Evanston officials talked a lot Monday evening but reached little consensus on how much power the city’s mayor should have to put special items on the City Council’s agenda, a procedural question that’s as much mired in politics as semantics.
Monday’s meeting of the Rules Committee, comprised of the city’s nine councilmembers and Mayor Daniel Biss, took more than three hours as the 10 elected officials worked through an overhaul of the council rulebook, which governs the city’s legislative process. Monday’s discussion followed a similarly lengthy meeting in June that covered the first half of that draft.
Like last month, the committee spent considerable time debating the mayor’s role in directing council business, this time focusing on the mayor’s power to put “special orders of business” on meeting agendas.
Current council rules define special orders as anything up for consideration “that did not originate from any Council Committee or Subcommittee,” setting them apart from the majority of items that are heard at least once somewhere else before going to the full council, oftentimes through a legislative referral.
The mayor can place special orders on the council’s next agenda by emailing councilmembers at least five days ahead of time. Councilmembers can also create special orders for a future date through a majority vote during a full council meeting.
Acting quickly
As written, the proposed new rules would keep this process the same, but on Monday, several councilmembers advocated for either reining in the mayor’s power or expanding the council’s. A list of proposed revisions submitted by one or more councilmembers included removing the mayor’s ability to put special orders on the agenda entirely, doubling the required notice time from five days to 10 and requiring a supermajority vote of the council to take up any special orders.
Only one proposal actually went to a vote on Monday: Councilmember Matt Rodgers (8th Ward) moved to limit the mayor to adding only “administrative or non-legislative” items to meeting agendas, with all legislative items going through the Referrals Committee before being considered by the full council.
Biss responded that he’s “totally uncomfortable” with completely removing the mayor’s power to bring time-sensitive issues before the council when needed, naming the Welcoming City Ordinance revisions approved in January before the inauguration of President Donald Trump as a key example.
“There was not time to send that through the referrals process, so it was important to do that quickly,” Biss said. “If you’re saying that the mayor would retain the ability to create special orders of business unilaterally, and then for other items, there’s this other way around it, that I’m comfortable with.”
Rodgers said he’s fine with the mayor having that power, but only if “we have an understanding of what a special order of business is.” But his motion later failed, with only Clare Kelly (1st Ward) joining him in voting yes.
Dealing in definitions
Rodgers’ proposal remained relevant as Monday’s meeting went on, though, as defining special orders and when they should be used proved to be a thorny issue.
The current draft doesn’t include a definition, and while councilmembers voted to add one at their June meeting, they didn’t provide the specific wording they were looking for, leaving it an open question for city staff.
“If the committee has direction on what that definition should be like, that would be helpful,” said Liza Roberson-Young, the city’s chief legislative policy advisor.
On Monday, Parielle Davis (7th Ward) proposed that special orders should only be used in “emergencies,” adding that she’s “not exactly sure what other rationale there would be” for their use. She initially moved to include that in a definition, but later withdrew the motion before it went to a vote.
In response, Juan Geracaris (9th Ward) said that what counts as an “emergency” or “time-sensitive” issue is “very subjective.” When Davis later asked what he thought the definition or restrictions should be, Geracaris said he’d prefer to base it off how special orders have been used in the last year, and he encouraged other councilmembers to specifically call out any past uses they felt were “an overstep.”
Since councilmembers’ current term began on April 28, the only special order of business to go before them has been a discussion of the Envision Evanston 2045 draft comprehensive plan on June 24.
Biss: Avoid Oregon’s ’emergency’ clause
Biss also weighed in on the “emergency” question by sharing a story from his time in the Illinois General Assembly, when he was researching a bill from Oregon that began by declaring an emergency, which he said he found “odd.” A provision in Oregon’s constitution, he explained, actually prohibits bills from taking immediate effect except in the case of an emergency, which can simply be declared in the bill itself.
“It turns out that because of this very well-intentioned concept — that you can’t have something go into effect immediately unless it’s an emergency — all the bills in Oregon now say, ‘Hey, there’s an emergency,’” Biss said. “I want to make sure that whatever we do is real and actually affects the practice here, rather than puts an additional nominal protection that will be irrelevant in practice.”
The committee ultimately deferred the issue to its next meeting, when city staffers are expected to provide definition options for the group to consider.
Wrapping up discussion, Kelly requested that the mayor exercise “restraint from placing any items as a special order of business” on upcoming agendas while the new rulebook is still being developed.
“I commit to you that I will continue to show the restraint that I’ve always shown on this topic as mayor,” Biss answered.
Among other issues covered Monday, the committee approved a hard minimum of one minute per speaker during public comment and a time-limited public announcements period for councilmembers at the start of full council meetings.
The committee will take a final look at the revised rules document at its next meeting on Monday, Aug. 18, after which it will advance to a regular council meeting for final adoption.
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