Despite overwhelming public opposition, Cathy Moore and Sara Nelson are accelerating their push to change ethics rules so that City Council Council members could vote on issues where they have a financial interest. The proposal is on the committee agenda for Thursday at 2pm and could be voted out of committee that day.

Unfortunately there’s worse news: CM Hollingsworth is sponsoring several amendments which do little-to-nothing on the fundamental principle here. (As well as one amendment that is just flat-out confusing.) Typically CMs only offer amendments if they are planning to vote yes on the underlying proposal if their amendment passes. So this indicates that Hollingsworth is somehow a yes vote on rolling back ethics rules. This makes the vote count… challenging, even with Mayor Harrell’s strong opposition.

Process

The bill is before the Governance committee, whose members are Nelson, Rivera, Solomon, Hollingsworth, and Kettle. If it passes out of committee, it goes to full Council, typically two Tuesdays later. It can be amended again before full council, and I’d hope that Rinck and Strauss would at least make things painful by offering a lot of amendments. In any event, if the ethics rollback passes this Thursday, it would be full council on June 3rd. It takes 5 votes to pass. If there’s a veto, it goes back to full council and takes 6 votes to override. If passed, it can be taken to referendum, but that takes a good # of signatures gathered quite quickly. If it goes that way, bringing the ethics rollback to a referendum might be a smart thing for the Rinck campaign or Wilson campaign to do — couldn’t imagine a better organizing opportunity!

Amendments on the table

The council bill page shows six Amendments. (More amendments can show up in the next couple days or be “walked on” the day of the hearing. Here’s a rundown:

* Amendment 1 (Moore): This basically just restores some existing written disclosures and makes Councilmembers declare their conflicts at full council before voting anyway. Does nothing about the fundamental issue of allowing CMs to vote when they have financial interests at stake.

* Amendment 2A (Moore): This is a weird one. It does require recusal again, but only when “the elected official knows that a legislative matter would inure to their own special private gain or loss.” Entirely unclear how anyone is supposed to adjudicate the officials’ knowledge, or what a “special private gain or loss” is. Unlike the existing standard, there is no history of interpreting this, and it’s quite difficult to understand what these words mean. Would Nelson know that a permanent subminimum wage that saved her money at Fremont Brewing gave her a “special private gain”? Impossible to say. How private is private? If it’s a private gain, how do we know about it, let along know she knows about it? My take is that this is just window-dressing, it pretends to restore a recusal standard but only in situations which don’t make sense and will never happen.

* Amendment 2B (Hollingsworth): Another weird one. (It’s 2B because the drafting is in conflict with 2A; only one can pass). It would require recusal only “if the elected official’s financial interest is impacted to a greater or less extent than that of other members of the same professions, occupations, classes, or groups affected by the legislative matter.” This one doesn’t really make any sense I can figure out. If you’re in the class regulated how are you affected differently from the class regulated? And that “greater or lesser” is weird too. (Why would being affected less than others make you have to recuse? What?) Super hard to understand this one. BUT it reads to me like Hollingsworth is trying to get to Yes on the repeal and this is how… but I don’t see how anyone understands what the heck this one would do & when it would apply.

* Amendment 3 (Hollingsworth): Requires publication of complaints by the Ethics Commission. Which is nice, I guess, but not super meaningful when the rest of the policy is eviscerating the basis of making complaints by generally allowing Councilmembers to vote when they have a conflict of interest.

* Amendment 5 (Hollingsworth): This one similarly plays around the edges, it just requires that Councilmembers receive ethical advice more quickly. (No there is no Amendment 4, idk why.) Again, this is pretty much moot when the underlying legislation gives Councilmembers a free pass to vote when they have a financial interest at stake!

* Amendment 6 (Hollingsworth): This is the most do-nothing of all the do-nothing proposals from Hollingsworth. It just tells the Ethics Commission to offer their advice on improving public trust. IT DOES THIS AS PART OF BILL WHICH HAS ESSENTIAL ZERO PUBLIC SUPPORT AND HAS DESTROYED PUBLIC TRUST IN THIS COUNCIL. Honestly, this one reads as sarcasm.

What is happening

Kshama Sawant and her crew have made a big showing at hearings on this issue. Love that or hate it, it’s probably good for others to show up too — either to join in, to be a different additional voice, to broaden the coalition, whatever your theory of change is really. More turnout is a good thing, period.

The Hollingsworth amendments signal we’re not in a great place right now to beat this. BUT she flipped and gave up on rolling back the minimum wage when she proposed that last year, so who knows what she’ll do next here.

Next hearing is THURSDAY at 2pm. Worth showing up! At the very least we can make this difficult.