Tag: lobbying ordinance

3:50 – 6:00, 8/16/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 22: The Lobbying Ordinance. 

This is literally the sixth time this has come up since I started blogging last year: here, here, here, here, and then they finally held a workshop on it here. At the workshop, the ordinance got scaled way back. Instead of catching anyone with a financial interest in city council decisions, it was pared down to only include real estate developers.  There was a consensus that a majority of council would support this.

For a while, Max Baker and the city manager, Stephanie Reyes, discuss some of the finer points of implementation.

Mark Gleason makes the same points that he always makes:

  1. Overreach
  2. Too complicated for citizens, to hard to implement, too hard to enforce
  3. There’s no evidence of any corruption that would necessitate this.
  4. Unintended consequences. This will be weaponized.

The guy from the Ethics Review Commission takes these one at a time:

  • Overreach? We pared it down to just developers, like you all agreed you wanted during the workshop.
  • Weaponized? we have a specific item that states that this ordinance cannot be used as a political weapon or for personal reasons. [Note: I personally understand why this is not convincing.]
  • Too complicated for citizens? this is why we have a clear trigger process with so many exemptions.
  • No evidence of need? We have ethics complaints all the time. Someone was fired for this right before we started this process in 2020. So far this year we’ve dealt with a bunch of ethics complaints. Think of Lindsey Hill, La Cinema, etc.
  • You personally said you were worried about protecting the city from lawsuits. [Note: remember Mark’s School Resource Officer plea for legal protection?] This itself will protect the city, by documenting behavior along the way. This is lawsuit protection.
  • We’re not defining who is a “lobbyist”. We’re defining what kinds of behavior triggers need to register and disclose. It’s been disingenuous for you to persistently focus on the confusion around who is a lobbyist.

Mark is very offended at being called disingenuous, and yelps disingenuously about it.

Listen: I’m very done with Mark Gleason’s self-righteous rants.  Shane Scott and Mark Gleason vote equally badly, but Mark Gleason subjects me to long, infuriating soapboxes on every single issue.  Wheras at least Shane Scott occasionally waves around baggies of schwag weed for my personal entertainment.

Then the big bomb drops: Saul Gonzalez says that he will not be supporting this bill.  

Everybody understands the following:

  • Max & Alyssa will always support this bill.
  • Shane & Mark will never support this bill.
  • Saul is probably in, and Jude is probably not in.  
  • Jane is gettable, if she can put in some amendments.

So when Saul switches sides, he has doomed the bill.  Why?  

What Saul says is that he wants out-of-town developers to count as lobbyists, but not in-town developers. Since this bill catches in-town developers, he’s out.

Everything about this smells super fishy.  There was a whole workshop! They built a consensus that if the lobbying ordinance were restricted to developers, it would be okay. Saul was on board.  In fact, from the very beginning, Saul has been hungry to go after developers.

At this point, the mood flips. Jane Hughson drops her amendments, since there’s no longer a coalition of councilmembers who might pass the bill. And without the amendments, she’s not going to support it. 

So abruptly, they vote:

The vote:
Yes: Max & Alyssa
No: Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Jude Prather

The whole lobbying ordinance is dead, and the whole thing is fishy as hell.  

…

Item 25: There’s some federal money that was supposed to go to reimburse housing repair costs after the 2015 floods. The rules were so onerous, and the program was adopted so far after the fact, that it had exactly one recipient.  It’s being shut down, and everyone is frustrated.

Still, the money must be spent by 2024, and so the money is being re-allocated towards flood-mitigation projects in midtown and Blanco Gardens. 

Probably no one to blame here, but still frustrating.

…  

Item 27: There will be a council workshop on protecting the Edwards Aquifer.  Max opens pointing out that the river is extremely low and praising GSMP for their forward-thinking planning, which is really unexpected.  He’s got a couple ideas that should be considered – partnerships with the county to look at the value of conservation easements, looking at whether setbacks around natural things like caves should count as dedicated parkland, I forget what else.

Jude Prather has several good ideas which make him sound well-informed: aquifer storage where the ecology allows it, very large rain-water recovery cisterns, one-water concept for buildings,  water re-use, purple lines, etc.  That we should be preparing for droughts that last decades.

I don’t know what any of those things are, but I whole-heartedly approve of preparing for droughts that could last decades! 

…

Item 29: Shall we name one of the downtown alleys “Boyhood Alley” due to its use in Richard Linklater’s movie, Boyhood?

There it is! You can see the courthouse in the background:

via

Shane Scott and Max Baker bring the proposal forward.  The idea is to celebrate our movie industry. After all, La Cinema is coming. 

Apparently the Main Street Board was opposed, thinking that the public wouldn’t know what Boyhood means and might be weirded out. I find it funny that in the absence of context, “boyhood” sounds off-color and sleazy.  You know boys, with their creepy childhoods. How suspect.  

Jane Hughson is right there with those Main Street Boomers, asserting that “Boyhood Alley” sounds creepy.  She prefers Linklater Alley.  Mark Gleason, our Forever Hedger, kinda agrees with her but kinda agrees with everyone else.

Everyone else likes Boyhood Alley.  After all, Linklater isn’t especially tied to San Marcos. The movie Boyhood is especially tied to San Marcos. 

It passes 6-1, with Mark Gleason openly deciding to cast his vote with the majority since it was already going to pass. 

…

Item 32: Should people on boards and commissions earn a small stipend? Max & Alyssa make the case that this is an equity issue: we have a very skewed pool of volunteers for boards and commissions. Maybe younger people who are juggling three jobs would see a way to contribute if they were able to offset some of the cost of missing a shift at work.

Stephanie Reyes, the interim city manager, suggests that this would be a good issue to raise with the new DEI person. 

It’s funny how this plays out. First, Mayor Hughson asks everyone if they’d like to pursue this as a possible policy.  Everyone (besides Max and Alyssa) skewers the idea – too expensive! Too complicated! Too un-service-minded! (Well, not Shane Scott. He already skedaddled home for the evening, with his three oz baggie of the wacky tobacky.)

Second, Mayor Hughson asks everyone how they feel about talking to the DEI person about the idea. This time, they all pause and stroke their chins in contemplation, and agree that that would be fine.  

It’s like they had to be heavy-handed NOs on the topic itself, but they don’t want to sound unwilling to work with a qualified expert. So they all had to backpedal rapidly.

What’s my take? Our boards and commissions are disproportionately older, whiter, and male-r than San Marcos as a whole. Finding volunteers that match the population of San Marcos is a big problem. It’s possible that compensating board members would enable broader participation. Talking to the DEI person is a very good idea.

(I wasn’t entirely clear if they were talking about the future DEI hire or the host of the upcoming DEI council workshop. Either one will be better informed than the collective wisdom of Jane, Shane, Jude, Mark, and Saul.)

Lobbying Ordinance Workshop, 4/5/22 prequel.

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The lobbying ordinance has been in the pipeline since 2017. The current iteration of this proposal came up last June. Then it was postponed until July. Then it was postponed until November. Then finally it came up for discussion again in February. Then it was postponed to have a workshop. Basically it’s been a war of attrition on whether or not this thing will get passed.

Mayor Hughson shows up and proposes that the ordinance be restricted to just developers. This is warmly received by most of the council. Max Baker is furious. Alyssa Garza states that she wants to talk to constituents and see how they feel about it.

I am curious to know who exactly is omitted under this restriction? Certainly SMPOA and the Firefighters Union would be let off the hook, although we have a rough idea who they’d be in with. And probably organizations we like, like SMRF. From a lefty point of view, who should I be concerned about?

Still, this is much better than nothing. Rezonings, tax break agreements with the city (things like 380 agreements, TIRZ, PDDs, PIDs, and probably some other acronyms), running services out to businesses in the ETJ (the land surrounding San Marcos), etc: these would all be documented, and this is where the shadiness could easily occur.

There was an offhand comment about a city employee committing some offense during the Lindsey Hill proposal. I have no idea what that was referencing, and I’m curious to know more.

Quick primer on Lindsey Hill: Lindsey Hill is the old Lamar school building. Coming from downtown, if you turn right from Hopkins onto Old 12, a few blocks down you pass an old rundown, fenced off school. Circa 2015, developers bought it from SMCISD with plans to turn it into student housing. The historic district mobilized and shut that shit down hard. However, the developers – from Philadelphia, I think? – hadn’t gotten a rezoning contingency on the purchase, so they’ve just been stuck with the property ever since, unless they’ve managed to sell it at a major loss. Either they’re bleeding money, or they’re waiting for P&Z and council to turn over and become more sympathetic. Or both!

Hour 1-3.5

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The Lobbying Ordinance

Guys. Guys. This was such a shitshow. I’m going to do my best to tease apart the good faith arguments and discussion from the bad faith spaghetti-slinging.

Background:

The Ethics Review Commission first submitted a draft of this in 2017. That means it’s spanned many different compositions of councils, and many different election cycles. It has been postponed more times than …some clever San Marcos reference that I can’t put my finger on. (More times than trains are stopped on tracks? Than sights & sounds has sights, and sounds? nope and nope.)

Since I’ve been blogging, it came up on June 1st and July 6th (back when I was a wee baby blogger, still getting my sea legs. Take those entries with a grain of salt.)

Then tonight:

This meeting’s discussion had two main parts:

Part 1: A motion to deny, which failed after about an hour. This is the shouty part.

Part 2: A motion to approve, which was postponed after another two hours. This was shouting mixed with policy discussion.

That’s right: this was a 3 hour discussion. Eeek.

Part 1: The motion to deny.

Shane Scott moved to deny, and Mark Gleason seconded it.

Shane Scott says very little in the entire three hour meeting. When he does talk, it’s in broad platitudes about government overreach and how he won’t be kept from listening to his constituents.

Mark Gleason, on the other hand, gives fervent monologues throughout the whole three hours. Often what he says is word soup. This is what makes it so hard to blog – do I dive into word soup and try to string it together into a coherent garland, and point out the inconsistencies? Or do I just let it wash over me and then cautiously back away, so that I don’t inadvertently unleash more soup? Max Baker dives in, and hard.

Which brings us to our third problem: Max Baker diving in. He swings erratically between making excellent points and ad hominem attacks.

Occasionally it is important to attack someone’s character. Shane Scott and Mark Gleason are fundamentally arguing in bad faith. One tell of bad faith is the motion to deny: you can’t discuss amendments and fixes to improve the quality of a policy under parliamentary rules. You can only discuss denial. They want this whole topic to die, full stop.

But in practice, you should only attack someone’s character judiciously and sparingly. It’s a bomb, and if you toss bombs continuously, then you’re just leaving carnage everywhere. Which Max does.

At his worst, Max Baker is arguing back and forth with Mayor Hughson. She is cutting in to tell him to stop with the ad hominem attacks, and he is saying that her constant interruptions are what makes the meetings last so long, and that she is being hypocritical, and then he goes back to the ad hominem attacks.

Mayor Hughson was operating in good faith on this topic. She came prepared with amendments that would lead to an ordinance that she could support. When Max turned his anger on Mayor Hughson, it felt frankly like the most obnoxious kid from high school who is going to “well, actually…” their underpaid, harried teacher to death. Once or twice, it veered awfully close to gendered bullying, which makes my skin prickle.

Max Baker can string together eloquent sentences. Mayor Hughson is not necessarily as eloquent, but her words are chosen to convey a real meaning. If you nitpick her word choice instead of listening for her meaning, then you are being a jerk. And you can provoke Jane into being a jerk right back. This is part of why the evening was a mess.

Back to Mark. Here is the most generous reading of Mark Gleason’s word soup:

  • Average citizens will be caught up in this lobbying ordinance because it’s too broad. I believe this is what he means by “unintended consequences”.
  • People operating in bad faith will lob flimsy accusations under this ordinance, in order to score points during election season. He uses the term “weaponization” a lot.

Here is Mark Gleason’s most asinine argument: Suppose a nonprofit lobbies for a policy and the policy passes. Later, the nonprofit fundraises by touting their success to private donors. They successfully raise money. Wouldn’t that count as “economic benefit” and make them lobbyists?

He makes this point many, many times, and it’s dumb every single time. He seems to be making two opposite points:

  • Non-profits will be getting off scott-free, and it’s not fair that their economic benefit of fundraising doesn’t obligate them to report as lobbyists under the ordinance.
  • Non-profits won’t get off scott-free, and their noble desire to improve the world will be stamped out as collateral damage, because they’ll have to register as lobbyists under this lobbying ordinance.

This is what I mean by word soup. He is very often making two contradictory points, and then invoking emotional touchstones about the Supreme Court, and constitutionality, and PACs, Big Government, and the IRS. It’s a total and complete mess.

Let’s spend a moment on Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, and Mayor Hughson. In my opinion, these councilmembers operated in good faith for the evening.

Alyssa Garza: She has a substantially larger breadth of knowledge on this topic than the rest of the council. Several times she says some version of, “Would you mind if I introduced some vocabulary and organizational concepts to help you through the rough patch you’re bumbling around in?”

During the first hour, her main point is that many, many cities have had well-designed anti-lobbyist policies for many years. We are not inventing the wheel. In fact, we can cherry-pick the most well-written policies, since these other cities have had 15-20 years to iron out all the wrinkles.

This is exactly right! San Marcos is always about 15-20 years behind the curve. We are never breaking new territory, and other cities have already worked out all the kinks. We just have to read what they’ve done.

Alyssa’s other point: Has anyone else on this council actually read the literature? Have you all looked up lobbying ordinances in other cities and states? (And I quote, “Y’all are acting like this is brand new.”)

(Nope. No one else has read outside of what they’ve been given in their packet and from the Ethics Review Committee.)

Saul Gonzalez is 100% consistent the entire evening: we need this legislation in order to know who is getting bribed by out-of-town developers who want to wreck downtown by filling it with student apartment complexes. While I think his focus is a little narrow, I appreciate his honesty and directness.

Jude Prather: He keeps invoking Lady Justice and Scales of Justice. What he means is that he feels weird about having different entities mentioned by name. (SMPOA and the Fire-fighters Union both get special shout-outs.) He generally seems unfamiliar with the ordinance and it’s history. However, this was specifically postponed until February to allow a new council to vote on it, and to give the new council time to get up to speed. And it’s already a second reading. Sometimes you just have to catch up.

The answer to the carve-outs is that this is considered best-practices, many cities do it, and it was the result of hours and hours of deliberation and discussion.

Finally, as I mentioned above, Mayor Hughson came to the table in good faith, and stayed there. She brought 13 amendments to discuss and was ready to have specific conversations about policy content.

At the end of Part 1, they voted on the denial:

Yes, deny: Shane Scott and Mark Gleason
No, do not deny: Mayor Hughson, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, Max Baker

Part 2: The motion to approve

Mayor Hughson came equipped with something like 18 different amendments, which had been consolidated down to 13. The first amendment was the most substantial:

  1. The ordinance should only apply to councilmembers, not to government officials or members of other boards and commissions.

Max Baker asserted that government officials can certainly be prejudiced in certain directions by lobbyists, and ought to report. Jane Hughson asserted that we can trust government officials to be professional, and that we should start small.

The fighting came here: Max Baker wanted to know if Mayor Hughson’s consideration of the entire bill hinged on the outcome of this amendment. She said “It’s quite probable”. Then he was like a dog with a bone – he just kept hammering her on this point. I got annoyed with Max.

Alyssa Garza made the point that there is a generational memory throughout the Hispanic community of city officials being quite prejudiced against them. Even if the current employees behave professionally, there is a lack of trust due to the historical context. Saul Gonzalez spoke up to agree with this. Now, Saul is the quietest council member. If he speaks up to support Alyssa on this point, we should act as though he’s sounding bugles and banging on cymbals to get our attention.

In the end, this passes.

In favor: Mayor Hughson, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather
Against: Saul Gonzalez, Max Baker, Alyssa Garza

(I briefly wondered if Shane Scott and Mark Gleason would vote against this, in order to undermine Mayor Hughson’s support of the entire ordinance. But they did not play 11-dimensional chess.)

There is some discussion of methodology by the Ethics Review Commission, and which comparison cities have policies most closely resembling this proposal. There is discussion of direct campaign contributions versus indirect campaign contributions. The council seems mystified on how to quantify indirect campaign contributions until Alyssa Garza reminds everyone that organizations have to report these to the IRS, and there are clear categories with useful examples on the IRS website.

There are several technical amendments. Listen: this post is ridiculously long.

Finally we have the constellation of issues that leads to the postponement. The definition of lobbyist in this proposal requires either compensation or economic benefit. For example, if you argue that city council should rezone an area, and your business will benefit from the rezoning, then you’ve received an economic benefit.

Mark Gleason is in a fever pitch at this point, bringing in the Oxford English Dictionary and constitutionality and PACs. Alyssa Garza helps him out by suggesting that he’s trying to distinguish between grassroots lobbying and direct lobbying?

Mark Gleason says that lobbying is lobbying, and Alyssa redirects him that these are different things. It’s an incredibly patient display of self-control. Gleason does appear to hear what she said. (I am not saying that he retained it.)

Finally Alyssa concedes that if these distinctions are this difficult for the committee, the public probably doesn’t have that good a grasp on them, and it’s worth taking the time to write the policy correctly.

This opens the door for Shane Scott to immediately move to postpone.

Max is furious, of course, as are Alyssa and Saul. Shane Scott has absolutely no interest in discussing the ordinance in three months. He just loves postponing things.

Jude, Scott, Jane, Mark, vote to postpone until April.

Saul, Max, Alyssa vote against.

So there you have it. Postponed for two more months.

I feel uneasy about this write-up – so many parts were omitted.

Hour 1 – 11/3/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Citizen Comment Period

Several people from the Animal Shelter are super fed up. It sounds like it’s been a catastrophe over the past year, since their last director left. I couldn’t infer quite who was running the show in the interim, but the speakers are furious. Transparency has clouded over, advocates and volunteers are being shut out, animals are being euthanized instead of exhausting all options. It sounded pretty bad.

(Apparently they’ve recently posted the job opening for a new director, so hopefully someone good will turn up.)

Flood Mitigation

The presentation was fascinating. It sounds like long winding trenches have been dug along the Blanco river, to keep it from flooding into Blanco Gardens. Then there’s a relief channel that’s going to be built to meet up with the river, downstream. In addition, there’s storm water drainage repairs and more projects being done in Blanco Gardens itself.

The presenter seemed very competent and clear-headed, but what do I know?

Max Baker asked about archaeological remains, should they turn up (which they often do). The answer seemed reasonable and non-evasive: everything would shut down and proper authorities called in. Basically, this is being carried out with federal funds, and so standards are much stricter than Texas for the engineering, environment, archaeology, and so on.

Sounds good to me.

Lobbyist Registration Ordinance

Tell me this isn’t fishy as hell: this was on the docket last July. It was postponed until November 3rd, in order to involve the new council (which already seemed shady). Since the new member hasn’t been seated yet, Mayor Hughson called for anyone to make a motion to table it for a week or two.

Mark Gleason immediately moved to table it until the end of January. Three months? In order to let one councilmember get up to speed? One councilmember who has been on council before, and who had six months advance notice that this issue was coming? It was so over the top that I concluded that Gleason is personally scared of this ordinance. Or someone who is scared of it is leaning on him. Whatever the root, this was bullshit.

Max Baker called them out for sandbagging the ordinance and dragging it out through as many elections as possible. He is correct, and this is really overt crap.

July 6th City Council Meeting, (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The most confounding item – and ultimately anticlimactic – was the Lobbyist Registration measure. Where to begin.

This is Commissioner Baker’s ordinance. It came out of a committee that spent six months or so researching and writing it. The key provisions are:

  • You are a lobbyist if you are paid to make contact with a city official or city staff, or if you stand to profit from an issue
  • If you want to make contact and try to persuade an official on an issue, you must register as a lobbyist, and then report all contacts every two months.
  • There are some exclusions – private citizens are allowed to speak up about zoning issues, for example, without registering.

In Citizen Comment, about 18 people spoke up against the ordinance. They were mad that it’s onerous, would stifle speech and business, etc etc.

The item comes up, and instantly both Commissioner Scott and Commissioner Baker mumble motions into their microphones, but Mayor Hughson sides with Scott and gives him the floor. He moves to postpone the agenda item until November 3rd, which is after the election, and so there will be new councilmembers.

Recall that at the June 1st meeting, they debated postponing this endlessly. It was tiresome! And it failed! And yet we’re right back there.

Commissioner Baker is furious and lights into Commissioner Scott, who has openly mocked the Ethics Review Commission on other occasions. Mayor Hughson reprimands Baker to stay on topic, and Baker argues that this is entirely relevant, and the two of them get entertainingly snippy with each other around the 1:40 mark, (should you feel like listening to grown ups act like cranky children for yourself. It goes on and on! Hughson comes off looking like an overly controlling parent who wants to micromanage her sprog.)

Commissioner Scott can’t really explain why he wants to postpone. First he says, “So it can be re-written”, but he is reminded that it can’t be re-written on postponement. Then he says that he can review it with other people, which is unsatisfying.

Commissioner Derrick points out that it seems like this is an attempt to get a new city council in place first. (Who is up for election? I’m not sure. Garza, Scott, Gleason and Mayor Hughson were all elected last year. So some portion of Baker, Derrick, and Gonzalez could be up.)

Apparently CLEAT (Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas) wrote a letter to the paper which had enough errors that the City Manager, Bert Lumbreras, felt compelled to write a response to the paper to clarify the errors. The key refutations were:

  • This does not prohibit free speech. It just requires registration
  • SMPOA and the Firefighters Org were specifically mentioned in order to clarify their status, but if their names are removed, they’re still included as meeting the definition of “lobbyist”.

This detail is so bizarre that we should dwell on it for a moment. In the original proposed ordinance, SMPOA and the Firefighters Org are explicitly named as lobbyists, and no other organization is named. It’s such an inflammatory way to write the ordinance that it borders on self-sabotage. Who actually chose to explicitly name those two groups? Was it someone who wants the ordinance to pass, or was it someone on staff who actually does not want the ordinance to pass?

I truly have no guesses. It’s just such a lightning rod. Such an unforced error if you actually were fighting for this ordinance to pass. (This may have been removed in the latest draft? it’s hard to tell.)

Mayor Hughson wants to massively pare down the ordinance, and make it so that only councilmembers must report. But that’s not up for discussion, since they can only discuss whether to postpone or not.

Councilmember Baker is clawing out of his skin in frustration, and rightly so. The thing that’s most clearly in his favor is that the proposed legislation uses the language of existing lobbyist policies in surrounding cities. It’s nothing special or onerous. The outsized backlash is more damning than anything else, in the sense of raising my eyebrows and making me wonder what exactly people are trying to hide.

A persistent exchange is one where the someone yelps, “but why? why do we need this when there’s no problem?!” and Baker patiently explains, “We don’t actually know if there’s a problem because it’s all shrouded in secrecy and hidden right now. That’s why we need this.”

Finally it’s time to vote.

Postpone: Scott, Gonzalez, Gleason, Hughson, and Garza all vote to postpone.

Against: Only Derrick and Baker.

Garza gave a very naive speech about how she favors the ordinance, but maybe we can use the next four months to educate people and bring them around.

There is a real point, buried in the flotsam: that paperwork – or the specter of paperwork – will inhibit participation from a largely uninvolved batch of citizens. Behavior is shaped by gentle nudges, and if you’ve vaguely heard that there’s red tape surrounding making contact with council, it could easily dissuade a mostly-checked-out community member from speaking up when there’s an issue that actually does affect them. That would be a worthwhile discussion to hold.

However, postponing discussion is how you drown legislation in the bathtub, and this move is not happening in good faith. But that’s what it is. I told you it was anticlimactic.

June 1st City Council meeting, (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

This may not be the most important item exactly, but Item 22 was definitely the strangest item of the night. And Mark Gleason was the strangest acting councilmember of the night.

Item 22 is about adding language about lobbyists to the code of Ethics. Lobbyists would have to register with the city, and issue reports every two months. Apparently this has been floating around since 2018. Last December, Council gave direction that a committee should be formed. The commission met for three months and gave tonight’s recommendation to council.

Immediately Gleason made a motion to postpone the measure until the end of August. Everyone was caught by surprise. Baker was obviously annoyed and sparred back and forth with Gleason.

Gleason said:

  • He was contacted by constituents over the weekend and now he needs more time to research this
  • He’s worried about unintended consequences
  • The people need to be here to comment on this, and it should be postponed until they are meeting in person.
  • He’s worried about the constitutionality of restricting free speech like this
  • We already passed a campaign finance law, so this is redundant.

The thing is that these five points are easily swatted down, and they were swatted down, and Gleason just stuck to these five points over and over again. It was a bizarre performance and made me wonder what exactly got planted in his ear over the weekend.

The swatting down of these points went roughly like this:

  • The lawyers and experts are right here! If you have questions, please ask them!
  • What unintended consequences might you be imagining? The recommended policies are in place in many similar cities. No new language was written for San Marcos.
  • This has been brewing for 3 years. Citizen have been forced to show up over zoom for the past 15 months – what exactly is making this so unusual that it needs to be postponed, especially since the new election season will be underway by then?
  • No one is restricting free speech. When money is involved, lobbyists just need to register and report.
  • Campaign finance laws are just a different thing. Quid pro quos and influence are not exclusive to campaign finance.

Anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Gleason’s motion to postpone until the 2nd August meeting fails. Then he moves to postpone until the 1st August meeting. That also fails. (Baker, Derrick, Garza, and Hughson vote no.)

There are other concerns – who qualifies as a lobbyist and who is exempt? What should the penalty be? etc.

Hughson had quibbles that annoyed me:

  • Hughson feels like this just doesn’t happen in San Marcos and isn’t needed. This is very naive of her. She says that no one has approached her on council or as mayor. Fine, but perhaps other councilmembers signal a willingness to play ball that makes them more approachable than you?
  • She wanted to expand the definition of lobbyist to include any instance of influence, and then she was tying herself in knots because it would include citizens and nonprofits.

Shane Scott wonders what the big deal is. It still comes up for a vote. Why does it matter if someone picked up the phone and called you ahead of time? He wins the prize for the most disingenuous councilmember.

Gleason keeps these panicked nonsensical rants going. It feels like this: Someone called him over Memorial Day weekend and convinced him to postpone. That person fed Gleason these reasons, and Gleason can’t maintain a coherent conversation about them because they’re not his real reasons, and he’s unwilling to divulge the real reason. He was like a parody of someone squirming under pressure – practically yanking on his collar and wiping his brow and saying, “Is it me or is it hot in here?”

Gleason hasn’t been on council long, but his general shtick is to be the most earnest person on the block, although a bit repetitive and rambly. I don’t always agree with him, but he usually appears to be operating in good faith. This was like an easily rattled stooge sweating bullets before a mob boss. It was very strange!

Finally, conversation seems to be winding down. Surely they are getting ready to vote on this first reading!

But wait! Saul Gonzalez makes a motion to postpone. Everyone is dumbfounded. Saul’s reasons are that it’s getting late and he’s not thinking clearly anymore. He wants to postpone to the second meeting in August, ie the same as Gleason’s first attempt.

WHAT ON EARTH. The conversation has been had already. It’s now 10:30 pm. This is only the first reading – if you have misgivings, you still have a 2nd reading to bring them up! Nothing is binding here! (Like, did someone also get to Saul? Am I imagining conspiracies here?!)

The amendment to postpone fails. Again. As before, Baker, Derrick, Garza, and Hughson vote no.

They vote on some dates to implement the policy, and then hold the final vote on the first reading. It passes 5-2. Gleason and Scott vote no. Hughson and Gonzalez both qualify their yes-votes with ominous “for now…”s.

Well! Not the most important item necessarily, but definitely the most fun to write up.