On December 2, 2024, the Richardson City Council appointed eleven members to a Charter Review Commission, as required by law every ten years. Details on the 2014 amendments can be read in "Charter Amendments: Vote Yes AND No".
Let's examine the new commission members for 2024.
There are eleven members. Why eleven? Dunno. The 2014 Charter Review Commission also had eleven members. Why? Dunno. It's not because eleven members of the public applied to serve, and only eleven. Without any effort on my part, I have heard of three applicants who were rejected. Why? Dunno. How many others were turned down? Dunno. There's not much transparency in the process of appointments to boards and commissions. We need a Sunshine Amendment to our City Charter.
Let's look to our neighbor to our south, the City of Dallas, to see how they do it. They've just completed their own Charter Review.
What is the Charter Review Commission?
The Charter Review Commission is a group of 15 volunteers, appointed by the Mayor and City Council. Each Councilmember nominates one member, and the Mayor nominates the Chair of the Commission. They are tasked with thoroughly reviewing the Charter and recommending amendments to City Council and ultimately to voters in the City of Dallas.Source: City of Dallas.
Dallas City Council has fourteen members plus a mayor. So, having fifteen members on the Charter Review Commission makes sense. Every councilmember gets their say. They can't be outvoted. The procedure is also transparent. Maybe we should call this a "best practice" and adopt it ourselves. Did we even look at how it's done in surrounding cities and see which practices we should adopt from them? Not that I saw.
Richardson's selection process is all done behind the closed doors of so-called executive sessions, which are run by who-knows-what rules of procedure. Maybe it's a simple majority vote, making it subject to a four-member bloc who can reject some applicants for political reasons, leaving the other three councilmembers powerless to influence the makeup of the commission. Maybe formal votes aren't taken. I've heard that names of individual applicants are brought up for consideration and it takes unanimous or near-unanimous agreement of Councilmembers for them to be selected. In that case, power-sharing is even worse. Only one or two Councilmembers would be needed to have effective control over the makeup of the commission.
Let's look at who made it through Richardson's system to see if it offers any clues. Note that I will not be criticizing any individuals who volunteered their time to serve and were selected. They deserve our thanks. But I might criticize the City Council for the procedures they use to select them, if I ever learn exactly what that procedure is. Two of the appointees are members of the Richardson Coalition Political Action Committee (the PAC). A third appointee contributed hundreds of dollars to the PAC over the years. A fourth is the spouse of a former Richardson Councilmember who received multiple endorsements from the PAC. This spouse is currently responsible for managing the Facebook page for the Mayor's re-election campaign. That's four appointees with direct connections to one PAC. I can't find the names of any other appointees who have such obvious partisan connections with Richardson politics than these four. The result is a commission lacking in diversity of political association.
I also can't find any names of people who have non-partisan expertise in government. That's a disappointment. The result is a commission lacking in obvious expertise in the subject at hand. If you want good government, you have to recruit some people with expertise in good government.
Bottom line? I see no one who can be expected to push for reform. I see no one who can be expected to resist being led by City Staff, especially led by the City Attorney, who works for the City, not the residents of the City. What do I expect from this commission? Not much. Change my mind.
"Eleven chosen.
Closed-door decision-making.
Change feels far away."
—h/t ChatGPT
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