AN ORDINANCE proposing an amendment to the King County Charter to update the charter, clarify terms and bring the charter into compliance with state law, as it pertains to referendum, initiative and charter ballot measure timelines; amending Sections 230.40, 230.50, 230.50.10, 230.60, 230.70, 230.75 and 800 of the King County Charter; and submitting the same to the voters of the county for their ratification or rejection at the November 2, 2021, general election.
Then, unless there's objection, we will expedite, which means that it will be on the June 15th Council agenda. Hearing no objection. That's what we will do. And that takes us to item six in today's agenda, proposed ordinance 2021 185 would also send a proposed charter amendment to the November ballot. This would. This deals with the timelines for referendums and initiatives, which was also briefed at our last meeting. We have Jake Treacy from council staff here to reorient us as we want us to this legislation and its amendment. Jake. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jake Treacy Council Staff The materials for 2020 10185 begin on page 14 of your packet. The work for this item was done by Miranda less than ten council staff. I'm just filling in for her today. So, as you'll recall from the last meeting, this item would place on the next general election ballot a proposed charter amendment that would update the charter by making changes pertaining to referendum and initiative timelines and clarifying terms and bringing the charter into compliance with state law. With regards to such timelines, Table one on page 16 of your packet provides a summary of the proposed changes as compared to the current charter language. In addition to technical changes and changes intended to align with state law, the ordinance proposed would specify that initiatives and referenda should appear on the next general election ballot after the respective petition filing timelines have been completed unless the Council specifies an earlier time. Currently, the code says it could go on the next general or a special election ballot. So this will default to general unless council made other arrangements. It would clarify that it is the intent to file a referendum that must be submitted before the original effective date of the ordinance, not the signed petitions themselves. Those will need to be filed with council no later than 45 days after enactment of the ordinance. It would also specify that council cannot adopt an initiative by ordinance and thereby therefore thereby avoid a vote by the public only to immediately adopt the new ordinance amending that language. Any ordinance adopted in response to an initiative petition would not be allowed to be amended or repealed by the Council for two years following the effective date of that ordinance, except by an ordinance adopted by a minimum two thirds vote of all members of the Council. There's also a proposed striking amendment that would make technical and clarifying changes and would make a change so that if a valid referendum petition is submitted to the court from the County Council, the effective date of the ordinance would be 90 days after its enactment, rather than 60 days as proposed in the underlying ordinance and 45 days as is the case currently. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Mr. Chair, council member. DUNN Thank you, Mr. Chair. What was the genesis of all this? I missed that. How did this whole process to revise and update these rules relating to the referendum process come to pass was initiated by the Charter Review Commission or someone else? A Yes, that's correct. It was a recommendation of the Charter Review Commission, and I believe the ordinance, as is before you, is in the form that the Charter Commission Review Commission recommended. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Gallucci. Thank you. Just to add a little more context to Councilmember Dunn's question. You may recall, Councilmember Dunn, there was an attempt by a group of citizens to put a measure, an initiative on the ballot on a for an initiative seeking county on the ballot of 2 to 3 years ago. And one of the things that came out during that process was that our rules were contradictory and hard to understand. And in fact, although those residents submitted the requisite number of signatures by the date, they were told they still were too late to make the ballot they were aiming for because our rules did not allow for all of the process steps that were required. And so after that happened, you know, regardless of the substance of that, our process was clearly not working. And so after that, my office and I took it upon ourselves to try to fix the rules which required a change to ordinance and charter. We've already adopted changes to the ordinances, our ordinances to put them in line with state law and each other. This change to the charter would kind of complete the circle of process improvement here so that there is a clear, stepwise path to take to do either an initiative or a referendum in King County. You know, by the way, not a huge fan of this way of legislating, but if we're going to have this is available to people, we should be upfront and honest with them about how long it really takes so that if they put the effort in, they're not told at the end of the day, oops, sorry, you can't go on the ballot anyway. So that that's a little bit more of the flavor of it. Thanks for that clarification. That's helpful. Lambert because remember Lambert. Real quick questions. Why do we move from 45 days for it to become effective to 90 days? My understanding is that that was requested by the executive side or it was it was so that there was enough time on staff's part in order to do the processing. But the sponsor might have more information on that. Because it seems that when people are doing this, they want to do it as quickly as possible. And so that seems like an awfully long time. And then when we're talking about notifying the clerk and writing a we defined writing. I know we talked about this before, but I do writing to include by email. I would have to follow up with you on that. I believe that they accept it by email, but I can confirm that. Okay. And then my last question is on page seven. It's. Because he's 17. They find it where they were talking about it real quick again are. You have to go on. Only the general ballot. Yes. The last part under 30.50 on page 17. The last bullet specified in Mississippi are only a general election unless the council specifies an earlier date. So. It seems a little redundant in some ways because it is a target, but we could pick any date we want. So explain why that's called out so clearly. And do we have authority? Supposing a city says, I really want this done quickly and I want it on April ballot. And for some reason we don't like whatever that is. We're sorry we had to wait till the November ballot. Is that a possibility that they could create? So I can say that the the existing rules say it goes on either the next special or the next general election ballot, whichever one comes first. So and this would go to just the next general election ballot, unless the council unless the council said, yes, it's going to go into a special election prior to that. So it would be up to the council to decide if it can go on an earlier date or if it defaults to the general election ballot. I think that was a recommendation that came out of the Charter Review Commission. All right. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. See no further questions. Council member Banducci. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to move that. We approve a proposed motion 2020 10185 with a do pass recommendation. Councilor Reason is House. Member Bill Duty has moved it. We give it to pass. Recommendation to propose motion ordinance 2021 185. Councilmember Balducci. I understand there is also an amendment. I don't know if would like to brief that first or have me move it first. I believe Jake spoke to it. You know, it just it is striking the amendment S1 on page 31. Yes. Moving on to S1. S1 is before us. See no discussion. All those in favor of approving amendment S1 please signify by saying. Ii1i. Opposed nay. The ayes have it and the amendment is adopted for the discussion on ordinance 2021 185 as amended. Mr. Charles, speak to a. Council member about duty. Thank you. As I said earlier, this is really the end of a kind of a journey of legislative cleanup we've been on to make sure that these processes are clear and implementable so that if and when groups of residents go to the effort to either run a referendum or initiative in King County, our rules make sense and they can be understood. We created a Gantt chart, which I will gladly share with anybody that shows sort of when all the steps have to happen in order. The elections is very much on board with clarifying these processes, so it's really clear what they have to do and when. Sometimes in these processes, the council has a role. It's clear what we have to do and when it just makes it possible for residents to access their government in this way. In response to one of Councilmember Lambert's questions, what the the amended ordinance would do if adopted into the charter by the voters is it would extend the entire process to a total of 90 days instead of a total of 60 days. So it's long, but it's not really ridiculously long. And the reason is to allow election 40 days to verify signatures. That sounded like a lot to me too, when election proposed it. But when I thought about it and listening to what they were saying, often the need to verify very large stacks of many, many thousands of signatures hits around the same time as they're working on an election, and they don't have people hanging around just to sit down and do this work. So to make sure that they were allowed ample time and could always meet their deadlines, this was what they thought was was required. And because the goal of this whole change is to make sure that we can meet our marks and that if we tell somebody who comes in with a petition, if you do everything you're supposed to in 90 days, you will be able to get on the November ballot. We want to be able to make that statement and make it true. And so this allows ample time so that we can always feel confident that we can do that. And that's the entire purpose of the change. I really appreciate the charter commission taking this up and looking at it very closely and passing it on to us because it does complete a path that we were already on to really fix one of our one of our one of our operating processes that we have here at King County Government. And I urge everyone support. For the discussion. Just a quick. Question, if I might, Mr.. Councilmember, about. This touches on an inquiry that Councilmember Lambert raised, and that is that kind of default to the next general election. And I wondered if there was kind of a pro and con assessment of that. I think of that initiative and referendum was kind of coming out of the populist movement. If my memory if my history serves me correctly, it's kind of a Western states thing and it's kind of it's designed as the ultimate testing of power in the people when their elected representatives maybe get a little sidetracked from what the majority wants on on a key issue. And, and, and I when I think about that, I it seems like that that a defaulting to the next general election could really lengthen the process for the people's voice to be heard on an issue of of major importance. And I understand that that there's a counter to that in this legislation where we could we could put it on a special ballot or a primary, for example. But that kind of seems to be counter to the general thrust of the initiative and referendum power. And so I'm wondering what the discussion was in the Charter Review Commission about that issue of defaulting to the to the next general, which is different than what we do today, as I understand it goes on the next election ballot. Unfortunately, Councilmember, I do not have that information in front of me. I'm sure if Miranda was here today, she would be able to give you a thorough background on that. But I'll be happy to follow up with you on that. Okay, Jeff, maybe it was chiming in there perhaps or wanting to. I was just going to say the exact same magnitude. All right. I guess I would say I'd be supportive today, but I'm interested in that angle as we take it up at full council and make sure that we're comfortable with that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Dombrowski. And not knowing the thinking of the charter review commission at all. It occurs to me that with the turnout in the general election, there's certainly more of the electorate, more of the public participating in that decision than in a primary and certainly than in a special election. But that's my own thinking at this moment, not at all representing what the term review commission may have been thinking. Fair point. Thank you, Joe. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Lambert. I'm glad you're at least talking about this, because sometimes the November ballot can be very long, very complicated, and people are working on big ticket items and this might be a down ticket item and not get the scrutiny that it might get a smaller election and that the cost of elections, you know, people are pretty clear about , well, I don't want to be the only thing like Councilmember DEMBOSKY asked earlier on, what does it cost? Because if you're going to go on, say, a primary election date, you have most likely other people just to share the costs with you. You don't have more people as a general, but you may have less scrutiny because there'll be more attention on other things. So it could be good and it could be bad. And so I think having the flexibility of the citizens being able to decide, is it better for me to be able to have more bandwidth or is that better for me? Not so. I think it's a good thing to at least think about. Thank you. Councilmember Mel Duchin, anything to close? I appreciate the discussion, and I think these are issues that we can take up on final passage. If that anyone has any amendments. I just urge them to really think ahead and make sure, because there's a number of hands that have to touch these processes, including elections, our own clerk's office, etc.. So if we're going to make changes to this, I really encourage that people check with those folks in-depth as early as possible, because I find that with any like with any process, if you pull the string here, things might happen over here that you're not thinking about. And as I said, the goal of this entire thing is to make the process manageable, clear and doable so that it is a reliable thing for anybody who undertakes this, which is a significant amount of effort. So, yeah, I appreciate the discussion and everyone support I urge yes. Vote here today. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And quickly, please call the roll. Was there a vote on this breaking amendment? I may have missed that. Pardon me. I have it documented that there was a vote on my amendment. Great. Would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Belushi, I. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. I. Councilmember Caldwell's i. Councilmember Lambert, i. Councilmember of the ground. Councilmember the girl. Councilmember Yvonne Recover. I. Council members. Hello? I. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is eight zero now. Council member of the group. Excused. Thank you. Councilmember at the Grove. Are you able to unmute? Not at the moment. Then we will be in touch with his office if he wants to follow up before the end of the day as our procedures for remote meetings allow. And without having no other business before us, I guess I should be clear. The motion is adopted and will be expedited to the June 15th Council meeting. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.