AN ORDINANCE relating to telephone or electronic attendance at council and standing committee meetings; and amending Ordinance 11683, Section 15, as amended, and K.C.C. 1.24.145.
Yes. You got a new house. Okay. So thank you very much for being here. That's for having look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. All right. We're going on to our next item. We have a quorum with us still. So that's item number five, proposed ordinance 2014, interestingly enough, oh 3 to 0. And this is a ordinance relating to bringing better technology to our chambers. We had a briefing on this before. So this one, Mr. Wagner, if you would, reverse the amendments so we'll know what the amendments before us. All right? Yes, Madam Chair, for the record, Nick Wagner, council staff, the staff report on this legislation begins on page 13 of your materials. This ordinance, as you said, addresses the issue of when council members are permitted to attend council meetings by telephone or other electronic means, which I will refer to as remote attendance. Two weeks ago, on June 15th, as you pointed out, the committee considered three possible amendments to the ordinance. As a result of that discussion, there is a new amendment, Amendment four, for the committee to consider, and that amendment is that pages 27 to 32 of your materials, the first three amendments, one through three, are no longer being considered. There is also in your materials a red line showing the changes that amendment or would make in the original ordinance. And that red line is that pages 33 to 38 of your materials, the staff report focuses on Amendment four, since it is proposed by the sponsor of the original ordinance. The current county code provisions governing remote attendance were reviewed on June 15 and they are summarized in the background section of the staff report on pages 14 and 15. The changes that the proposed ordinance would make, if amended, if Amendment four is approved, are described on pages 15 to 17. First, the ordinance would allow a council member each calendar year to remotely attend without a showing of cause up to five meetings of each council, standing committee and five meetings of the full council. Second, the ordinance would allow remote attendance at additional for council and standing committee meetings on the basis of quote good cause unquote, which is defined to include the following five categories. First, an emergency as defined in the county code section 12.50 2.010. And that is an emergency in the nature of a public emergency, not a personal emergency. Second, special council meetings held during the council's summer or winter recess. Third, situations where it would be, quote, difficult, unquote, for the member to attend the meeting in person due to the member's attendance at a meeting of an outside committee to which the member has been assigned. Under the Council's organizational rules. Fourth, urgent circumstances as defined in the ordinance, subject to approval by a majority of the members present at the meeting and last other circumstances constituting good cause again subject to approval by a majority of the members present at the meeting. The third change that the ordinance would make is in the definition of urgent circumstances, and that change is is shown in the red lining on page 16 of your materials. Briefly, the ground of inclement weather would justify remote attendance if it made it difficult for the member to attend the meeting. It would not need to be so severe that travel to the meeting would pose an immediate life, health or safety risk to the member, which is the current standard. The second category of urgent circumstances is a member or family member's medically related issue or other urgent need for attendance, which would justify remote attendance if it made it difficult for the member to attend the meeting. But it would not need to be an emergency and the member would not need to be unable to attend in person. In addition, the definition of family member is broadened to match the class of family members whose death would allow a county employee to take bereavement leave. And it is made clear that the death of a family member would fall within this ground for remote attendance. The fourth proposed change that Amendment four would make is to require a member attending remotely to have the member's voice be audible so that the public can hear the discussion and voting process. And finally, the ordinance would add the following notice provision to facilitate connection to the broadcasting system. Requests for participation by telephone or other electronic means should be made half an hour in advance of the meeting when possible. And that concludes my staff report summarizing Amendment four. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I think you need to go on to do five and five a. Okay. Okay. Well, there there is an Amendment five, which I believe Councilmember Dombrowski intends to propose. And I think copies of it were circulated informally yesterday. But here are additional copies for members this morning. So just. Madam Chair. Just a second before we get started. So is Amendment five supersedes or we vote on four and and five to amend it? Or is five? What we need to supersede for. Amendment five is a anticipated proposed amendment to Amendment four. Okay. So we still vote on four, but then the friendly amendment for five would be added to it. Well, since amendment five is an amendment to Amendment four, it would need to be voted on before you vote on Amendment four. And then if it's adopted, then you would vote on Amendment four as amended by Amendment five. Okay. I just have four and then there's five. A So after we go through five, then we'll go five. A Well, what you were referring to as five A is depends on Amendment five being divided into two parts. I don't know whether that. Okay. That remains to be seen. So for the moment, I'm what I will do is describe what Amendment five in its current form would do to Amendment four. Okay. So. So it's up there. Council member dombroski has a question or comment. He'd like to make a number five. Well, I guess what I just wanted to say preliminarily was and thanks for your work on it and distributing it was I wanted to share it with members and get their views. I'm not dead set on offering it, but I it expresses kind of more closely where I'm at to the extent there are going to be any changes in this part of our operating procedure. So I offer it for consideration before actually offering it. Okay. I am I'm good with it being a friendly amendment. I think that, you know, there are some good things like changing the word difficult to safe. So I think that you did a nice job on that. The only part as we we'll hear is that I have one reason for being remote, that if you're out doing county business, for instance, a member of Naco, which is our National Association of Counties, or Wasatch, which is our statewide or any other time, if you were asked by the executive to go speak at something so you're actually doing county business. It seems to me that if you're out doing official county business that you shouldn't be marked, be not able to take some time away from that to listen in and provide your input remotely. So that's the only thing different from what's in five. So that's where I will have an amendment. We can vote on that. But otherwise, I think you did an awesome job on number five. So would you go ahead and explain number five? Sure. So what Amendment five would do is, first of all, reduced to a total of five of five, the number of times per calendar year that a council member may attend by telephone or other electronic means, either a full council meeting or a meeting of a standing council committee. So Amendment four would allow five times per entity, five times for the full council, five times for each standing committee that a member is a member of. This would reduce it to a total of five for all of those five per year. Second, the Amendment five would eliminate from the circumstances constituting good cause for attending remotely. Two things. First, difficulty for the member to attend the meeting in person due to the member's attendance of a meeting of an outside committee that the member has been assigned to under the Council's organizational rules that would no longer be a constitute good cause. And second other circumstances constituting a good cause. Both of those would be removed from the grounds, constituting a good cause for attending remotely. The third change that Amendment five would make is to limit the inclement weather that is deemed to constitute urgent circumstances, justifying remote attendance to inclement weather that makes it unsafe rather than merely difficult for the member to attend the meeting. And last Amendment five would provide for the meeting chair to rule initially on a member's request to attend remotely because of urgent circumstances, subject to appeal to the members present at the meeting. And the chair's ruling could be reversed only by an affirmative vote of at least two thirds of the members present at the meeting. And that those are the key elements of Amendment five. Okay. So if we were to divide this question so that we could talk about whether or not being gone for a county business someplace else, where would that be? Divide it out. The provision having to do with outside committees is line six of Amendment five. Okay, so I have never done this before on dividing emotions, so I'd like to move that. We divide the motion and take line number six out so that we are able to discuss that. And then then we have the amendment. Do you want to talk about. Okay. Yes, Mr. Chair, there. I think that's inappropriate. The chair cannot make a recommendation, him or herself, he or she has the right. To overrule or the chair could give the gavel to the vice chair or or another member of the committee, as I understand. So would you be willing to do that or are you not willing to do that? Can I say something? Absolutely sure. So I don't think a motion to divide is debatable. And so before it's made, I want to make a comment. All right. So that's great. So if I just everyone's on the same page, I think what you're interested in, Councilmember LAMB. It is adding as an additional reason for a for cause in, if you will, participation in outside committee. And my amendment would not permit that. And that's something I'm not supportive of. I think that we should move very carefully in this direction and that this should be our first priority in a number of outside committees. Allow you to dial in to them. So I would be opposing the motion to divide if it were offered, but I would be happy to temporarily chair the committee if you want to make that motion. Thank you, sir. Chair, if I could request clarification, I don't recall whether either amendment or Amendment five has been moved yet. They have not. Yeah, they have not. I do remember that. All right. So, council member Cole Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I would like to ask a question unrelated to this amendment. Just more background. Thank you, Nick. I think last time when you had your initial briefing was mentioned about what some other jurisdictions do. I think you mentioned Seattle. Could you just review that? Yes, there is. Information in. In the materials. There is a table. And this is in attachment six to the staff report. Page 43 is that the incidents pages 43 through 47 or 46 of your materials? And what it contains is a comparison of the remote attendance rules of King County with several other jurisdictions the Seattle City Council, Bellevue City Council, PSR Sea Sound Transit Board. Snohomish County Council, Pierce County Council, Spokane County Commissioners Court, Noma County and NACO Executive Committee. So the effort there is to compare their rules on remote attendance with King County's. Thank you very much. So as you can see, those surrounding counties, they many of them have no limitation at all. So hours being five is more than conservative. It is baby step. Councilmember Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I was trying to do the math on the total number of cow council committee meetings we have. I think we figured it's around eight per week. If you add KHOW and council and budget and tree and law and justice and geo health, healthy services and employment in the math with the recess has taken in that about. That's about 400 meetings a year and I'm talking necessarily not asking the question, but it's about 400 meetings a year. And so the five is just about 1.25% of the total meetings. Well, what do you think? It would be about almost exactly 1% if we made it four. But I just wanted to make the point of the sheer number of meetings and to put it in perspective. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember. Council Member Lambert, would you like to put the ordinance before us? 2014 032. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move proposed ordinance 2014 zero 3 to 0. All right, that's before us. And Council member Gosar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it was back in 1956 when I was a little boy, I had a bike and at first my two friends I could beat on and in races with my back against them. But then I started to lose and I thought that wasn't a bike. And I went to my dad and I said, You got to get my bike this part because it's not working well. He checked it over. Nothing was wrong with it. So he said, Sandy, you can't ask us to waste money on getting something fixed that's not broke. Why are you doing this? And I wasn't able to answer. I have that for some reason. That same feeling here. What is broken about our process of voting that requires that it needs fixing? Over the last seven years, we've had 26 members on the county council, people that are going nuts now and those who have served and we have not had one. Our regular meeting on a monday where we failed to achieve a quorum of five people so that we could take up issues and vote on what I think five year period. There was only one car or committee of the whole meeting where we did not have five. At the beginning of the meeting with 10 minutes later a member came and we had five. I fail to see anything that's broken as it relates to our voting because we always allow for three meetings but real serious emergencies at our regular county council meetings. Nothing has vote broken in my estimation, so I can't support any of the proposals to fix something that's not broken. I don't see the practicality or the need for it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Gossett. Other questions or comments. Councilor Lambert, would you like to speak to your ordinance? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, first of all, I think that when you look at the attachments, how many other counties and government bodies are using technology for whatever reason when you're behind other counties and being able to do that? And it's not just a matter of everybody being present for a quorum. What is the matter is that everybody's district be represented, even if you are not here physically, that you have something that's going on, including an emergency where you're stuck home because of a storm or whatever. It's much easier if you represent someplace close by, but if you represent someplace far away, then it is much more difficult because there is more flooding and snow. Right now, as Councilmember Gossett said, we are allowed to do it three times for council meetings, but no time for committee meetings. And we have some very important things happening in committee meetings that should you have to be gone for whatever reason or something comes up in your life that you are away. I think it's important to be able to also call into a committee meeting so that your voice and your vote for your constituents constituents is there. I do not see it as a bad thing to not be here. If you are, for instance, doing the county's work in some other place, or whether you're taking and dealing with an issue in your own district that you need to be someplace else too. This is a very large county, and as you may know, almost half of it in landmass is mine. And so there have been many times when I have been far away and having to drive back in again for a meeting. So things do come up. We're talking about five, which is less than 1% of the meetings, which you had to have the ability to use electronic communications. I do not think this is overly burdensome, and I think it's an important tool that should we have an emergency or an opportunity to do something that we believe is also important, like dealing with emergencies or speaking at a national conference that we've been asked to speak at, that we have the ability, though, even though our bodies might be in D.C. or Olympia, that our voice can still be here communicating and representing our citizens. So with that, I'd like to put the motion 2014 0320 before us and move amendment number four. The Amendment four is before us. I think number four is the basis I am planning a number five, which will be the, I hope, friendly amendment. But it underlies what we've been talking about, basically talking about for three years. So I think it's time that we go ahead and come into the 21st century. And so with that, I would like to put number four before us. For is before us. Let's turn to amendments two four right before we vote on four. Jim, we need a little guidance here on parliamentary procedure. Amendment four has been moved. There was an amendment to Amendment four. Would you like me. To should that be or should the amendment be offered? Well, this is an innovative way to talk. You're not disrupting the meeting. I'm going to put us into recess and ask you. Let's go into recess. All right, let's go into recess. This is. Thank you, Marco. We're back on the record. Mr. Brewer, the question is a parliamentary one Amendment four has been offered. There is an amendment to Amendment four, label five. Do we need to vote first on four before turning to five or do we need to vote on. No, you would. You would vote if I understand the facts. Mr. Chair. An amendment has been offered and now someone is seeking to amend that amendment. Yes. First vote on that. On whether to amend the amendment. Thank you for deciding to. Vote on the. Amendment. It's all right. Thank you very much. Councilmember Lambert, do you have a further motion? Yes, I would like to divide and we have to put number five before us first, right? Yes. Okay. I'd like to move amendment number five. It was written by a colleague after much thought. And I think it's a good amendment. And so I'd like for it to be a friendly amendment to number four. By amendment five is before us. And I'd also like to move. If. I can add. One thing at a time. Yeah. But I think we have to debate. Do we have to divide it before we vote on a. Motion to divide amendment question divide the question on five your state, your motion. This is a non debatable motion. I'd like to move that. We debate the motion and take our item six line six, which is the item that would discuss whether or not you are on county business someplace else. I mean, if we take this out, then you would be able to go to county business someplace else and phone in appropriately. Or if we leave this in, then you would not be able to do so if you're on county business. Okay. All in favor of dividing the question, say. I, I. Any oppose say no. No. The nos have it. The question will not be divided. We'll turn to a vote on Amendment five. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm someone needs to explain to me what Amendment five would do to four if we voted yes. All right. We can ask that. Would you prefer staff to do that matter? All right. Yours that I don't give a shot at it because that was as best I can in the nick can fill in. But Amendment five, in essence, would change this legislation to provide for a total of five council meetings or committee meetings per year participation electronically. It would reduce the number or the types of four cause participations by phone to those articulated and set forth in the amendment. And that includes whether that makes it unsafe to travel here. The current standard requires a threat of imminent danger, and I felt that that was frankly walking up too close to the line for a member . Imminent danger is very close to, you know, peril. Unsafe seemed to me to be a more appropriate standard and would provide further that if you had an ill family member, an immediate family member as defined in the code, that that would be justification procedurally deleted. Your family member would be left. It would be put in there. Yes, I would. Yes, it would be in there. It's a little broader in terms of describing the family members than the current code, and I think that's more appropriate and reflective of its contemporary design. It adds grandchildren, says our grandmother. It puts the determine on with respect to those four causing participation requests that benefits the authority to decide that in the chair of the council or the committee subject to an appeal. If the member doesn't like the decision and the appeal would require a two thirds vote. So it keeps it this frankly dramatically narrows the original proposal. My view is that we should proceed carefully here if this is adopted. I'll be watching very carefully the next six months as we head toward reorg as to whether or not this is working and how it's working. The five was chosen, frankly, for some of us who are parents to take a spring break, which doesn't always coincide with our work here, but still be able to participate. The five would allow, I think most members who are want to participate in a council meeting as well as their committee meetings that we the opportunity to do that. In that sense, I think it's a little bit of a family friendly change, but also I think it's trying to strike a balance to ensure that we continue to be here face to face and participate in the good debates and dialog on a face to face basis, which I personally think is very, very valuable. Prioritizes that the work here of this council is job one and the committees here is job one. I know we all do a lot of outside committees, no more than Councilmember Lambert, of course, who does the most. It's I understand our interests there, but that's the nature of of this. And you could add anything that I might have missed. Just I think you touched on it. But two things specifically, the justification of attendance at an outside meeting would be eliminated from Amendment four and then the general other circumstances constituting good cause that category would be taken out. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. Does that help, Mr. Gossett? Yeah, but his last point. What did you say about outside attending outside committee B. Amendment Amendment four would allow as a reason for attending remotely the member's difficulty in being here for a committee or council meeting because the member of the member's attendance at an outside committee that the member has been assigned to under the council's organizational rules, that exception would be removed by Amendment five. All right. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Other members have questions to Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have a question. I have a comment. And are we in final? We're debating Amendment five. Yes. Yes. So I have wrestled with this a great deal. And I can see the positives and some of the drawbacks on each perspective, each side here. But I really think. That it's. Councilmember Dunn brought out we're talking about five medium senator, 400 roughly a year. This is a very small number. And I believe strongly that all nine members here and future members who replace us at some point, I want to be here and they work very hard for their constituents and they don't treat this willy nilly in terms of taking it seriously to be here to participate and vote. But things do come up and we are all professionals. We're involved with associations. We have times when we're ill that make it very could make it difficult potentially to be here at every single meeting. But when people take the the opportunity to call in and participate, which I've done a couple of times, even though I haven't been able to vote and this is on a committee meeting and a council meeting. I can't vote, but I'm participating the whole time, even though I'm somewhere else that a professional association which I may have been chairing. So I think this is an adult thing to do. When we look within the context of our other local jurisdictions, counties and cities, for example, we really stand out from the norm. And I think and I am going to support the striking amendment. I think we need to be adults here and give credit to our colleagues that they are not all doing are doing something because they're not taking their job seriously. We all do that. So I strongly support the striking amendment. Thank you. Madam Chair. Just for clarification, the the the amendments are not technically striking amendments. Amendment four would replace all of the operative language. The original ordinance, Amendment five would modify certain provisions of Amendment four. So I will just correct clarify in my remarks to amendment number five. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so no further debate. Oh, I'm sorry, Councilman Belushi. Thank you. Just really briefly, I think Councilmember Coles has put it very well. To me, this is about expanding participation, especially in a body like this, where we represent districts. Any time one of us is not able to participate in a meeting, our district is not represented in that meeting. And so I think to allow some additional flexibility to participate is is really important to the people we represent. It's also not at all uncommon for bodies like ours to have call in rules and make that possible. But I think, on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that it really does impact the quality of the discussion and debate when we have people on the phone and we wouldn't want to see it on a regular basis just for those occasions when when it's really necessary. So I think that this strikes a nice balance. I appreciate the amendment. I'll support it and I'll support it at the end of my motion as well. Thank you. Councilmember Belushi, any further comment on five? All right. All in favor of five. Say I. Any opposed? No. Five carries turning to Amendment four as amended. And is this get us to final passage? I think it just gets us to that with. Government after amendment we got to vote on because amend and you get the underlying right. So this is frankly a fairly procedural vote at this point, all in favor of Amendment four as amended by Amendment five, say i. I. Any opposed? No. Okay. Amendment five carries Amendment four as amended by five carries. Now, turning to the underlying legislation. Are there further comments on it as amended? Councilmember Dunn. I'm going to support this ordinance, and I think I would have preferred the number would be more like for about a 1%. We're all but four or five. I think it's I think that's and I think folks know I've been battling the flu this week. I'm just coming back. And it was really tricky situation. Monday, I was sick as a dog and really sick. But this Annenberg nonpartisan issue was up and I was the fifth vote and I sure would have loved to call it. But I drove down here and actually actually driven down here. And I came in here and I voted and I went back home and was still sick. But, you know, that's an example. Then what would happen is what the majority and will of this council was, which was to make prosecutor non partizan would have very likely been thwarted by the access situation. So, you know, I've had situations with the ice storm of 29 where trees were down. I was living out in rural, unincorporated King County by Maple Valley. There's no way to get in, you know, just you can't do it. So there are these and it was dangerous to for that matter. So the circumstances here were fair. Again, it's one point roughly 1.25% of the meetings. I know the members abuse it, so I'm going to support it. Thank you for the passage. Oh, okay. I have returned the chair to Councilmember Lambert, having completed our procedural issues. And thank you for doing a good job and getting through this. It's for the listening audience. This was a complicated one and there were lots of changes even this morning. So, so and final passage. There's nobody else that wants to speak. I agree with the idea that being face to face is is always optimal, but then life happens and so not good. And so this acknowledges life like Councilmember Dunn, who brought his flu or sick, whatever it was. We appreciate that you did that. But it was if you had been driving himself, he didn't look like he was in any condition to be driving. So we appreciated you doing that and bringing a driver. I have come here in the snow this badly and not been pleased that I was driving here when I knew it wasn't safe. This will allow us and I serve on 11 internal committees. So for me that'll be 528 different committees in a year. So, Councilmember Dunn, the 1% would work for me. So you got your 1% and I appreciate all the comments that been made. And with that, I think we can have the clerk call for the vote. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Banducci. Councilmember DEMBOSKY, Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett, now Councilmember I. Councilmember McDermott. By. Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember Yvonne right there. Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the vote is Six Eyes Council Member Gossett no council members of the Grove and one right. They were excused. Okay, so we can have some choices here. Do we want to expedite and put it on consent or do we want to discuss this all over again? I'm good with whatever anybody wants. Madam Chair. I wouldn't expedited. I don't see a need to expedite it. And with dissenting votes, I wouldn't put it on consent either. Okay, then we will go in their normal procedures. Right. Madam Chair, I just want to note that calling it the 1% ordinance almost cost it a vote by me. More than one vote. Oh, that's funny. Yes, we are dealing with that in Olympia. We don't need to deal with it here. All right. Okay. Now we are doing pretty well and we will go on to our next our next order of business. And that would be, I think, what I'm going to do. I'm going to skip if it's okay. Do you mind being the last? And I would bring up our our last item, which will now be the one before last, which is our chaplains.