February 23, 2007

More Reed Reforms approved

Three more Reed Reforms were approved unanimously during the Feb. 6 City Council meeting. Numbers one, five and 26 were approved at the meeting, while number three was tabled.

Number three deals with the disclosure of all offers made to city unions for pay or benefit increases when offers are made. First, it’s most likely that because of bargaining rules, the city could only disclose numbers only after the union had approved them. In addition, 14 bargaining units each have a different ratification process.

So Mayor Chuck Reed and the city staff asked the Council to table the motion until the Sunshine Reform Task Force issues its recommendations and the city manager holds further discussions with the director of employee relations to determine when a tentative agreement can be disclosed.

Reforms passed include the first one, which will ask voters to revise the city charter to make it easier to recall the mayor or council members for violating the charter or their oath of office. Reed asked to change this to combine a recall with a replacement in one election, as the state does it, instead of holding two separate elections.

Reed Reform number five mandates staff and council members make memos for agenda items available to the public 10 days prior to a vote. This will allow the public time to digest and to respond and participate in discussions about all proposals the Council will vote on. However, there are a couple of exceptions that allow items to immediately be placed on the agenda. One is emergency motions “to preserve public welfare (i.e. health, safety and financial matters) and that need immediate council action. The second is reports regarding a second reading of an ordinance where no substantive changes have been made from the first reading.

Reed Reform number 26 requires the Council hold annual public hearings on ethical issues to learn from such mistakes. These hearings would include “discussion …of major ethical issues and/or incidents that the City Council can learn from and review against its own practices and policies to ensure that such incidents” not happen in San Jose. It would also provide ethics training to fulfill state mandated requirements and review the best practices of other municipalities against San Jose’s procedures.

—By Carol Rosen