Lincoln aldermen debate at length separated committees versus committee of the whole

 

[June 27, 2019] 

LINCOLN 

On Tuesday evening, Lincoln Alderman Kevin Bateman led the first hour of discussion at the meeting of the Lincoln City Council. Bateman presented a rough draft proposal for the city returning to a committee structure versus committee of the whole.

The city of Lincoln worked under a committee structure for many years. Committees met as needed, usually just prior to a full council meeting. The city maintained two committee of the whole meetings and two voting sessions per month.

Before the 2012 Census, there were five wards with two aldermen per ward equating ten aldermen serving ten committees.

When the 2012 Census showed that Lincoln had a drop in population, the council downsized to four wards with two aldermen per ward.

While Keith Snyder served as mayor, the city hired its first administrator.

With those changes the council also changed its committee style governance changing to consent agenda.

The meeting schedule remained the same, with the only difference being that topics were brought directly to the Committee of the Whole for discussion. All the aldermen had the opportunity to offer input on the topic, but no single alderman or group of aldermen was in charge of the topic.

On Tuesday evening, Bateman proposed a structure that would include two meeting nights for committees only, one committee of the whole meeting per month and one voting session per month.

Bateman said that what he was proposing was the end result of working with Alderman Tracy Welch to come up with a starting point for a work in progress. He said that the plan could be changed and refined to meet the needs of the council.

In Bateman’s plan, the aldermen would be divided into two groups. Each group of four aldermen would serve on four separate committees, and all four of those committees would meet on the same night. Each of the four aldermen in the group would chair one committee within the group.

The chairman of each committee would be responsible for establishing the agenda for the committee meeting, calling the meeting to order and directing the discussion. That person would also give a written report of the meeting to the city clerk and request that items be placed on the Committee of the Whole agenda for introduction to the full council.

At the Committee of the Whole meeting that same chairman would introduce the topics and explain the work done by the committee. The full council then would have the opportunity to discuss the topic further if needed and ask questions for anything they felt needed clarification.

All eight aldermen would be welcome to attend any of the committee meetings, and any alderman or department head could request that something be placed on a specific committee agenda.

Some of the immediate questions that came up revolved around the payment of bills. Treasurer Chuck Conzo said that the city needs to pay its bills in a timely manner. Moving to only one voting session at the end of the month would jeopardize that process.

Bateman suggested that there be some kind of ‘spending authority’ within the committee so that bills could be paid, or he said the council could maintain two voting sessions per month as well as two Committee of the Whole (COW) meetings. He suggested that the committees for example could meet on COW nights one hour ahead of the official meeting. They could meet at 6 p.m., go through their work and present it at the COW that same night if they were ready.

He said that each committee would review and approve the bills pertaining to the specific department the committee represented, so he didn’t think the process would have to be slowed down if the council wanted to maintain the current meeting schedule.

On the other hand he said the meeting schedule could also be sped up. The committees could meet on two consecutive nights at the first of the month, hold a COW in the second week, a voting session on the third week, and be off on the fourth week.

Steve Parrott asked if the mayor would be a member of all eight committees. Bateman said, no, the mayor would not be on any of the committees. Parrott said that proposed a problem for breaking ties within the committee. Bateman said the committee members would have to “just talk it out” until they were in agreement.”

Bateman moved on to discuss the roll of the department heads. He said ultimately the daily routine of the department heads would not change. They would however submit their monthly reports to the committee rather than the full council. He added that department heads would not always be needed at the committee meetings.

Jeff Hoinacki asked whether the full council would see the monthly department reports then. Bateman said that the chairman of the committee could email those reports to everyone after the committee had reviewed them.

City Attorney John Hoblit noted that in one particular committee – the Liquor Committee state statutes require that the mayor be a member. Bateman said that the committee could be established separate from the commission. The committee would decide policy and the commission would enforce the policy. The mayor along with others would then still be on the commission.

Ron Keller said that as an alderman who has not served the city under a committee structure, he still needs convincing. He said he would like to hear from the aldermen in the room who have served in a committee structure.

Kathy Horn and Jeff Hoinacki are the only two sitting aldermen who have that experience. Horn is supportive of returning to a committee structure, Hoinacki is not.

Horn said that the structure included the chairman, who was appointed by the mayor. The chairs were appointed annually and the responsibility spread around. She said there was no conflict of power and that the committee structure had worked out very well.

Welch spoke before Hoinacki. Neither he nor Parrott as Ward One aldermen have served on a committee structure. He also had reservation about payment of bills regarding timeliness, but there was also a degree of trust that would have to be there because the committees would approve the payment of those bills.

Hoinacki said that he preferred the Committee of the Whole. He noted for example that if a constituent comes to him and says ‘I hear the city is buying 20 police cars. I’m not on that committee and I can’t answer that question.” Hoinacki continued saying that at the Committee of the Whole everyone is hearing the same thing at the same time and from his point of view that is a better scenario.

Fire Chief Bob Dunovsky weighed about ‘across the isle” situations where an issue within the city impacts more than one department. He said that if something were introduced in one committee it would then have to be re-introduced in another. Dunovsky added that in his career with the city, he has worked under chiefs in both committee structure and committee of the whole structure. He said that in his mind the committee structure verses COW ended up “bogging down progress.” Dunovsky added that even now with the current structure there are monthly bills that fall in between meetings and end up getting paid late. He said then vendors have to be contacted and asked to remove late charges and etc. He said paying bills once a month would only make that worse and harder for everyone.

Building and Safety Officer Wes Woodhall has not served under committee structure, but he did have an opinion on the matter. He said that what he was hearing was that the aldermen would be doing double duty. A specific topic would go to committee for discussion, but then it would also come to the COW for further discussion. He said it looked like doubling up to him and felt unnecessary.

Bateman said that most of the time, topics introduced at the COW by a committee chairman would require no further discussion. The chair would present, the item would be placed on the agenda for voting. He surmised there would be no redundancy.

Hoinacki disagreed. He said it would be redundant simply because one topic was coming before the aldermen twice, once at committee and once at COW. He added that there would be a lack of transparency at the COW meetings as a result of only four aldermen in a committee handling any given situation.

Bateman said there would be a better distribution of information. He recalled when former Alderman Ron Fleshman had taken the lead on working through some of the sewer department issues, he did the work and brought it back to the full council. Bateman wondered if it was right for that to have happened, and said that under committee structure four aldermen would have done the work.

However, Parrott said that was an exceptional issue because the city administrator was not present to take the lead as it should have been. It was noted that during the time that the city was without a CA, business as usual had to go on, and Fleshman had taken the initiative. The same was true at a later time when current City Administrator Beth Kavelman was on medical leave, the city had to keep moving forward.

Kavelman also noted that Fleshman had continued to work with her on the sewer issues because he was very knowledgeable on the topic.

Wanda Lee Rohlfs is a former alderman who served under committee structure. In the gallery Tuesday night, Rolfs spoke up in favor of the structure. She noted though that in her day, the committees met only as needed and not all committees were needed every month.

She said monthly bills went to the chairman of the committee. The committee members would come to a meeting 15 minutes early and would review and sign off on the bills.

Rohlfs had used the Building and Zoning Office as an example, saying that there would not be a building to demolish every month, so that committee would not have to meet monthly. Parrott said that the same people would still have to meet, because they served on four committees. Bateman said that was the thing though, there would be plenty of times when the group would not be needed because there was nothing to discuss in the individual committees.

Rolfs said that the problem Parrott was talking about was because of the rigid structure being presented. If the structure were more “flexible” those meetings would not all have to be held at the same time. She then asked how many departments actually have issues on a weekly basis.

City Street and Alley Superintendent Walt Landers answered quickly. His department has issues sometimes on a daily basis. He said it was simpler now to be able to go directly to the city administrator and the mayor, and it was also immediate.

Hoinacki said under the Open Meetings Act he would also question the legality of coming 15 minutes early to review bills. He said while there was no meeting called to order, the aldermen present would still be conducting business.

Bateman said the solution to that would be to approve the bills in committee. He said the payment of the bills for a department could be approved by four aldermen and the bills paid. He added, if a problem arose it could be addressed afterward.

Hoblit had been researching some of the legal and governmental policy of the council and a committee structure. He said that running a department was still going to be the responsibility of the respective department heads. He wondered if the committee structure would result in “micro-managing” the departments.

He said that there were rules that would have to be followed including minutes taken at each committee meeting as well as on action items, a majority report and a minority report reflecting the position of each side.

Keller said that he while he appreciated the work that has gone into this topic, “I will say I was open to it and am probably less convinced now than I was that this will work.”

Keller said that his question was why are the aldermen considering this, what needs to change? He said if the council is having issues with sharing information then that needs to be corrected in the COW.

Bateman had earlier in the evening said that he had already had instances where he came to a voting session and something was put before him and he was told to vote yes or no with no background information. He had said something like that would not happen if there were committees.

Hoinacki addressed that later in the evening saying that the council has the right and responsibility to table items when they are not prepared to take a vote. That is always at the discretion of the council and one alderman can initiate that by saying simply he or she does not understand the issue and wishes to discuss it further.

Welch spoke up noting that he had worked with Bateman on this draft document. But listening to the discussion, he had to agree with Keller when his counterpart asked, “What is the problem?”

Welch said it was important to discuss why the council wants to bring this back. For himself, he said his big issue is transparency. He said transparency empowers the council. He said there were advantages to a committee structure, but there would also be a great deal of fallout. He listed a few - the role of the city administrator, the role of the mayor, the payment of aldermen for meetings, the change in work load for the city clerk, the number of ordinances that will have to be changed to accommodate the committee structure.

Bateman said he was accustomed to a committee form of government on the county level, and that he liked it. As an example, he said the city would have handled the trash mandate much better had a committee been working on that and refining it before the vote. He said that it would not have been the scenario when the city approved something, then had to fix it and fix it again.

As the evening wore on, the discussion hit the one-hour mark, and Mayor Seth Goodman called for the discussion to end for the evening. He did so based on a suggestion from Hoinacki that the topic be closed for the night. Hoinacki had stated that this discussion could go on for the next several hours, but there were 17 other items on the agenda that required the attention of the aldermen.

Bateman made a final comment saying that the committee structure would allow for more communication between aldermen. He noted that according to the open meetings act aldermen cannot speak about city issues outside of a meeting. With four on a committee, those four could talk more freely about the issues pertaining to their department.

Keller said he still believes that what the city has now (the COW format) works, he said if there are issues to work out, then work them out. He added that there was always the option for the mayor to appoint special committees to address big projects or issues.

Goodman wrapped up the discussion by offering his own opinion on the topic. “I have listened to all this, and I don’t want to discredit the work you guys have done, but I am in no way, shape, or form in favor of the committee structure. It is obviously your decision.”

There are no action items coming in the near future regarding this topic. However, a straw vote of this topic at the moment appears that it would be split. Hoinacki is definitely against the change. Bateman and Horn are definitely in favor. Parrott and Keller appear to be leaning toward opposition. Welch appears to be trying to stay open to the idea, but recognizes there are big problems with making this kind of change. Sam Downs and Kathy Schmidt did not offer any input. City department heads appear to be opposed to the change and Conzo has some strong concerns. Kavelman appears to be in favor of the change, and Goodman is strongly opposed.

This topic will no doubt return to future meetings.

[Nila Smith]

Past related articles:

Nov. 27, 2012 - One contested race in 2013 city of Lincoln officials primary

May 24, 2014 - City discusses reducing wards from 5 to 4

June 15, 2011 -- City Briefs: City redistricting would cut aldermen to 8