MINUTES OF THE METRO' S TRANSITION ADVISORY TASK FORCE MEETING

January 9, 2002

Room 501

Members Present:  Jeff Condit (Chair), Jeff Alden (Vice Chair), Gary Blackmer, Judie Hammerstad, Larry Hildebrand, Ted Kyle, Don McClave

Members Absent:  Rob Drake, Rick Gustafson, Matt Hennessee, Michael Jordon, Felicia Trader, Councilor McLain

Elected Officials Present: Presiding Officer Hosticka, Councilor Burkholder, Councilor Park, Councilor Monroe, Councilor Atherton, Executive Officer Burton, Auditor Dow

1.  Jeff Condit convened the Metro Transition Advisory Task Force meeting at 3:14 p.m.

2.  Consideration of the minutes of the December 19, 2001 Transition Advisory Task Force meeting.

Motion:  Jeff Alden moved approval of the December 19, 2001 meeting minutes.

Seconded:  Ted Kyle seconded the motion.

Vote:    The vote was 7 aye/ 0 nay/ 0 abstain. The motion passed unanimously of those present.

3.  Colloquy with Elected Officials

Jeff Condit, Chair, explained the process for this colloquy and opened the floor for councilor comments. He asked that the elected officials tell the task force of their interests and concerns. He noted his 1/3/02 memo addressing Issues and Options (included in the meeting record).

Councilor Atherton said he had served with city manager and on a local government. He felt one of the key issues was access to staff and interaction with Metro staff. He gave his history at Lake Oswego. He felt there was a need for different interaction with staff at Metro. He believed it was difficult to keep checking with the Chief Operating Officer (COO) before you interacted with staff, it simply didn't work.

Chair Condit said one of the concerns brought up by task force members was access to staff and avoidance of micro-managing staff. He noted Councilor Atherton's needs to have some access to staff but there needed to be some controls. He asked Councilor Atherton if he wanted the task force to explore this issue.

Councilor Atherton suggested using common sense, the last thing you wanted was the government body pressuring professional staff.

Executive Officer Burton said Council members have contact with staff in two ways: constituent issue and chairing Council committees. There was committee interaction issue versus individual citizen contact.

Chair Condit said this discussion was raised at the last meeting, council staff versus professional staff, the kind of staffing for the council office. One idea was that council staff would deal with the scheduling and constituent issues, providing information. The question was who should be in control of these staff.

Larry Hilderbrand asked if the task force had discussed whether Council needed staff.

Chair Condit said they had talked about this issue at the last meeting, council needed some staff support but the task force was divided. There was a mix of opinions everything from staff reporting directly to the COO to councilors having their own hired staff. The weight of the opinion was hiring their own staff was not a good idea but there was concern expressed if council didn't have some independent staff function there wouldn't be chances to get independent feedback. He suggested Council give them input about this, as this was the area that the task force had most disagreement. He noted that the committee was considering this in the context of the ballot measure which said there will be staff savings because there will be no need for duplication of staff because the COO will work for the council. The question was, should staff work for COO, the Council President or direct for the Councilors. He expressed concern about having too many staff outside of the normal staff structure because of the problems this would create.

Councilor Park commented about the transition of policy development. There was a need for independent function from the COO. As good as agency staff was, they had their biases. Whereas with independent policy development staff, they may look at issues differently. If all of your information was coming from one source, your information could be shaded. He felt this type of independence was important and sets Metro aside from the local jurisdictions where policy makers have the opportunity to do independent checks. Otherwise all your information was filtered at some level. He felt it was important to have that independent check.

Alexis Dow said, considering that the COO would be directly reporting to the Council and responsible for the administrative functions of the agency, would it not make sense to have an analytical department within the structure of the organization underneath the COO. The COO was responsible for administering and providing services and information to the Council.

Councilor Park noted an article in today's Metro section of the Oregonian about a recent resignation of a city manager. He said there was concern that information was not given to the council and this was one of the reasons for the resignation. He felt there was a certain protection for the COO when council had independent staff.

Councilor Bragdon said they also needed to consider the external relationships. The councilors were elected to represent 217,000 people each; those citizens needed to have some type of relationship with their elected representative that differs fundamentally from their relationship with the agency. All seven had different opinions about different issues, there needed to be some ability for the council to have some staff that was an extension of those individuals as opposed to representing the agency.

Mr. Burton said he thought that it was important to have a unified government. He thought the changes in the charter created an agency were the entire staff was the staff of the council. How you use that staff was different. In the legislature he had seen a "us and them" which immediately created a distrust. The whole idea was to make sure everyone was everyone's so there wasn't the problem. The COO and the Council President needed to make sure the needs of the council were served in what ever way they wanted to be served. It was a trust issue. He expressed concern about separate staff; it created a "them versus us" sense. He felt this wasn't healthy, part of motivation for the charter change was to have easier access to the entire staff but it had to be managed. He felt that this was the role of the COO and the Council President's to figure out.

Gary Blackmer asked about accountability. He felt it was difficult for the public to see who was accountable for what if there was that much blending going on. If you had a legislative body that was responsible for policy and oversight and you only got what the COO told them, then the council had lost some accountability.

Ms. Dow said there was no separation between executive and policy under the new charter.

Mr. Blackmer said he felt there was value in that tension, he felt making it one big happy family undermined the ability to have the oversight of the legislative body go in a different direction.

Mr. Burton said this was too small a government to have separate branches. The government wasn't that big that it needed to have that tension, the individual elected officials would create that tension.

Councilor Monroe said the voters approved the charter because it would make Metro more accountable. Where public money was involved there had to be a direct line to public authority. If there was mismanagement the voters knew directly who was responsible and who should not be re-elect if they didn't like the way the agency was being managed. The old system was a two- headed monster, the voters weren't sure who was accountable. Under the new system they needed to be able to directly understand who was accountable. We needed to be careful to not just replace the old system with an appointed executive. We needed to have an extremely skilled COO. We needed to do a national search to select the best person. The task force needed to determine how much they ought to pay the person and what that person's responsibilities ought to be. They would have a responsibility for the day-to-day management of this agency. The COO was not directly accountable to voters but to the Council President and individual councilors. He further suggested that each councilor should have areas of expertise such as Solid Waste. Those councilors needed to have direct access to staff; they shouldn't have to go through the COO or the Council President for that access. There should however be some filtering for other councilors access to that particular staff. He felt there should be rules perhaps indicating whom they go through such as the Council President or the COO. He said elected officials have constituents that they serve, neighborhood associations and the like. They needed to have sufficient staff help to allow them to make those kinds of contacts and connections. Six of the seven Metro Councilors were part-time. Because of this they needed someone here full-time so they didn't miss out on those constituent contacts that were critical. He felt that one area that we could save would be in the public relations staff. Council analysts might not be needed any more. He thought we could meet the goal of $400,000 to $500,000 annual savings. He also suggested guidance from the task force about salaries of the part-time councilors. He suggested that there needed to be a reasonable salary that met the needs of the public servant. He noted that there were a lot of highly qualified people who couldn't afford to serve because of the current salary.

Chair Condit said the task force decided they would start with the premise that they were working within the confines of the adopted charter. They had explored other issues but the task force could take a look at these issues. The task force had talked about selection of the COO including a national search and whether there ought to be a contract. They talked about the fact that the council should expect to pay more money than Mr. Burton got for the new COO. He noted that Rob Drake felt it was necessary to lay out how a COO was selected, how they should be paid and how the council should do performance appraisals.

Councilor Bragdon said they also talked about the job description.

Chair Condit said every one agreed that the councilors needed some staff to do calendaring and constituent response. The question was how this should be organized. He noted Councilor Monroe's recommendations. Chair Condit said that, as a lawyer for public bodies, he didn't like to see councilors hiring, firing and managing people because it was fraught with peril. He said if the council felt that they needed this type of staff then that was a discussion the task force needed to have.

Councilor Burkholder said he felt having a council analyst allowed for professional orientation different from the agency. He felt it was important to have someone who was working for him and for the council for independent verification. This was more important than constituency contact. He felt clerical support could be under the auspice of the COO.

Jeff Alden asked if there was a reason why you couldn’t have these independent analysts under the COO. The COO could be responsible for people assigned to the individual councilor and their job assignment was to provide the councilor with independent analysis. Did it have to be someone the councilor hired?

Councilor Burkholder didn’t think it had to be someone he hired.

Mr. Alden said assuming that there was a function laid out for this type of position and the councilor had some input into the evaluation of that person, could that person be under the COO?

Councilor Burkholder said he thought if you had an analyst whose responsibilities were to provide analytical work for the council that person could be under the COO. He simply wanted independent review. He felt the current system provided that independence, the question was how you merge.

Councilor Monroe said what he would not support was giving each councilor cart blanche hiring authority for staff that served them. He felt that continuing the current present system of hiring staff which included a committee of councilors, a search. It was a collective hiring process and then assigns staff to appropriate individual and or committee. He wasn’t sure what Councilor Burkholder’s concerns were. He felt we needed analysts now because departments were under the Executive Officer and the council didn't have direct control over them. He thought once the change occurred the agency staff would be working directly for the Council through the COO and the Council President.

Mr. Alden clarified Councilor Burkholder’s view; the council didn't have a uniform view. Each councilor needed some way of obtaining independent analysis of the issues the council faced.

Councilor Monroe said he would hope that they would have qualified individual staff people assigned to the councilor that could provide that kind of information.

Councilor Park said Chair Condit advice was considered neutral because he worked for the city not for individual councilors and was collectively hired. He said the council was trying to ensure that when you were doing policy development that you were looking at it from a neutral standpoint. There was a concern about having this information come from only one source. The independent review allowed consideration of how this best worked for the public and for the agency.

Chair Condit said as a person who has served at the pleasure of elected bodies, he personally thought that if a COO was appointed by a majority of the Council, they were going to be responsive to council's needs. His own personal experience was that if you were going to serve at the pleasure of an elected body, you had to know how to be accountable to the majority but had to be able to give good service to the entire council. This was the way you kept your job. He thought they were going to find that they would have a much more responsive situation than they were used to. He recommended that they go with a council staff that was directed by the COO. He had also recommended that the legal counsel serve the full council rather than the COO as a checks and balance. At some point council may want to fire the COO, you needed to have independent legal advice. What needed to be strengthened was how the Council managed the attorney and the COO.

Don McClave said they needed to run Metro like a government not like a business. Metro was a unique entity. He suggested that you needed to hire council staff through the normal Human Resources procedures. He asked whose information was really independent. You could be hiring people to duplicate work. He suggested why this didn't work. If you had staff that couldn’t do the job, you fired them.

Mr. Blackmer spoke to the two biggest failures that the city council had dealt with.

Judie Hammerstad said, based on her experience in Clackamas County, when they decided to hire staff people, they went through a group interview and they hired them as a group. They were responsible to all of them. They then hired a clerk of the commission, who was the coordinator of the staff. She said they were loyal to all and became experts in specific areas. It worked extremely well as long as they were equals and were hired by everyone. They had independent evaluation of the COO. What happened was they had someone new elected who came from the legislature and wanted their own personal assistant. Subsequently, the next person who came from the legislature brought his or her own personal assistant. She noted Mr. Jordan's remark about this, it did not work. You had to institutionalize this so that the new councilors that came in could not undermine the system and bring in their own people.

Chair Condit pointed out, as a legal matter was that the legislature had exempted their staff from most ethics and employment regulations.

Ms. Hammerstad said it was an incestuous situation.

Councilor Bragdon agreed that it was important to guard against that patronage system where it was very fragmented but, as a principle there needed to be a way for councilors to be able to challenge the orthodoxy of the organization. Any political organization that was safeguarding the rights of a minority was important. Sometimes the councilors' personal opinions were different than agency opinions. If voters saw fit to send someone who wanted to challenge some of those orthodoxy's that person deserves sufficient staff support, should not have his or her ideas stifled by lack of staff. Some involvement in the hiring might achieve this so they could be served in a neutral and responsible fashion.

Mr. McClave spoke to the loyalty of staff.

Councilor Bragdon said councilors needed to have some level of staffing that allowed them to challenge some level of orthodoxy of the agency.

Mr. McClave asked was this person someone like a "Sam Adams".

Councilor Park said he did not want everyone to have a “Sam Adams” because the balance should be between the elected councilors.

Mr. McClave clarified what he meant.

Councilor Bragdon said if there was someone with an opinion in the minority, that person deserved a voice, deserved staff support.

Chair Condit said the question was really responsiveness. He thought that the council would find that if you had a COO that worked for the council, that each individual councilor would want to assure responsiveness. The task force needed to come up with a system that would provide that line of accountability that gave the council some independent control over that staff. They needed to think about how this should be crafted.

Mr. Burton said there was a pragmatic issue. If you were talking about 6 individual staff people, how were you going to pay for it? We needed to take a look at the cost of this. There were certain areas of staffing that needed to be corrected within the agency. If you were running an organization the way you wanted to, you should be able to do that within the resources of this agency and get a good response without a need for independence. It was a cost issue.

Mr. Hilderbrand asked where does the council get its funding now.

Mr. Burton said it was from the general fund. It was a big tap on the general fund and so was executive staff.

Chair Condit said this would be useful information for the committee to have. Who was the council staff now, whom do they work for and how much was the budget.

Mr. Burton he thought they had provided that information to the task force.

Chair Condit said he had served on the Metro budget committee, he felt this agency was funded in the absolute worst possible way. He was not sure that they could solve this problem.

Mr. Burton said the fact was that it was not going to change in the near future so they had to live within the reality of where they were.

Chair Condit said he did not think it was any ones intent to create a bunch of new positions. Their hope was to eliminate duplication.

Mr. Hilderbrand said you could also contract if you wanted certain things done, you didn't have to hire full time staff.

Ms. Dow reiterated the point that Councilor Monroe made, there will be savings by eliminating areas were there was duplication. The functions of independent analysis, responding to constituents and scheduling were being funded now. She thought the task force's focus was who was responsible for these people. The issue that needed to be addressed was how does the council manage the COO and legal counsel? She said that, from her experience outside Metro, when the council had direct authority to hire the COO, the COO was going to want to be responsive to the council.

Chair Condit said that if your experience was the existing situation it was easy to see why there would be a concern.

Mr. Burton spoke to the question of legal counsel. He spoke to the history of the council when they were suing the executive. They needed to have legal counsel that worked for Metro not the Executive Officer. He thought this should be the way this worked. He said the executive with advice and consent of the council hired the legal counsel. If he dismissed legal counsel he had to tell the council why. The COO was a different situation.

Chair Condit said the legal ethics rules indicate that legal counsel represented the agency. His experience had to do with when the Executive Officer had lost their job. There were two reasons, one, they had been there too long and they had built their own political constituency and stopped being responsive and, second, there was a perception on the part of the council that the information was being too controlled. He spoke of his experience in Lake Oswego. His experience had been that the council that took office in 2003 should hire the COO.

Councilor Park spoke to the uniqueness of Metro because of council committee structure. As Chair of Community Planning he had opportunity to interact with Andy Cotugno, Director of Planning. There was an implicit amount of authority given to interact because of the nature of the Chair positions. Yet, if there was need for staff work, that would need to be run through the COO. This provided a check and balance.

Presiding Officer Hosticka said they didn’t talk to Andy Cotugno about hiring and firing staff, they talked about sequencing and workload from a policy perspective. This made Metro different from how most governments' work. They assumed that it would continue to work that way.

Mr. Burton said everything they were doing was a workload. He spent some of his time helping Andy shift workload to accommodate the councilors needs. He said it got into policy development to some extent. He gave guidance to Andy on workloads; he couldn't see that changing. The Council President’s job would be to manage the agenda, but the COO needed to manage the staff's time in relation to workload that the Council wanted to do. He spoke to the MERC budget and the need for reduction in their budget as a result of a loss of business. Part of what was going to come along with that was for the council to decide if their cost allocation would be reduced accordingly. The functions didn't go away even if they were reducing their income. This would be the job of the COO.

Councilor Burkholder said he was looking for advice on how to make the transition smooth such as when to hire the COO.

Chair Condit said this had been discussed. If you had a COO that could start on January 1, 2003, that would be ideal. The problem was that under the charter the approval had to be referred by the Council President, you couldn't do anything until that President took office. From a standpoint that the council and the first COO trusted each other, that council needed to do the hiring. It was possible they may know who that council would be as early as May 2002. If that was the case, you could begin that process then. There was an equally strong feeling on the committee that if this was not the case and you did not know who your council would be until November 2002, then it was necessary to hold off on the hiring. You wanted to have a job description that everyone agreed upon. You needed to do a nationwide search. You needed to have agreement about the salary range from the people who had to fund the position. You needed to do this with the people who would be initially in charge.

Mr. Blackmer asked about the councilors’ views on what would be the risk of going without that COO for several months? In the future, the council may have to hire again.

Councilor Park said you needed to keep the agency running.

Mr. Blackmer suggested having either an interim COO or continuing with the current COO until one was hired.

Councilor Park said there would need to be some type of plan for the interim; he asked the task force for guidance.

Councilor Monroe said even if you couldn’t sign the contract, assuming if you knew whom your council would be in May; you could start the process of locating that individual prior to 2003. The Council President couldn’t hire or fire the COO without the agreement of the council and visa versa. It forced unity between Council President and the other councilors concerning the role of the COO. He spoke to the relationship between the COO and Legal Counsel. He thought the system forced working together.

Councilor Atherton responded to Mr. Blackmer’s question about risk of proceeding with a national search. He felt it was going to take some time to gather reasonable candidates.

Chair Condit said it would depend on the job description and the process they set up. He said there was a need to have a search consultant who could find good candidates. That consultant could also determine salary range. Much of this could be done prior to the actual hiring.

Mr. Alden asked if the cut over dates were the same.

Chair Condit said it was January 6, 2003.

Mr. Alden said you couldn't have the new council vote on the COO until they were sworn in.

Mr. Burton said not legally, the previous council could agree but you couldn't hire legally until the new council was on board.

Chair Condit said the formal council could hire the COO and put them in a place holder position as long as you were sure that rubber stamp was going to come down on January 6^th. This was why you wanted to make sure that new council was involved in the selection process.

Presiding Officer Hosticka said they had a lot of open questions, but how much closure did they need before the new person came on board? Were they trying to design a system and then fit someone into the position or were they trying to hire someone to help the council work through and design a system that that person would then take responsibility for.

Chair Condit said they had debated this also, how much policy did the task force need to write and how much would be suggestion for after the fact decisions.

Presiding Officer Hosticka said there would be some sequencing issues also. Would this council pass ordinances that created a new structure or did the new council do this?

Chair Condit said they had that discussion, at least for the COO position, that authority and job description would need to be decided before the previous council left. He thought the current council could do this. Ordinances could always be amended.

Mr. Alden said that after Jan 6^th you might find that you had a council that had to change some of the responsibilities. This would be a process rather a single decision.

Presiding Officer Hosticka said it would be different if they had an interim person while they were hiring the COO.

Councilor Bragdon said they had put a number in the budget concerning hiring a firm to conduct the search for the COO. He spoke to transition functions that must go on. It you were going to have an interim person it was important to define that position as an interim position, it wasn't a permanent position. They didn't want an abrupt change over.

Chair Condit said that was their intent, even if you could get the person on board before January 1, 2003, you would have some transition issues.

Councilor Burkholder said another idea was to hire someone who would deal mainly with the changes in the organization, so this might be a different set of skills than the COO.

Mr. Alden said the charter said you would have a COO on January 6, 2003.

Chair Condit said that was a strategy that other jurisdictions had proposed. He thought that was a good strategy if what you had was a broke system. He felt Metro had a system that was running smoothy now. He thought their best bet was to pick someone who was with the organization right now to help cope with the transition.

Mr. Hilderbrand said they were not precluding action by this council and certain things such as staffing for the council. If the public objected to action that the current council took, they could show objection through their vote.

Mr. Burton said the budget was fiscal year, July 1-June 30. The budget began to be prepared in September. The Council that was in place in 2002 would be making decisions about the FY 02-03 budget year. It was his hope that the new budget would reflect some of the proposed changes and what the organization would become.

Chair Condit said they did have to make some decisions so they could plan for the budget. He asked the committee and council if there was anything else that needed to be considered.

Mr. Kyle said they needed to raise the question about the power of the council subcommittee to direct staff and was that going to change. They had discussed the subcommittee chair and their relationship with department heads. What was the relationship of the subcommittee to staff particularly if the subcommittee was not a majority of the council?

Chair Condit said he had added that issue to the list. He suggested figuring out an access to staff for subcommittees.

Mr. Hilderbrand asked should there be subcommittees?

Chair Condit said the committee structure was a hold over from the 13-member council. Was there a need for subcommittees within the structure? This could be something the new council decided in 2003.

Mr. Hilderbrand said that was one of the reasons it had to been brought up. He thought the current structure created a lot of extra tension and trade-offs.

Mr. Burton said he thought it would be helpful to have the task force thoughts on the committee structure issue because the dynamic would change. Part of the reason for the charter amendment was that there was an annual decision about the Presiding Officer and chairs of committees. The idea of having a region-wide Council President was to get away from that annual decision. That person had the authority to make committees or not. He suggested the task force give the council feedback about this issue and how to organize differently.

Ms. Hammerstad said you needed to look at each of the existing committees. She felt that it was a pain for people to have to testify at committee and then turn around and re-testify before the council as a whole particularly if you were testifying before a committee of the whole. She felt this dual testimony was a bit disrespectful to individuals who were trying to interact with council on an equal basis.

Councilor Burkholder said it was also very sad because of the duplication of public records.

Councilor Atherton spoke to a task force concept like the System Performance Task Force. He also encouraged contracting as a model for meeting the needs of a specific councilor's projects.

4.  Citizen Communications

There were none.

5.  There being no further business to come before the Metro Transition Advisory Task, Chair Condit adjourned the meeting at 4:50 p.m.

Prepared by,

Chris Billington

Clerk of the Council

Attachments to the Public Record for the Meeting of January 9, 2002

The following have been included as part of the official public record: