Mayor Josh Chapman and Councilmember Bapu Vaitla recently began asking city commissioners for feedback on a proposal for “clarification of how items are placed on a commission meeting agenda.” Chapman and Vaitla did not invite the public at large to weigh in on their proposal, but we feel compelled to do so in the public interest.
To sum up, we recommend jettisoning this illegal and ill-conceived plan. It would empower even a single councilmember to micromanage and indefinitely block any commission-initiated proposal they didn’t like for any reason whatsoever. There are far better alternatives to promote teamwork and collaboration between the City Council and the city’s expert volunteer citizen commissioners.
Current city policy allows commissions free reign to work on pretty much anything they want as long as it is consistent with the written charter established for them. Once a commission has explored a policy matter, the city’s Commission Handbook says it may submit items to the Council to be placed on the Council agenda for its consideration.
The Chapman-Vaitla plan, summarized in a flow chart, overrides those policies. The Council and the city staff could continue to place items on commission agendas. Yet, in a big change, proposals initiated by a commission would now be subject to review and veto—by either any relevant council subcommittee (two councilmembers) or that commission’s assigned Council liaison (typically one councilmember). The Chapman-Vaitla plan says these new rules would apply whenever the council wished to “undertake a particular task/project/discussion.” In other words, almost anything and everything a commission might ever want to do would be subject to veto by one councilmember. The Council and city staff would dictate what a commission can or cannot do, but the commission itself would have absolutely no control over its work. This is bizarre and extremely unwise.
Huge policy fiefdoms would be carved out for individual councilmembers. Bapu Vaitla (Council liaison for the Climate Commission) alone would make the call on commission proposals to address greenhouse gas reduction proposals. Donna Neville (Council liaison for the Fiscal Commission) would have sole control over commission proposals regarding budgets and taxes. Josh Chapman (the Council liaison for the Social Services and the Recreation and Parks Commissions) would call the shots for commissions that oversee housing projects and city parks.
The plan sets no time limit for a councilmember to review and act on a commission proposal, allowing it to be tabled for months or years. And Councilmembers would have wide discretion in making such decisions: The plan says their decisions could be based on whether they align with “Council goals and priorities,” the “cost,” “staff bandwidth,” and “other Commission workload or priorities, etc.” That is one gigantic “etc.” Nothing in their plan prohibits decisions based on whether they made their friends and political supporters happy or unhappy rather than serving the public interest.
A councilmember could have to decide whether to rubber stamp or veto a particular commission proposal amid fierce lobbying for or against it by special interest groups. Under this flawed approach, their decision would be made in secret, and that councilmember would not be required to explain or justify their final action in writing or in public.
We predict that commissions would rarely bother to follow the cumbersome process outlined in the Chapman-Vaitla plan. They will have quiet off-the-books conversations with their assigned councilmember and quickly ditch any proposed agenda item their “minder” didn’t like. Many important city government decisions would be hidden from the public.
Those decisions may not reflect the will of the voters. A single council “shot-caller” delegated the control over a particular commission might act very differently on an issue than the council majority.
The Chapman-Vaitla proposal clearly violates the Brown Act, the landmark state law enacted to ensure that local government decisions are made in the light of day. That law says that only a Council majority—not one or two councilmembers out of five—can make city policy decisions on issues within its jurisdiction, such as a decision to block a specific policy proposal being considered by a commission. Council decisions by law must occur in a public meeting for which the public has been provided advance notice and a chance to weigh in with public comment. The Chapman-Vaitla proposal would violate requirements for open meetings and open government. Their proposal also conflicts with various state laws and local ordinances that authorize certain city commissions to take official actions unimpeded by review and vetoes by one or two councilmembers.
Why do this at all? Commissioners are being treated like children rather than adults. Why straitjacket them, stifling innovative proposals? It is crucial for commissioners, as subject matter experts, to anticipate changes like AI technology they may see on the horizon and keep the Council abreast of the latest developments.
The Council already has the tools it needs to ensure city commissions do what they are supposed to. It can appoint commissioners committed to its goals. Each commission is governed by a charter approved by Council spelling out what it can work on. Each commission has a Council liaison empowered to weigh in at every commission meeting with their opinion about what work would help the Council achieve its goals.
There are much better alternatives for creating a desirable environment in which the Council and its commissioners collaborate more closely in policymaking. The Council could invite commissions, as it has in the past, to review and comment on the official list of Council goals before they are adopted, fostering mutual buy-in. The current Council halted the longstanding practice of holding a public workshop with a different commission each month to discuss issues they wanted to work on together. Council could resume those workshops
The Chapman-Vaitla plan to micromanage commissions is neither legal nor good government. It would create a breeding ground for bad policymaking and corruption and frustrate the independent oversight of city government that commissions were created to provide. This plan should be scrapped as illegal and unworkable.
Dan Carson is a former Davis City Council member and city commissioner with a 45-year career in journalism and state and local government service. Elaine Roberts Musser is an attorney who has served on county and city commissions as well as various task forces. She was given the award of Davis Citizen of the Year in 2014.
