Spokane Valley City Council considers changes to rules and regulations for council members

The Spokane Valley City Council is poised to vote Tuesday on a number of changes to its governance manual in an effort to cut down on the many contentious council meetings since the start of the new year.

“What we hope is for everybody to be professional and do the work that we need to do and get back to the business of the city,” Mayor Pam Haley said of the proposed changes.

The bulk of the changes are minor updates to policies, procedures and guidelines, including those governing travel reimbursements, dress code, social media use and newly formed committees such as Public Safety.

There are also some noticeable additions to what is considered acceptable council member behavior, and how violations of conduct standards will be handled moving forward.

Councilman Al Merkel feels many of the changes are targeting him, such as the additions made to the “Respect and Decorum” portion of the manual’s section on rules and procedures for meetings.

The proposed changes to that section state that a council member may not interrupt or argue with other council members or staff, engage in disorderly behavior, or make derogatory or accusatory remarks.

The changes also include requirements that council members must be courteous and must keep questions or comments relevant to the facts at hand for whatever issue is being discussed. Relevancy will be determined by the mayor, the deputy mayor, or whoever is leading the meeting.

While the previous iteration of the manual has language covering all of those things, the changes make those expectations much more explicit.

Merkel said he worries the relevancy requirement will be used by his fellow council members to prevent him from asking questions. He’s made a habit of asking a string of questions of city staff and outside presenters for each issue they’ve brought before council.

“In other words, I’m not allowed to ask questions if the mayor doesn’t like them,” Merkel said. “I don’t have an inherent problem with the changes, but I don’t know what they are trying to address.”

Haley said the changes to the manual were not intended to target Merkel, and have been under development for years.

“That governance manual has been in the works for probably two years, so it isn’t anything specific to right now, per se,” Haley said. “It’s just some things that had happened before and we just decided it was time to kind of make it more clear.”

The “we” to which Haley is referring is her fellow members of the council’s Governance Manual Committee, including Councilman Rod Higgins and Councilwoman Jessica Yaeger. The committee brought the changes before the council for a vote, a move Merkel said violates the council’s usual “Three Touch” principle.

Typically, members consider issues that require a council vote three times, whether that be a written communication, administrative report or a public reading.

Haley said it may seem like the manual changes are being brought up for the first time, but council members have been working on the manual for more than a year.

“We’ve actually had several touches on this as it was being revised,” Haley said.

She added that the three members of the committee are new this year, which would mean six members in total have reviewed the changes before the vote.

Merkel is also concerned about a change to the council’s social media policy, over which he and Higgins quarreled at the first few council meetings this year.

Council members are required to provide their social media handles to city staff so any content on it can be archived as public records if it relates to their role as a council member.

Archiving costs will now be deducted from each council member’s individual annual budget, which Merkel believes may be used to hit him with unnecessary fines and bills.

The substantive change to the manual is the addition of a chapter detailing the procedure to be followed if a council member is found in violation of the policies outlined within, as well as any laws and regulations applicable to elected officials.

The chapter outlines how a council member can file a complaint against a fellow member, how complaints will be investigated and what measures the council can take in response to any violations.

An independent third party will investigate complaints and recommend any relative corrective action based on their findings, according to a copy of the proposed chapter. The council can then vote to either reprimand, censure or remove a council member from their committee assignments or any regional boards or commissions.

The accused council member will have the right to request an appeal before any action is taken, and can appeal any disciplinary decisions to the Spokane County Superior Court if they feel the hearing examiner and council got it wrong.

“This is the most concrete steps that we’ve ever had,” Haley said. “But as far as the behaviors that it addresses, that’s been in there for a long time.”

Higgins said that the same procedure has generally been followed with past grievances on the council, but that the procedure needed to be included in the manual for future enforcement.

As an example, he noted that the council could have taken other disciplinary action instead of the reprimand they issued Merkel last week for violating executive privilege, but there was not a set procedure in the governance manual dictating what steps to follow.

“He was talking about something he should have not even brought up,” Higgins said. “The reason he got a reprimand rather than something worse than that, like a fine or censure, was that there was no set procedure for what happened.”

Merkel said the complaint and investigation process likely means more unwarranted expenses for the city.

He also worries it could be used as a political weapon.

“It could be abused, say leading up to an election or something, so I am constantly under investigation,” Merkel said.