I’m becoming convinced that this County Council couldn’t pour water out of a boot if you told them the instructions were written on the heel.
How hard could it be to screw up this UGA agreement? Pretty hard. But, the Whatcom County Council is plucky and has found a way.
According the the WCC, all council members are supposed to have five days to read the agenda and all of that agenda’s supporting documents.
One of the supporting documents for the May 11th agenda is AB2010-054c. That is the preliminary draft of the ordinance to resolve the UGA settlement with the self-described “affected community”.
This UGA settlement is a Joe Biden-esque “Big [Bad Word] Deal” to the current County Council and the “affected community”.
One would think that the Whatcom County Council would exercise all due diligence to insure that
One would be wrong, however.
If you look at AB2010-054c, you will see that the Agenda Bill was stamped as received by Council on May 4, 2010. This is plenty of time for the Agenda Bill to have been prepared for members of council at least five days before the May 11 meeting.
If there had been any supporting documents to read, that is.
Funny thing about the copy of AB2010-054c that I downloaded from the County website on Friday, May 7, 2010.
At that time it was one page long.
It was a 20 kilobyte PDF file.
Just an Agenda Bill form with no documents attached to it.
As of May 7, 2010, AB2010-054c didn’t substantively exist (at least not on the county website) and the current substantive draft of AB2010-054c didn’t become available to the public on the County Website until the afternoon of May 10, 2010.
Then three days later, AB2010-054c grew an additional 47 pages of material.
On Monday, May 10, 2010, the agenda was revised at about 2:30 p.m. A full week after AB2010-054c was received by County Council. I downloaded a second copy of AB2010-054c, with that agenda revision.
That copy of AB2010-054c was a 2.1 megabyte PDF file.
48 pages long.
AB2010-054c seems to me to be a supporting document for the May 11 agenda.
So, when was the substantive language of Agenda Bill 2010-054c available to the members of council?
Did all members of Council have the 48 page preliminary draft of AB2010-054c available to them at least five days before the May 11, 2010 meeting?
How many days before the meeting did all seven council members have to review that 48 page document?
And if all the council members had a substantive copy of this supporting document five days out, how come the public didn’t get a look at it until the eve of the regular meeting?
And more to the point, if the substantive language of AB2010-054c wasn’t received by the County Council at least five days before the May 11, 2010 agenda... what was it doing on the May 11 agenda?
I am skeptical that 48 pages of material from an Agenda Bill, which happens to be the entire substance of a proposed ordinance, can be added to a regular meeting agenda one day before the meeting itself without blatantly violating the Whatcom County Code 2.02.045 (a), which reads:
The clerk of the council shall consult with the council chair and the chair of each committee prior to preparation of the council’s agenda. The clerk shall prepare the agenda, which, together with supporting documents, shall be provided to all councilmembers no less than five days prior to each regular council meeting and at the earliest possible date prior to any special meeting. The agenda shall be posted conspicuously within the Whatcom County Courthouse and shall be available for review on the council’s web page. [emphasis added]
The stamp on AB2010-054c shows it was submitted to Council on May 4, 2010. This Agenda Bill was included on the May 11th, 2010 County Council Agenda for discussion in Committee of the Whole.
There appeared to be nothing to discuss about AB2010-054c as late as May 7, 2010.
And then, less than 24 hours before the Agenda Bill is to be discussed, all of the preliminary language materializes on the County Website.
Timeline for Agenda Bill 2010-054c
April 27th
The County Council met as Committee of the Whole to give instructions to their policy analyst, Rebecca Craven, to draft the language of a proposed amendment to the 2009 UGA ordinance.
April 28
Rebecca Craven resigns as Policy Analyst for the Whatcom County Council.
April 28-May 3
Some time during this six day interval, which includes a weekend, the County Executive agrees to have his staff draft the language for a proposed amendment to the 2009 UGA ordinance.
May 4
County Council stamps AB2010-054c as received. If the 48 page bill was actually drafted at that time, it was prepared in less than a week.
May 7
Apexnerd downloads AB2010-054c. It is a one page document at that time that lacks the 47 pages of substantive ordinance language and exhibits.
May 10
A revision to the Whatcom County Council Agenda is posted on the County Website.
Apexnerd downloads the revision and discovers a version of AB2010-054c that includes the full 48 pages of supporting documents. This is the first opportunity he has to actually read the Agenda Bill.
Apexnerd wonders when this Agenda Bill was actually drafted, because it doesn’t seem like it could have been drafted in less than a week.
He also wonders how many days the council members had to review this document, hoping that all of the council members had more time to read it
What the hell is going on here?
It's not enough to simply **win.** You have to grind your boot into the face of the enemy as you do so.
ReplyDeleteI'll grant you that, Anonymous...
ReplyDeleteBut is it too much to ask that the boot be at least laced up and worn on the correct foot first?
You need to understand: The general lawlessness of their actions is part of the game.
ReplyDeleteApex:
ReplyDeleteYou were wondering how many days the Council had to review the new UGA Ordinance. I think ken Mann answered that question. It was zero days. I wonder how much fact checking was done on the facts presented in the ordinance. And did the Council send this off to CTED for review without ever allowing any opportunity for public review?
From a post by Ken Mann "We will have some interesting committee discussions, especially Committee Of The Whole at 1:00pm, which will be further cementing (paving?) the geographic expansions of multiple urban growth areas. While there is no draft ordinance in our packet, apparently we will be discussing it during the committee. Yes, that seems odd. ***Update. Sam Taylor just informed me that the ordinance has been released via email this afternoon***"