Want a great example of the benefits of open government and public process? Look at the issue of digital billboards in Tacoma.
An awkward retreat was sounded by the City Council last week when it approved a six-month moratorium on any new billboard permits. The explanation was that the council needed to take a breath and give more consideration to new regulations.
But it came in the face of overwhelming public opposition to digital billboards. And it was seen by billboard owner Clear Channel as reneging on a settlement agreement the same council approved last summer.
That agreement sought to resolve Clear Channel’s lawsuit against the city’s all-but-ban on billboards by exchanging several hundred static billboards for several dozen digital ones.
Characterized last July by Mayor Marilyn Strickland as a good deal and by council members as a fair settlement, the agreement is now being portrayed as simply the starting point of a public-policy debate.
“It was the start of a conversation, and it’s been a good and robust conversation to this point,” Councilman Joe Lonergan said last week.
“I welcome the opportunity to take a breath, and be able to do that conversation and do it well. And come to an agreement that works for all involved, whether that be the settlement agreement that’s on the table, or whether that be something different.”
But Lonergan is engaging in revisionist history. The 9-0 vote last year was described then as a conclusion, not a beginning.
“It’s something the people clearly have told us to find a resolution to,” said Councilman Marty Campbell in July. “I think we did a good job of creatively finding a compromise.”
City staff subsequently sent a proposed sign ordinance to the planning commission that was completely in sync with the settlement agreement. Certainly the council now has the right to adopt an ordinance without digital billboards, as Lonergan said. But it would do so knowing it would void the settlement agreement and throw the city back in court.
To claim now that this was an open process without preconditions, that it was simply the start of a public discussion, is at best nave and at worst duplicitous.
Perhaps believing that the best defense is a good offense, Lonergan lashed out at the news media in remarks described by Strickland as “very, very eloquent.”
“We’ve read the sensationalized newspaper accounts about a settlement agreement that was put through without public comment,” Lonergan said at last week’s council meeting. “And I would challenge the newspaper to identify settlement agreements that are not put through that way. That’s how they’re done. That’s why they’re done that way. That’s how settlement agreements work.”
OK, councilman, I’ll accept that challenge. Because any settlement of a lawsuit involving the city not only must be voted on in public session, it must provide an opportunity for public comment before that vote. That’s not my opinion, that’s the law.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Feature Realty v. City of Spokane wrote, “… there is no dispute that the city council was entitled to convene an executive session to discuss (emphasis added by the court) with its attorney the terms of the settlement, and to receive legal advice with respect to that proposal. All other actions are ‘beyond the scope of the exception,’ and must take place in public.”
That court nullified a settlement agreement because the decision “took place behind closed doors with no opportunity for public comment.”
The city followed Feature Realty by bringing the Clear Channel settlement to a vote in public session. But “all other actions” also must take place in public, defined in the open-meetings law as “including but not limited to receipt of public testimony, deliberations, discussions, considerations, reviews, evaluations and final actions.”
Yet there was no council discussion or deliberation in public, just the reading of a prepared statement by Strickland. And by rushing it onto the agenda with little public notice, it denied all but two residents the chance to comment.
Had a real public process been followed, the council would have seen that it did not have public support. It might have slowed down.
Instead it rushed ahead and now has to scramble for a six-month delay that just might move the controversy beyond this year’s city election.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
