San Antonio mayor loses fight over how local laws are brought up for public debate

San Antonio mayor Gina Ortiz Jones speaks during a City Hall press conference last month. Credit: Michael Karlis

San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones suffered a bruising defeat Thursday as the 10 other members of City Council voted to keep the existing city rules governing how members of the body propose new ordinances for debate.

A bipartisan coalition including District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo, District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito, D10 District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte and first-term District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears put the item forward for a vote.

Last month, Jones advocated changing the old rules so no proposal documents, called Council Consideration Requests (CCRs), filed by council members prior to her time in office could come up for a vote. At the time, every member of council voted to reject the alteration.

After that vote, the four-member coalition filed a memo demanding Thursday’s full debate of the CCR rules. The discussion set the stage for Jones’ second defeat on the matter.

During Thursday’s debate, Whyte said the rule change Jones sought would force council members to refile CCRs that aren’t heard before the end of their term — a process that could take as long as a year and a half.

“Imagine being in your last term in office,” Whyte said. “Why would you even file a CCR that could take a year or a year and a half to be worked on, if the minute you’re gone and termed out the CCR expires, and the process would have to start over again? I mean, you may as well not even do the work at that point.”

However, first-term District 4 Councilman Edward Mungia disagreed and put forth an amendment that would have declared CCRs authored by a member no longer in office “expired.” CCRs where four of the five signatories were no longer in office also would also be tossed under Mungia’s suggested rule change.

Although first-term District 6 Councilman Ric Galvan and District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur both said they’re open to having a more in-depth discussion about how the CCR process could improve, they argued the language in Munguia’s amendment could cause problems if not properly examined.

“I think there’s a larger conversation about what the things that feel are important … but I think we can continue with the previous CCRs that were under the previous ordinance, and then we should have a conversation about how we want to propose anything new,” Kaur said.

Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.

San Antonio mayor loses fight over how local laws are brought up for public debate – again.

Tags: