2000-05-10 Charter Commission Minutes

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Transcript of Meeting of May 10, 2000Page 21 of 62 SANTANGELO: So you need to get Council approval. Okay? IRVINE: Right. SANTANGELO: If the Council says no, but you’re obligated by law to do it, but your lawmaker doesn’t, now you’ve got a real dilemma. IRVINE: It says ‘the Council may, by two-thirds vote of its entire membership, authorize – RAY: But it may not, as well. SANTANGELO: It may not, and yet you’re still legally obliged to defend these people. IRVINE: Well, then they’re acting outside the law if they don’t because it says in impeachment cases, that the County cannot defend, etc. SANTANGELO: Again, I appreciate that, Sue, but what you go back to is if you’ve elected someone to represent you, they have the right to vote yes or no, so you can’t say you’ve broken the law because you voted no. You see, it’s a dilemma, and that’s what this was going to address but I think it’s very complicated and maybe we’ll just let them deal with it. RAY: Mr. Bess. BESS: I would speak in favor of this provision. However, in the interest of presenting a ballot to the public that is small enough and has issues that are of true importance – I mean this is an issue that may or may not arise, and given the number of amendments that we are proposing to the public, I am voting to delete. RAY: All in favor of deleting, raise your right hand. HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners. RAY: We’re recording all of this, Jason, if you want to check the record afterwards. Any other proposals for deletions before we go through? SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, just one little statement for clarification. In deleting these – we’ve deleted quite a few things here, and I think it’s good for the record to show that a lot of this came up because people brought it forward and we wanted to give it a fair and open hearing. And this may well be the result of that fair and open hearing. So anyway, that’s my explanation for going against some of these things. RAY: Thank you. I think I’ve stated on numerous occasions that nobody really engages the process until they have something concrete in front of them. But we erred in that direction to put it out there even though we knew there’d be a number of changes. First off, non-partisan elections – And so we’re voting on the proposed amendments as we have previously voted on and established language around. So I’d like to entertain a motion, and then if someone would like to propose an amendment, we’ll take that. So, can I have a motion to approve the non-partisan elections? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 05-10-00.html7/1/2011