To Ronney Reynolds and Eric Mitchell, micro- management is a common problem at city hall. The real problem, however, is that the council does very little managing at all.
Take, for example, City Manager Jesus Garza's shuffling of the bureaucracy last year. Among other things, he moved the Environmental Inspection Review Team from Planning and Development (P&D) to the Drainage Utility Department (DUD) without seeking council approval, in direct contravention of the City Charter.
At the time, Jackie Goodman, Brigid Shea, and Max Nofziger were up in arms about the move, not because of its illegality, but because the trio thought it marked a downturn in the city's commitment to the environment. It put the inspection team -- which reviews development projects for environmental compliance -- in jeopardy, they said. Why? Because Reynolds and Mitchell hate the DUD, especially since it helps pay for the legal defense of the Save Our Springs water-quality ordinance. Last year, Reynolds threatened a measure to eliminate it, and council offices say Assistant City Manager Jim Smith has suggested the same. The environmental department was certainly safer as an adjunct to P&D, one of three departments named in the Land Development Code as a council-created entity; dismantling it would require majority council approval.
Apprehension is the harbinger of error, which is probably why, though desperately seeking a countermechanism to Garza's assumed sovereignty in playing musical chairs with departments, the council trio didn't consult the city charter. It reads: "No administrative department shall be... combined with another department until the council has obtained and considered the recommendations of the city manager."
Oh well, it's just city law. In fact, Garza doesn't seem the least concerned by his ignorance of it. He says he was only following the models of past city managers, and says council approval will come eventually, anyway. "The council will approve the reorganization [when they approve] this year's budget. That's how we've done reorganizations in the past."
Not until a month after Garza's reorganization, did Nofziger's office learn about that passage in the charter. By then, it was so late in the game that the three councilmembers didn't bother to undo Garza's changes. Lame duck Nofziger, in fact, is now sponsoring an ordinance that would formally approve Garza's changes. But he also hopes to regain the environmental inspection team's security, by naming it in the Land Development Code to protect it from administrative elimination. Because Garza's move also raised doubts about the city staff's commitment to environmental safeguards, Nofziger wants a cross-department environmental officer created, and he wants that included in the code, too. According to Nofziger's aide, Robin Cravey, the officer's duties will include an annual report on the state of the city's environment and investigations into abridged environmental policies, among other things.
After a public hearing two weeks ago, Nofziger's ordinance passed on first reading only, getting approval from the trio and Gus Garcia. Mayor Bruce Todd and the ER tag-team voted no; unless an ordinance wins five votes, it must be voted on a total of three separate times to pass. To no one's surprise, ER pulled out Old Reliable: Their weekly micro-management argument. The irony was lost on no one. If the council had properly "micro-managed" Garza in the first place, Nofziger wouldn't have brought forth any amendments.
And a bit more management could have been used to fix staff's bumbling attempts to get the item on the agenda. The first vote was originally anticipated for April. But staff forgot to advertise the public hearing. When they finally remembered, they then forgot to notify the neighborhood association, delaying it another week. By the time staff finally got it together on May 30, just enough meetings remained to pass the item on three readings this week. But because key vote Jackie Goodman will be absent for today's meeting (June 6), the land code amendments won't get their second vote today. Instead, the council must hold an "emergency" vote at the June 12 worksession, and take the third and final vote the next day, at Nofziger's last council meeting. If any of the four approving councilmembers misses one of the meetings, Nofziger's efforts will be for naught.
Nofziger wouldn't be in this predicament if he'd planned better, but staff is also largely to blame. Whether they intentionally delayed the amendments is uncertain. But the truth is, without a little micro-management from the hand of Nofziger's aide, the item might have never made it to the agenda at all. A key leitmotif from the conservative script during the recent campaign elections was that the council should set the vision and let staff carry it out. But staff has many ways to avoid that vision. Correctly implementing it requires some meddling; otherwise staff will run the show. The ER duo should know as much, what with Reynolds' constant oversight of the DUD's activities, and Mitchell's heavy breathing down the necks of bureaucrats at the Neighborhood, Housing and Conservation Office.
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There couldn't have been more blatant political posturing than a May 28 press conference called by Mitchell. With members of the Austin Police Association and tag-along Reynolds at his side, Mitchell called for Capital Metro to apply the $20 million it receives from annual sales tax revenues to the city's struggling emergency services. The issue of re-allocating Capital Metro's sales tax revenue is cresting after the incessant beating the transit agency took during the recent council campaigns over their sales tax increase from 3/4 cent to one cent. Other than the few Brownie points Mitchell's announcement could get from angry taxpayers, it wasn't worth the penny that Capital Metro gets from each $1 purchase. State law mandates that Capital Metro funds be used only for public transportation.
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This week in council: Third reading of the cable franchise with Austin CableVision. The move for a Downtown Art Museum finally gets underway, with a measure to approve Venturi Architects for a $300,000 design contract. The ER tag-team will talk about micro-management. n