County Board Stumbles Over Effective Government
The Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners spent nearly 45 minutes Tuesday night bumbling and bickering through an agenda item that was meant to – wait for it – improve the effectiveness and efficiency of board meetings.
Commissioners ultimately approved a set of recommendations that was crafted by the board’s oxymoronically named Effective and Efficient Government Committee, but not without some drama.
The first sticking point came on changes to the board’s agenda format, specifically a recommendation to hold discussion and votes on consent items at the end of a meeting, after more pressing policy issues had been addressed.
Consent items are typically a laundry list of general motions and minor budget requests that are lumped together for a single vote. Commissioners, however, at times will pull a specific item from the consent list for discussion. Pushing that process to the end of a meeting would prevent citizens who were present to speak on an actual policy issue from having to wait for the consent-item housekeeping to take place.
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Not to Commissioner Vilma Leake, a Democrat who has a penchant for grandstanding by highlighting, usually with rambling, self-serving oratory, consent items she has pulled for discussion that include perks for her district and her own special interests.
“Why would we put it at the end of the agenda when it’s the meat of the meeting of what we vote on to determine how it impacts this general community?” Leake asked. “Why would we do that, other than we don’t want the general public to know what the consent items entail?”
It didn’t take long for Leake to answer her own question.
“I knew this would be a part of your recommendation,” she told her fellow commissioners, “because you’ve been complaining about me pulling consent items and taking up a lot of time in this chamber for meetings. I resent the fact that you don’t want the general public to know what’s in these consent items.
“So I’m asking us to be fair in the process and not try to muzzle any member of this board,” Leake scolded, “as it relates to sharing information with the general public.”
Commissioner Karen Bentley, a Republican, tried to put the recommendation in perspective for Leake.
“I think we have to look at it through the lens of folks who commit an evening to come down and wait to present an agenda item, only to find it’s a very late hour,” she said. “I think we need to be respectful of their time.”
Commissioner Dumont Clarke, a Democrat, echoed that sentiment, pointing out that there were people in the audience Tuesday night waiting to speak about an important policy issue, while Leake moaned and groaned about consent items. Clarke also bristled at Leake’s characterization of the Effective and Efficient Government Committee’s recommendation.
“I don’t think it’s fair to accuse four commissioners who have approved this of trying to muzzle you, nor is it fair to say we’re trying to hide something from the general public,” Clarke said. “To accuse us of bad faith like that is just not fair.”
Placing consent items at the end of the meeting’s agenda, he said, would still give Leake or any other commissioner the ability to pull specific items for discussion and speak to it for as long as they want. Left unsaid: they likely just won’t get to do it in front of a large audience.
Responded Leake: “I apologize to you, sir, if you feel that I made an attack on my fellow commissioners.”
The board eventually approved the consent-item recommendation, with Leak voting in lone dissent.
After the squabble was settled, Commissioner George Dunlap, a Democrat who chairs the board’s Effective and Efficient Government Committee, tried push things along by having the board approve different recommendations tied to the same issue – how to handle official proclamations, for example – with a single vote.
That floundered when Commissioner Neil Cooksey, a Republican, pointed out that the board hadn’t finished approving two recommendations on how to more efficiently organize its meeting agendas.
When that was finally sorted out, the board ran into another snag, this time over re-appointing members to advisory committees. Under existing policy, all nine commissioners must be present to move forward with a recommendation to vote on reappointment. Under the recommended revision, reappointments could be moved forward by a majority of the board, with five votes, and with the consent of all members present at the dais.
Commissioners stumbled around whether that meant one member voting in dissent would require the reappointment to be deferred, or if having one member temporarily out of the meeting chamber when a vote was taken would trigger the same.
After consulting with the county attorney, the board decided to just approve what was written in the committee’s recommendation report and to have the attorney tweak the language later, after the motion was approved, if it was needed for clarity. For what it’s worth, the board ultimately approved all of the recommended changes, which the Effective and Efficient Government Committee had been working on since last October.
These, honestly, are the people in charge of a billion-dollar budget.
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