January 05, 2005
Correction Regarding The Charter Provision Mentioned Yesterday
A Little Legal Arcana On A Wednesday Afternoon
We made at least a partial mistake in identifying a City Charter provision in a comment to our last item, so we need to clear that up.
Chapter 2, Section 2-302, deals not with bureau assignments, but with departmental designations. There's something of a relic in the Charter, which is the establishment of several City departments -- Public Affairs, Finance and Administration, Public Safety, Public Utilities, and Public Works -- which are irrelevant to how City government functions today.
That's what Chapter 2, Section 2-302, addresses, and not the process by which the Mayor makes bureau assignments amongst the members of City Council, as we erroneously said in our comment. As near as we can find, there may be no Charter or Code provision controlling when the Mayor distributes bureaus.
Nonetheless, and that error corrected, there's still the matter of these departmental assignments not being on the agenda at today's Council session.
Of course, the Charter language -- "At the first regular meeting after the election of any Council member" -- perhaps is not very clear. Does it mean the first meeting directly after Election Day itself, the first meeting after the Council certifies the abstract of votes, or the first meeting which includes the newly elected member of members?
Well, the first meeting after Election Day was on November 3, and there's no sign of any "order which shall be filed and preserved as an ordinance" on that day's agenda. Moving on, the abstract of votes was certified on December 1 (item 1376), and the first meeting after that would have been on December 8, but there's no sign of such an order/ordinance on that agenda either.
As indicated, these departmental assignments, although irrelevant, are mandated by the City Charter. And yet in none of the above possible meanings of "the first regular meeting after the election" does an "order ... filed and preserved as an ordinance" appear on the Council agenda. Nor did any such order-as-ordinance appear on today's agenda.
So we suppose our question is this: Is it Mayor Katz or Mayor Potter who seemingly failed to comply with this Charter provision?
Comments (2)
Vera Katz on 05 Jan 2005
Don't blame me, you little twerp.
allehseya on 06 Jan 2005
re: "twerp"
Oh sure, Vera -- call him names now that Tom is in office... ;]