1999-10-13 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 10-13-99Page 20 of 31 Commissioner from that particular area would be tied directly to that Council person, and the person to serve on the Police Commission, who was chosen by the particular representative from that district, still could not be approved, or take the position, without being approved by the majority of the other members of the Council. MARTIN: I understand that, and I agree with that because that’s a democratic way of doing it. What I’m saying is, your statement was that the people are puppets to the people that appoint them now. All I’m saying is, where’s the difference? Why wouldn’t they still be puppets? PIERSON: They could be. They could still be puppets. BALOG: Hey, Mr. Pranke, you’re not supposed to coach him. He’s asking this guy, not you. If you want to say something, you should come back, right? PRANKE: I’ll be glad to. I thought I could cut that out. MARTIN: Point of clarification, Mr. Chair. There’s one conversation going here. Thank you. RAY: Okay, any more comments? SANTANGELO: To leave it on a positive note, I’d like to make a comment. One of the things about Del’s proposal, coming from a Council, and I have no favorite, one way or the other at this point. We’re going to debate that here, if it comes up. But, if Council members are appointing, you have a pool of nine members pools rather than one pool so I think it does help disseminate it a bit. I’m a little bit disturbed that we’re appointing people to Commissions to do a job. It’s kind of like the Supreme Court. The President doesn’t appoint every single Supreme Court Justice, but at the time an opening comes up, then you need an appointing body, and so I think a lot of it does change. I think there’s a lot of merit that can be if we want to look into it, and I appreciate the public coming and giving us this comment. I just wanted to offer that a little bit because it does answer some of that a little bit. Thank you. RAY: Mr. Balog. BALOG: I just have, I think, two questions, if I don’t forget one like my colleague over there. One of them was that you made mention that the Council isn’t doing their job now, and it really bothers me, because if they aren’t doing their job when someone is sending them a nomination, I can’t believe they’re going to do their job when they get a chance to choose them individually from their own district. Is the other eight people now going to do their job that they magically weren’t doing before? I mean, the proposal is that if these Council members have a chance to pick one person per district; there’s nine districts; what’s going to make eight other people do their job when an Executive Branch sent a nomination, and nine of them didn’t do their job? I don’t understand how, all of a sudden, they’re going to be so interested that they’ll do their job. Because you said they aren’t doing their job. You follow? PIERSON: I believe that Mr. Ray is quite familiar with one particular case that I referred to, where a liar was approved to go on the Board of Transportation. Testimony was given at the open opportunity for public testimony. Such and such and such happened, and then the person nominated to be on the Board of Transportation said otherwise, and without any further investigation, did this happen or did this not happen, this person was approved. Okay? That’s the way it came down. A member of the Police Commission was presented, and all of these people are presented by the Mayor, huh? BALOG: I understand. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 10-13-99.html7/1/2011