July 26, 2003
Irony Briefly Seizes Control As Citywide Public Involvement Standards Taskforce Enters New Stage
This past Wednesday, as part of my day off from my temporary gig helping to install a bookstore into its new location, I attended the monthly meeting of the Citywide Public Involvement Taskforce, which for months has been working to create recommendations to the City Council for improvements to the City's public involvement processes.
I remain uncertain as to just how many people in the room understood the painfully amusing irony of the meeting's concluding minutes, which were spent debating whether or not the Taskforce should institute public involvement standards for it's own working groups.
A faction of Taskforce members seemed certain that the only way for the newly-created working groups to accomplish their goals was to limit direct public participation in the decision-making processes of the groups. Opponents of this move argued that since the working groups would be formulating what would become the Taskforce recommendations to Council, broad participation was required.
Either no one noticed the obvious, or no one was willing to voice it: That approach of restricting public authority in decision-making is precisely that which so many of those on the Taskforce despise when they hear it coming from the Bureaus. The argument is the same: We can't get our work done if we have to take the time and energy necessary to involve the public in the decisions themselves.
Despite this glaring, and likely-averted, mis-step late in the meeting, the Taskforce turned a corner this week, moving out of its initial outreach and input-gathering stages (such as its series of constituency discussions) into the stage where serious policy recommendations will begin to come together.
Over the next couple of months, working groups will examine six categories of data, and formulate recommendations for them. These categories are: the City's adopted principles for public involvement; process design and implementation; diverse and accessible public involvement strategies; accountability and transparency of process; education and skills training for staff and public; communication and access to information.
In addition to creating these six working groups, the Taskforce finally adopted a formal mission statement1, working definition of public involvement2, and set of proposed objectives.
With the exception of an overly-prolonged push by a City staffer to replace the word "improving" with "enhancing" (they felt that "improving" was too negative) in the proposed mission statement, each of these suffered little serious or potentially-derailing debate, although minor changes were made to better reflect their intentions.
Notwithstanding the late-stage irony of the meeting, the Taskforce's move into formal self-definition and the establishment of its working groups comes perhaps somewhat late in the game, but soon enough to head off what I imagune could have been a rather serious issue.
According to one Taskforce member, the liasons between the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (under whose auspices the Taskforce was created) and at least some Council offices have been expressing deep frustration that the Taskforce was "wasting too much time" on the semantics of the word "standards."
According to this Taskforce member, these liasons in essence said that the Commissioners have stated they want standards, and standards are what the Taskforce is charged with recommending.
1 Mission Statement for Public Involvement Taskforce: "To review and revise, as appropriate, the City's adopted Public Involvement Principles. Identify gaps and inconsistencies in the implementation of the city government's public involvement processes. Recommend strategies for improving the city's public involvement processes that are in accordance with the Public Involvement Principles and take into account the needs of city staff and a diverse set of public interests."
2 Working Definition of Public Involvement: "Public Involvement for the purposes of this Task Force refers to: The practice of including a diverse range of individuals and groups in governmental decision-making processes that have the potential to affect them. This is for the purpose of improving decision-making by ensuring that diverse interests are represented. These processes include, but are not limited to, capital improvement and other projects, public safety, land use planning, policy and budget development."
Comments (4)
Julie Odell on 29 Jul 2003
Hey - thanks for the press! The Public Involvement Standards Task Force (TF) can use all the public press it can get. It's a really important process and the more diverse participation the better.
Which brings us to the problem you wrote about. I would have preferred a less cynical description of the process and you might perhaps recognize the irony in your own perspective. You both criticize the TF for worrying about how to move this process along to get the best work done in an impossibly short (three months) timeline AND for taking so long to finalize all of the diverse perspectives into its mission and objectives. You can't have it both ways.
The TF goal is to include as many voices and perspectives as possible. That is why the TF is composed of nearly 40 members. Which is a virtually unheard of number of participants. We have until December to recommend any guidelines/standards that the City might want to include in its biennial budget process (in other words, there won't be any funding for two more years if we don't get something on the table!). So, the very real problem is - if it took us seven months to get everyone to agree to the mission statement among 35-40 people, how can we develop these very important participation strategies in a couple of months with an unknown number of participants? I don't think the "irony" was lost on anyone; I think the issue underscores the difficulty of the job the city staff are asked to do on a daily basis. The solutions to participatory democracy are not a foregone conclusion, and typically entail many tradeoffs - some of which may appear ironic, at times.
However, there is another less cynical spin that could have been put on this process. You could have celebrated the very real fact that the TF had an open dialogue among a diverse group of constituencies, including city staff, neighborhood/business associations, underrepresented communities such as the African American and Latino communities, public participation professionals, youth groups, etc. That open dialogue included a discussion about the problem of broad participation versus efficiency within a short timeline. People need to feel free to bring all options to an open discussion in order to find the best solution under whatever the present circumstances might be, not criticized for having what may turn out to be the least popular perspective.
We came to a relatively easy consensus that we should deal with the management burden in order to be as inclusive as possible. I would have preferred a headline that celebrated this feat rather than denigrated the process - which is ironic on your part, no?
Julie
The One True b!X on 29 Jul 2003
You could have celebrated the very real fact that the TF had an open dialogue among a diverse group of constituencies, including city staff, neighborhood/business associations, underrepresented communities such as the African American and Latino communities, public participation professionals, youth groups, etc.
Let me address this first. For what it's worth (quite a bit, in my opinion), I attended five or six of these constituency group discussions and wrote about them here (and, in fact, referenced them in this post) -- often contextualizing them in terms of "common ground" with each other, whether it was seen at the meetings themselves or not.
As for some of the rest, I'll just say this. The most recent meeting of the PITF, discussed in this post, had two primary stories in it: (1) Getting the mission statement, definition, and objectives finalized so the TF could get down to the working groups; and (2) The irony of debating public involvement standards for itself.
I don't fault the TF for taking time, for example, to hold those constituency discussions before getting down to the working groups. I do fault it for spending so much time squabbling over words like "standards" or taking precious meeting time to hash over issues that have been vented by various parties ad infinitum already.
The One True b!X on 29 Jul 2003
I should also say that the clear strength of this particular form of writing, and the one of the reasons why I am more comfortable here than I would be anywhere else, is that people who can provide differing takes on the matters I discuss here can chime in without restriction. That's why these comments are here.
Noah@AllianceWatch on 31 Jul 2003
After reading Julie Odell's comments I had the same reaction as B!x. The blog allows good reporting by the likes of B!x and good, visible replies by the likes of Odell. It is really wonderful to see it work so well.