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Council president to monitor referrals after two items were routed to Executive Committee
Summary
The Madison Common Council Executive Committee discussed a new checklist step that will require staff to notify the council president whenever an item is routed to the committee, after two ordinances were mistakenly referred to both CCC and other committees in a recent meeting.
The Madison Common Council Executive Committee spent part of its February meeting reviewing how referrals are routed after two ordinances were sent to the committee and to other standing committees in the same council meeting.
Council President Figueroa Cole said the committee will ask staff to notify the council president anytime staff sends an item to the Common Council Executive Committee, so the president can watch the floor during the council meeting and, if necessary, call out and remove an unintended CCC referral.
The change is intended as a process safeguard. “Any time a staff wants to send something to CC, they should contact the president … so they can be on the lookout for that particular agenda item,” Figueroa Cole said. She described the step as an additional checklist the president will use while reviewing agendas.
Attorney Haas clarified limits on correcting past referrals. The attorney told the committee that if the council has already made a referral during a council meeting, the referral cannot be retroactively rescinded by the committee. “The ones that are already in the system, we cannot change those,” Haas said. That means the new safeguard applies only to future referrals, not to items already routed.
Committee members asked for simple, clear points of contact so the process is easy for staff and council leadership to follow. Alder McKinney raised a legal point during the discussion, noting that council advice from the city attorney during the earlier meeting had indicated a referral made by the full council could not be re-dispersed by the committee once acted upon on the floor.
Figueroa Cole said anyone on the floor may also call out an erroneous referral, but that putting initial responsibility on the president reduces the chance of an oversight when many speakers and motions are active. The committee did not take any formal vote on the procedural suggestion; members directed staff to implement the notification step and to continue monitoring referrals.
The committee did not amend any ordinance language during the discussion. Members agreed to use the new step immediately and to raise the topic again if problems persist.
