Proposal to change Council meeting rules draws opposition

City Clerk Myrna Rios has proposed changes, some of them controversial, to rules for the conduct at City Council meetings. Council is scheduled to take up the new rules at today’s meeting.

During Tuesday’s work session, Rios defended her proposals, including a ban on allowing a member of the public to donate time to another member to speak longer. That ban has been in effect during the pandemic and Rios said it would be particularly difficult to allow those who signed up to speak remotely to donate time.

Council members Alison Alter and Vanessa Fuentes both expressed their objections to that change, and Mayor Kirk Watson agreed with Fuentes’ request that Council postpone voting on the new rules. “This is a very important part of our democratic process,” Fuentes said, suggesting that Council might consider changes at the June 8 meeting.

Rios said allowing people to donate their time makes it very difficult for her staff. She had four staff members at Tuesday’s meeting, and it would require considerably more if time donation is allowed. Alter suggested that only in-person speakers be allowed to donate time when the rules are changed.

Watson said Council might decide to postpone the rules item to a specific future date, noting that Council has a long recess after the June 8 meeting. Council is not scheduled to meet again until a July 18 work session, with a July 20 meeting to follow.

The mayor also suggested that Council might approve postponing the item on Thursday’s consent agenda, but Council members may have different ideas.

At least one angry Austinite has already weighed in, urging others to contact Council to protest the changes. Fred Lewis of Community Not Commodity sent out a lengthy email Tuesday in which he blamed Council for the proposed changes and blasted the idea of disallowing speakers from donating their time to another person. “One or two minutes allowed for an individual speaker is rarely enough time for a member of the public to address complicated issues,” he wrote. “Additionally, time donation enables a person vitally interested in an issue but uncomfortable with public speaking to have his or her views expressed through another. Discarding the time donation rule serves no purpose other than to hobble public participation.”

Under the current procedures, Council members can remove any item from the consent agenda and then it will be brought up separately for discussion. Also, if two members of the public wish to comment on an item, it will be pulled from the consent agenda and community members will be allowed to speak. Zoning cases have their own rules. If a zoning case is proposed for postponement, speakers are allowed to support or oppose the postponement. It is not clear how the new rules would impact zoning cases.

Lewis wrote in his email, “The consent portion of the agenda is designed for noncontroversial items to be grouped together and voted on collectively. To prevent the Council from abusing the consent agenda and including controversial items, the rules currently provide that an item may not be adopted by consent if two or more persons have registered to testify on an item.”

Although Lewis said Council had proposed to remove that provision, it was not the Council but the clerk. And it is not clear whether Council members will support such a change. He does note correctly that this item may be on the consent agenda for postponement, but since the rules have not yet changed, two members of the public can still take it off the consent agenda. Of course, it seems likely that a Council member will also want to talk about it.

The new rules say, as they have in the past, “The person registered to testify will be allowed to speak one time, for up to three minutes on the consent agenda as a whole, regardless of the number of items for which the person has signed up to speak.”

Council Member Mackenzie Kelly told her colleagues she was concerned that the city might be in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act because community members are not allowed to speak on briefing items. But City Attorney Anne Morgan told her that Austin and other cities have studied the question and believe that the law does not require the public to participate on items Council will not be voting on.

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