MINUTES OF THE METRO' S TRANSITION ADVISORY TASK FORCE MEETING

February 6, 2002

Room 370 A & B

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

Members Absent:  Felicia Trader, Rob Drake, Matt Hennessee, Michael Jordan

Others Present:    Councilor Bragdon, Auditor Dow, Executive Officer Burton, Presiding Officer Hosticka

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

2.  Consideration of the minutes of the January 30, 2002 Metro Transition Advisory Task Force meeting.

Motion:  Judie Hammerstad moved adoption of January 30, 2002 Metro Transition Advisory Committee minutes.

Second:  Jeff Alden seconded the motion.

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

3.  Review of Draft Recommendations

Chair Condit noted what had been accomplished at the last meeting concerning recommendations to the Council. He acknowledged the final draft of the report to the Transition Task Force on staff perspectives and a schedule for the process of having a COO on board by January 6, 2003 (copies of which may be found in the meeting record).

II.  Roles and authority of Council President and Council for agency administration.

A.  Hiring and firing department directors and other key subordinates of the COO.

Chair Condit said that the Task Force felt that the Council should hire the COO and the Attorney. The COO should hire all staff except for the Attorney's staff.

B.  Hiring, firing or supervising Council staff

Chair Condit said there were competing interests on this subject. The desire of the Council to have responsive staff people but balanced with the need for the COO to manage and to get away from an "us versus them" mentality. He spoke to his law firm's organization and how the secretarial support staff was hired and managed. The staff was hired and managed by the firm's managing partner and then assigned to specific attorneys. The attorneys had the ability to participate in the performance review and if the situation was not working out, make a request that staff be rotated. In his experience this was a good model. He thought of his support staff as his but he didn't have to do the performance evaluation, hiring or firing.

Gary Blackmer asked about shared staffing.

Chair Condit said each support staff was assigned to two lawyers. The manager took care of balancing the workload. A central manager who could shift workloads was good.

Don McClave asked what happened if they were not getting along with someone and they weren't doing the work to expected standards?

Chair Condit responded that they could go to the manager of the staff and speak to them about the work. It was the typical corrective and progressive performance process. If there was a performance problem there was an opportunity to correct the performance but if it was a personality issue and there was not a good fit, that person was shifted and/or terminated. The administration took care of this. The attorney was not involved.

Ted Kyle asked Chris Billington how the Council Office was working now.

Chris Billington said it seemed to work well, each of the support staff supported two councilors and then one staff supported the Presiding Officer. Each of those staff also supported one to two committees.

Ms. Hammerstad asked whom did the councilors' constituent work?

Ms. Billington responded that each support staff did that for their councilors. Sometimes the Outreach portion of the department did this work as well. The Council Assistants usually did the constituents letters.

Ms. Hammerstad said that she thought the main concern of the Council was that they wanted someone who represented them to their constituents. They wanted to have loyalty in the person that worked for them. She personally had worked in both situations and felt that having the more professional staff was a much better way to go and not have the councilors have their own appointed staff. She thought this could cause a lot of dissension in the group.

Chair Condit said, in a public setting where there was constituent support that was valid and necessary to do versus campaigning using public funds, he thought it was important to have someone available to respond.

Mr. Alden said all of the law firms used the system Chair Condit had described in his firm. If you had a single person, such as the Director of Administration or Chief Operating Officer, monitoring workloads, you could make staff work for the real needs that were there. Real loyalties developed out of that situation. He would anticipate that Councilors who had needs, in terms of outreach or constituent contacts would develop loyalty from their support staff.

Mr. Blackmer said there was another advantage to this model. If one of the staff wasn't working out in that position, there may be some place else in the agency where they could move that person and bring someone new on. There was more flexibility in terms of putting the right people in place if something wasn't working out.

Chair Condit said it seemed like half the time someone didn't work out because of personality issues rather than performance issues.

Councilor Bragdon cautioned there was a fundamental difference between a law firm and a Council in two respects; one, both attorneys were people who had been hired and joined the firm and had a level of collegiality with one another, they had both been invited to be partners by the group and two, the attorneys were working for the same clients. On the Council there were seven different people who did not choose to be with one another and who in fact may be rivals to one another and who had vastly differing opinions and represented different constituents. He was not advocating for a system where there was a patronage but the worst of both worlds potentially was a situation where ones staff was being managed or influenced in some way by ones political rival. In the existing situation there was a potential for this to happen.

Chair Condit said he thought that was a management issue. If you were having a conflict on work performance issues with a member of the staff and that staff person was supporting one of their people and not the other, then it was a management issue.

Councilor Bragdon said it depended upon who was doing the management. He thought there was a real need to safeguard the right of the minority on a political body. If there was one member out of seven that was out of step with the organization, that person was still entitled to a certain amount of support. He suggested outside contracting services as one way to solve the issue. You had to guard for someone who wanted to oppose the orthodox.

Mr. Blackmer asked in what way would shared staff make it difficult for that person to oppose the orthodox?

Councilor Bragdon said it depended upon how they were managed. Under the current situation, the Presiding Officer managed the Council staff. He gave an example of how this might not work.

Chair Condit said his suggestion was that the Council staff was managed by the COO not by the Council President. He felt that the COO had to be responsive to the whole council. With that check and balance in the system, it worked to prevent sabotage and provide responsiveness.

Mr. Blackmer said there could be some subtle things that the COO could do to sabotage but if a Councilor wanted something done on a particular issue, the COO was not going to go to the staff and tell them not to write the memo. If this did happen it would reflect poorly on the COO. It seemed as if the Council had been functioning this way for a while, he wasn't hearing enough to say this was a big problem.

Chair Condit said he didn’t think any of the Task Force members were saying that the Councilors shouldn’t have staff support to do both constituent and analytical work but the question was who should staff report to now under the new structure? He suggested that having a central administrator who was directly responsible to the Council and having Council have a role in the evaluation of their staff was the best model.

Mr. Blackmer said the COO needed to maintain the satisfaction of at least four members of the Council. This was a check over how well the staff served the COO also. He felt there would always be a sensitivity to and a respect for other peoples differing viewpoints. He hoped that issues and questions got a full airing and were encouraged. Having a variety of staff serving a variety of councilors gave opportunity to share those skills.

Larry Hilderbrand said that was a legitimate concern. These were independently elected people. The idea of shared staff was appealing to him but he thought it was also important to protect the outsider. He suggested ground rules established by the Council that laid out confidentiality rules for the staff.

Chair Condit said, having served at the pleasure of a public body, he was careful to be responsive even to the ones who were on the outs. They did have ground rules and explained those rules. He could respond to the councilor requests unless there was a major amount of work; then, they had to have three vote to do the work, for example, drafting an ordinance or a substantial research project. This was a workload issue that had to be discussed with the group and the manager. This model seemed to work well. If one of the councilors wanted to do something that was completely contrary to the established direction of the Council, they could do a contract. If you had a councilor who was suspicious of all the rest of the councilors then they were going to be suspicious of the work that staff did. It was actually better for staff to have that work contracted. He suggested making this recommendation.

Mr. Hilderbrand said that was important. He noted that one councilor had done this.

Mr. Alden asked, wouldn't you end up with individual councilors saying they wanted to go out and hire their own consultant?

Chair Condit said you had to have some specific ground rules.

Councilor Bragdon spoke to a previous councilor who had contracted work. This councilor had some in depth questions about Urban Growth Boundary management issues that he felt were not being satisfied with existing staff resources or there was a level of trust that wasn't there. He contracted with a firm to do an analysis. He paid for this out of his own pocket.

Don McClave asked why the staff couldn't have been directed to do the work?

Executive Officer Burton said they didn’t have the answer he wanted.

Mr. McClave said, in that circumstance why didn't other councilors agree to support his request.

Mr. Burton said the other councilors felt the answers were adequate.

Councilor Bragdon spoke to the confidentiality issue. He talked about Washington County's rule that said information for one was information for all; this inhibited the minority from exploring valid policy issues. He gave an example of a policy issue he wanted investigated. He didn't necessarily want this request in the newspaper the next day. He would like to ask someone to dig into the issue without sharing this with the other six councilors.

Mr. Alden asked why should it be a secret that he was looking into a policy issue if he was using public resources to research the issue?

Councilor Bragdon responded that it would be premature to couch it as a proposal if you were posing a question.

Mr. Alden said it was not a proposal as Councilor Bragdon described it, he was doing research on an alternate way of looking at something.

Councilor Bragdon gave another example of research, adding lanes to Hwy 217. He wasn't sure he wanted this in the press.

Mr. McClave suggested that this was a problem with the press.

Mr. Alden said if you were going to use public resources to take a look at the issue why shouldn't fellow council members know this.

Councilor Bragdon said every public elected official in the country had the luxury to do this without it being a public matter.

Chair Condit responded that they didn't have that luxury. The legislature and the Senate had exempted themselves from a lot of those rules so they could have those types of conversation. But anything you asked a public staff to do with public business, unless it fell into one of the exceptions under the public record law, had to be disclosed. You could have a conversation and you didn't have to tell anyone about it and you could have someone develop a report for you and no one may necessarily find out about it but it was a public record.

Councilor Bragdon gave an example of the Convention Center and said that it would not be expanded right now if they hadn't had trial balloons.

Chair Condit suggested having executive sessions on property transactions. He asked Councilor Bragdon what he would suggest as an alternative structure to the shared staff concept.

Councilor Bragdon said there had to be some firewalls and confidentiality.

Chair Condit said in a corporate entity, staff must share information with the Board. You could have ground rules concerning confidentiality. If it reached a certain level where it had to be disclosed then he would have to disclose. If someone asked him about the issue he would have to disclose. He felt this was a ground rules issue more than a confidentiality issue.

Mr. Alden said if there was an issue about the public knowing about what was being studied, they did have the executive session if there was truly a public need to keep that information confidential. He felt strongly that you shouldn't be able to keep the information confidential from your fellow council members. You were looking at an issue that concerned Metro and you were using public resources to gather information.

Ms. Hammerstad said this was a fascinating discussion. You had independently elected individuals who came from different points of view but the Council was a group decision making body. As mayor, she only brought things forward for discussion if there was agreement among the group that they wanted to discuss it. She would bring up a discussion issue at the request of two or more councilors. If only one person was interested in discussing an issue, it looked like it might not have the group acceptability even though she really valued the idea of having that odd person out have some kind of ability to bring something forward. She was not sure that public dollars should be spent on the investigation if the group decision making body didn't support the issue.

Mr. Alden said, to take a middle ground, suppose that someone had an idea about expanding the freeway, originally the rest of the council didn't support this idea. If one councilor wanted to flesh the issue out and bring it back to the council to see whether there was enough interest, then, there was some real value, in having one councilor pursue this. He didn't see anything wrong with doing that but he thought if resources were going to be used to flesh the issue out that the other council members ought to know that resources were being used for that purpose.

Ms. Hammerstad said they had a concrete example recently, Employee Assisted Housing to keep public safety employees living in Lake Oswego because the cost of housing was high. The Councilor felt that there should be some kind of public subsidy to do this. There was no one else on the council that was interested in it but he did the research and, by going far enough, persuaded people that it was worth listening to. There was a lot of public and press feedback about the issue. That person had to do some legitimizing of the issue so the rest of the council was willing to spend the time to listen to it.

Chair Condit said he didn’t think this structure would prevent that. Realistically no one was going to be telling everyone all of the time what they were working on even though it was technically all public record.

Mr. Blackmer thought anything of significance wasn't going to be magically unveiled to the public as a surprise, word would get out.

Councilor Bragdon said he was not talking about keeping huge things secret nor was he talking about large commitments of staff time, he was talking about trying to respect councilor's ability for the "what if" scenario without everyone talking about the "crazy idea" the councilor had.

Ms. Hammerstad asked about Councilor Atherton's outside contract?

Councilor Bragdon said he used his expense account to cover the cost.

Ms. Hammerstad asked if each councilor had the ability to do this?

Councilor Bragdon said yes, this was a good illustration of what he was trying to get across. He said the expense account was used for a variety of expenses; conferences, scholarships, as well as researching issues. He said Councilor Atherton was someone who represented 220,000 people and he was elected to do that. These were tools he ought to have available to him even though he might not agree with the orthodox of the organization. He spoke to the trust issue and the fact that Councilor Atherton contracted to get that outside help.

Ms. Hammerstad said this would still fit into this kind of staffing situation. She thought it was a good recommendation to have the ability to use their expense account to cover this type of research.

Chair Condit thought having a rule that staff people didn't discuss among themselves the individual requests was a good suggestion.

Ms. Hammerstad said she would support having centrally managed staff with the other allowance within the operating rules of the council so there was some flexibility for councilors to get independent information.

Mr. Alden suggested a limit to the expense account.

The Task Force concurred.

Mr. McClave spoke to trust issues and suggested a process were the councilor went to the COO and made the request. He gave an example concerning the light rail tunnel where they had executive session meetings to determine if the tunnel could be built.

Councilor Bragdon said the Council was made up of seven different people with seven different perspectives representing the region.

Mr. McClave said the Council's ultimately responsibility was to the agency. The Council was responsible for the agency.

Councilor Bragdon said he was not suggesting a shadow government.

Mr. McClave said staff should be supporting those requests. You shouldn't have to go outside the agency.

Councilor Bragdon agreed.

Chair Condit said, ultimately the Council had a very strong hammer. There was no specific delegated authority to the COO and if it turned out that the centrally managed process didn't provide enough flexibility, they could change it. He thought that when you had an appointed COO working for the body you would have a synergy there that didn't currently exist. He suggested that the Task Force recommended the centralized management and if it didn't work the Council could change it.

Mr. Kyle said as a staff member in a department, they were concerned with every one of those elected officials and what their concerns were. It was his job to have answers for all their questions. If staff could provide the answers they did. What the Task Force was talking about was a resource allocation issue. The COO would be able to help sort that workload out and know when to call the question of the others and know when it was something others were interested in and charge the staff to do the work. His goal was to make sure he could answer every reasonable question. The staff tried to anticipate needs and bring forth those answers. There were political rivals who would clash. He didn't think there was anything they could do in any system that was ever going to get the minority voice to stop whining that they didn't get enough attention from the government. In the end, it was the elected officials as a body, that ultimately had to work that out and decide how they were going to spend the tax payers money. He would try his best to get an answer for the councilor, if they didn't like the answer, they could spend their own funds to see if there was a different answer.

Mr. Blackmer said he had gone back and forth on this issue. He felt that good decisions came from good questions. Good questions came from research and deep understanding of the issue. Staff could help council members get a lot farther along that road. There were always more questions than time to get answers. It was important to be challenging the COO and asking those questions all the time and was critical for the Council to have the resources to be able to delegate questions to a staff person. He also heard the other side of the argument, there was value in having a range and capacity and specialization among this group. His sense was that you could have interdependence, you could have a staff that answered to council but ultimately was hired, fired and supervised by the COO. Obviously that COO needed to be responsive to a majority of council to keep his or her job. He thought the natural progression of government was that everyone wanted to be independent and not necessarily accountable. They were accountable to the public but not to another branch of government. He thought it was worth the effort to try the central management model for a while and seeing how it worked.

Mr. McClave asked if the Task Force would agree with the notion that all reasonable requests for additional information should be responded to by professional staff. There ought to be a process in Council for bringing up differences of opinion where a council member didn't feel that his or her request was not being responded to.

Mr. Blackmer said that was always an option.

Rick Gustafson said he assumed that the Task Force was supportive of the COO hiring all of the staff. He wouldn't count himself in that group; he was not worried about the minority or the combativeness. He thought that politics was a profession and one of the things that he thought Metro needed more of was being better equipped to think through politically as opposed to technically issues. There was a lot of good technical work going on but better understanding the political role was also important. In the past they have gotten into trouble on the political side not the technical side. Metro was a very strong technical organization. He suggested articulating the different options. The point of making the Council President and Council more effectively politically was something that required some specific assistance. He thought this was important to recognize. He would be concerned about having it all through the COO and then ending up with no direct political assistance to the Council.

Mr. Blackmer asked Mr. Gustafson what he would suggest?

Mr. Gustafson said he did not feel that the Council all had to have their own staff person but the notion of having some clear responsibility to think through the political ramifications was important to have. It was a very different thought process than what the facts told you. There were other facts that told you where voters were, how they perceived an issue which may not relate to the facts.

Chair Condit said he agreed with everything Mr. Gustafson said except that having it centrally managed offered some opportunities that weren't there with individually appointed staff members. What they had been talking about was centrally hired and fired staff by the COO but assigned to the Councilors and Councilors having an opportunity to have a say in what the assignment was and performance evaluation. He was not suggesting 100% COO management with Council getting no staff. He didn't think any Task Force member supported that concept. He overviewed the three possibilities.

1)  COO manage the staff

2)  Council President managing staff

3)  Council hiring own individual staff

It was his opinion going with the COO management and assignment of staff was the best way to start that process. If they were not going to have the COO manage staff, there would have to be some method for appointment of staff. Then there was the question of who was going to assign that staff to whom. He believed council needed to have adequate staff support, the authority to be able to go out and get information prior to making a decision. He agreed that they needed to have better political support and that they needed to have people that did constituent support but he was concerned about exacerbating the trust issue by having a bunch of lone rangers.

Ms. Hammerstad agreed. She wondered about Council President staff. The Council President needed his or her own staff. Would the COO or the Council President pick that person? She thought that Mr. Gustafson's point about political leadership was one of the things that professional management allowed the Council President to do exert political leadership. You may or may not get a Council President who could do this.

Mr. Kyle said what he heard Mr. Gustafson say was that Council staff needed to be more than just people who were part of the constituency management and took care of the calendars. Their skills needed to go beyond and provide both professional and political advice.

Mr. Gustafson agreed.

Mr. Kyle continued that it was something that couldn't happen inside the departments. They needed to be answerable or directly connected to the Council.

Mr. Gustafson said it related to the full issue of garnering the majority of the support of the region and conducting a campaign on key issues and then keeping track of those key issues and delivering on them.

Mr. Kyle said he knew of a perfect example where that didn't happen and they ended up with a rate revolt over water.

Chair Condit said you hired a COO that was competent to do that. One of the main skills of the COO was to make their Council look good and prevent train wrecks. The structure that was set up where the Council President had oversight power over the COO and was also responsive to the Council was different than the current structure.

Mr. Alden asked Mr. Gustafson if he was worried that the whole organization didn't have enough political savvy to see beyond the technical answer as opposed to the individual council member needing the political support of a staff member. If that was his concern it may be a question of what kinds of people Metro had working for them. They ought to have a better-staffed political organization such as a public relations arm. It was an organization wide problem rather than a question of whom managed what personnel.

Mr. Gustafson responded that it could be an organization wide problem. Most other elected organizations ended up providing increasing amounts of direct staff support to the political functions of the organization that related to such things as political initiatives. He thought the COO was key in this, a key advisor and a key participant with the majority of the Council. He didn't want to diminish the importance of equipping the members of the council. He was an advocate of having the Council President have a real opportunity to lead. He was not convinced that was the job of the COO. As major political initiatives were mounted he advocated for a level of respect for those kinds of political leadership responsibilities. Being elected by 1 million people in this region and having stood on key issues like the UGB, those would be very serious and difficult political issues.

Chair Condit said it came down to the question on how we did that? Everyone at the table expressed their support that the Council should have adequate staff and that the Council should lead. How would it be structured?

Councilor Bragdon said there were different types of support, one technical, one political. He gave an example of needing to know how many square feet was needed in a ballroom versus needing to know what the City of Portland's political officials were thinking about the expansion of the Convention Center. Those were two completely different sorts of tasks but they both needed to happen by different types of people.

Mr. Alden said they were not talking about dictating what kind of skills were out there for the Council to access themselves of, the Task Force was talking about who supervised the hiring, firing and evaluation of those people.

Auditor Dow pointed out that the Council currently had secretarial, analytical and PR support. If in the process of assuming the management of the agency, the Council needed additional types of support there was nothing to prevent them from going to the COO and saying this was the type of person they needed.

Chair Condit said he would be reluctant for this committee to say that each councilor needed a half time person or to make any specific staffing recommendation. The structuring of the new system should include political and constituent support for the council. The question was how it was going to be structured?

Ms. Hammerstad said she didn't hear anyone arguing with having the COO be the manager of the staff. Mr. Gustafson was the only one.

Mr. McClave said, however you did this, each elected official would need a person that they trust. He was skeptical of this happening if those individuals were shared. He expressed concern about all councilors having access to the facts. He felt that what Mr. Gustafson was talking about was not the support staff who scheduled and answered letters but staff who could give councilors a political perspective. He wondered if there was another government with this type of structure.

Chair Condit said the City of Portland was an odd government because each of the councilors was assigned bureaus, which they managed.

Ms. Hammerstad said when Clackamas County first hired staff they utilized the central management model and it worked great. Then, as people who were elected came from the legislature, they were used to bringing their own person on board. Then it worked extremely poorly and still did. She agreed with the Chair, that when they hired people they didn't know that came to the county applying for jobs, they were managed by the COO and assigned to the commissioners. What happened in working with someone was, if you were a person of integrity and had respect for the person who was working for you, they developed loyalty to you. She had never had a problem with someone not being trustworthy and loyal to her because she was trustworthy and loyal to them. You built on the relationship with the person who you were working with.

Mr. Burton shared his thoughts about the role of the COO in relationship to Council staff and the particular political needs of the Council.

Mr. McClave thought that a central staff should generate information being generated by the agency for the Council. This was different than political advisement.

Mr. Burton said what you didn’t want to set up was having the political advisor do the analysis.

Mr. McClave said that would happen ultimately if you didn't have a process that ensured everyone had access to the same information.

Mr. Blackmer said there was overhead and liability in hiring, supervising and firing of staff. A COO was in a better position to absorb that overhead, do it right, and minimize liability than part time elected officials who may have never had that kind of employee before.

Mr. McClave said it was more economical to be able to move staff around.

Chair Condit asked Mr. Gustafson who he thought ought to manage council staff.

Mr. Gustafson said the Council President. The Council President was not part time.

Mr. Hilderbrand said you were creating two separate organizations.

Mr. Gustafson disagreed; they weren't necessarily in opposition to each other. There were two very important different functions. To run everything through the COO was potentially a complication certainly for the COO if he had to hire people he was instructed to hire by the Council President. You had professional staff carrying out the technical responsibilities and the political staff supporting the council, it worked.

Mr. McClave asked Mr. Gustafson if he was suggesting that the Council President identified staff for the other councilors?

Mr. Gustafson responded this was out of trying to respect that political role of the organization. A full time Council President needed to be supported staff-wise with a direct role of carrying out their political initiatives, one of them being competent management of the organization through a COO. He felt it was fine for the Task Force to urge the COO was responsible for all of the hiring and to the extent that we respected the political role, the council ought to deliberate about this. He urged that the Task Force respect that political responsibility and not assume that it could be handled by doing better technical work.

Mr. McClave expressed concern about the Council President hiring other councilor's staff.

Chair Condit said that was more fraught with peril in terms of trusting staff than having the COO do the hiring. If I were a councilor and the Council President was appointing my staff, I would much rather have my staff appointed by the COO where he was one vote to terminate them rather than having the Council President do it. He thought that put councilors who were in the minority in even a worse position.

Mr. Gustafson said it had that potential danger.

Councilor Hosticka said the one entity who had the most successful long-standing structure was Washington County where their political operative was hired by the COO. He had been through many commissioners. When you characterized Washington County you had a weak Commission except for the Chair.

Mr. Gustafson said Dennis was more of a lobbyist and a representative. In that case, he agreed with being careful as to how the governmental relations were set up. The city had very extensive rules about intergovernmental director and the restrictions she operated under in terms of only abiding by a majority of the council. She couldn't be directed by an individual councilor. He agreed with the intergovernmental relation's function being under the COO.

Chair Condit said Washington County was a good example, everyone had staff but they all worked for the manager. The manager had also survived hugely different personalities for 20 years. He said most everyone knew that Tom Bryant, Commission Chair, was running the show. He felt that you would have that relationship between the Council President and the COO. He felt that the Council President would get that support or the COO wouldn't last. He said the two models were either COO runs it or each individual councilor gets a certain amount of staff. He preferred Option A.

Ms. Hammerstad suggested in the report that they outlined the options, pros and cons. This report was going to be the most sensitive report to the Council because they were either benefiting from it or not. She thought they could make a strong case for each option.

Mr. Hilderbrand said he would hope they would make a recommendation.

Ms. Hammerstad said she would like to make a recommendation for the professional manager.

Chair Condit suggested that the report say the majority of the Task Force favored the professional management and include what the Task Force had agreed upon; the council needed staff support, the council needed access for information, the minority councilors shouldn't be shut out, and the council needed to have political staff support. The issue was not with did they need to have that, the issue was how was that provided. There were three options: COO managed, Council President managed or each councilor had individual staffers.

Mr. Hilderbrand suggested that if you had a councilor who could get 250,000 votes they should be able to do their own political analysis. That didn't always happen. He thought that Metro had matured. To have a community relations staff under the COO who could provide advice to the council was important but he didn't think that the charter amendment was intended to create a structure such that you didn't have a Council that worked through the staff. It was important to have staff who could give political advice. He didn't think they should consider any other model than one where staff reported to the COO.

Mr. Blackmer said, with the grand desire to achieve consensus, he suggested another option; half of an FTE for each councilor to pool with another councilor. These staff would take care of scheduling, letter writing, etc. Political or special projects would be done by the FTE as well.

Mr. Hilderbrand summarized that the councilors would then hire their own people.

Mr. Blackmer said they lived with the consequences of their pick.

Mr. Hilderbrand said unfortunately the voters and taxpayers lived with the consequences as well. He thought the charter was intended to change this.

Ms. Hammerstad said the way each councilor used their staff was so dependent upon their own skills or lack of skills. The COO needed to manage this.

Chair Condit agreed and suggested they put the alternatives out there and discuss the pros and cons and then vote up or down on a recommendation. They had a primary recommendation in the report and it was up to the council to make the decision.

Mr. Hilderbrand said he didn’t like giving the council a door to slip through.

Chair Condit said his strong recommendation was for the profession manager. He thought there were political issues to deal with if the Council President managed the Council staff in terms of the relationship with the rest of the Council. He thought this would be a big mistake.

Mr. Burton said if the Task Force decided to do this he asked that they include the pros and cons in the report for each option. He pointed out that the operation of the government was an administrative activity.

Chair Condit said one of the reasons that it was put forward to have a full time Council President was for that political role. When the council shifted from 13 to 7 and became more visible you got a better quality of candidate. There would be even higher visibility particularly for the Council President. They would have that political authority.

Councilor Hosticka said Mike’s comments raised a fundamental question which underlay a lot of this discussion which was what did you want your council to be; an overseeing body or policy leadership role on Metro issues in a regional setting. These were two totally different jobs that required a different set of support and information.

Chair Condit said he wondered about that. When the charter was drafted they finessed the question of whether the Council President would work full time and Council part time.

Mr. Burton said the Executive Officer wasn't allowed to hold another job. Wasn't the language carried over to the Council President position?

Chair Condit said the language wasn't carried over. They were certainly paying the Council President to be full time and the Councilors would be making more money than they made now so he felt the expectation was that they would be the regional leaders.

Mr. Burton corrected Chair Condit; the councilors wouldn't be making any more money.

Chair Condit spoke to city councils and mayors some of who were part time and some of who was full time. The stature of the Council would be increased by this change.

Mr. Alden said you still had a distinction between the Council President and the rest of the Council. His view was that the Council members had primarily a policy function with the Council President having policy, political and administrative functions.

Councilor Hosticka said the least part of the job was coming here and voting. The big part of the job was being out in the region working with the people in the area that he represented plus other areas trying to form a political consensus, coming up with an idea of what the region ought to be doing and working out what it took to get it done. Since Metro was not a direct operational body that meant working through a lot of layers who were outside this building? The political and policy work was out in the region. That role impacted who you had working for you, it didn't necessarily impacts who hired and fired those individuals.

Chair Condit said he saw that as a distinction between a good and bad Metro Councilor. He thought the good Metro Councilor would do exactly what the Presiding Officer spoke to.

Ms. Hammerstad said the role as a policy maker was going to change because of the initiatives that were being brought forward. Every one of the Metro Councilors were going to have to be extremely well versed in what Metro did and why as well as some of the technical and political aspects. If the Councilors weren't extremely careful they could lose a lot. The position was a multi-faceted position dependent upon the skills the person brought to the table. The expectation of the citizens was that the Councilors needed to be extremely competent to do the job in and outside the building. She thought it was going to be a very difficult job in the next several years.

Mr. Hilderbrand said he agreed with Councilor Hosticka.

Chair Condit said he would write the report in such a way that it would include a minority report. Then the Task Force could come back and vote on the recommendations. He thought it was important to stress that they wanted the Council to be a leadership Council with staff support to enable them to exert that leadership role. The way the charter was set up the Council would accomplish that with the COO being the manager working directly for the Council.

Mr. Alden said Mr. Kyle had done a great job of drafting a proposed timeline for things that needed to be done. He suggested staff input on the timeline in order to fine-tune it.

Mr. Kyle suggested that this was a tight timeline. The critical path flowed through first defining the COO's job all the way through creating an ordinance. There was no time to second-guess the process. He was surprised it actually worked. He noted that the Task Force needed to get done with their work to move on to the next steps.

Mr. Gustafson said his problem with that was who picked the recruiter?

Mr. Kyle said he wasn’t thinking that would happen that way. He felt it was two separate issues, one could fall behind the timeline of the other. You hired a compensation person and independent from that you hired a consultant to run the actual process.

Mr. Gustafson said the recruiter should be someone that the majority of the new Council would be comfortable with and who would find a COO that matched the description that they were preparing. It was hard to prepare that description until you had the Council President and new Council on board.

Mr. Kyle suggested moving the recruitment process later in the timeline.

The committee talked about hiring a professional recruiter and the necessary timelines they had to follow.

Mr. Gustafson urged that the Council President have a direct hand in the selection of the recruiter as well as the COO. He felt the recruiter was critical.

Mr. Kyle said if they couldn't start the process until November getting it done by January was unlikely.

Mr. Gustafson said if you could settle the Council President and substantially the Council by May 2002 then you had a chance to get started.

Mr. McClave suggested having both Council President candidates decide on a recruiter so the process could get started.

Chair Condit said it depended on what happened March 12, 2002, the filing deadline as well as in May.

Mr. McClave suggested finding creative ways of getting the COO hired as close to January 6, 2003 as possible.

Mr. Gustafson said if you had a recognized body, who was conducting the search, he would feel different about going forward. He wasn't sure who was the recognized body that would be conducting the search. He urged the Task Force be supportive of assuring that the majority leadership of the new Council was conducting the process including setting out the personality standards of the COO. They wanted to create a close working relationship.

Mr. McClave concurred but hiring by January 6^th was desirable.

Mr. Kyle said they would know more in May, there was time to hire a recruiter after May.

Chair Condit asked when was the last day to file?

Councilor Bragdon said March 12^th.

Chair Condit asked if the Task Force were ready to start drafting a report and circulating it? He suggested that he would take the lead on drafting and circulating it to the Task Force. Next week's meeting would be cancelled and they would then plan to meet the following week.

Ms. Hammerstad asked if they did #3 on the Issues List.

Mr. Kyle said they hadn't but they had talked about all of the issues at one time or another.

Chair Condit said these issues were wrapped up in whom was going to be managing the agency. He suggested reviewing them items in #3 quickly. Metro Attorney had to report to the Metro Council. Policy budget and legislative analysis should be the responsibility of the manager. Public and media relations needed to be under COO. The Task Force had already covered the issue of government relations and political support. Committee staffing and support was wrapped into the discussion of committees suggesting the Council abolish committees and go to a full Council. Administrative support had already been talked about. COO was responsible for oversight of advisory committee support.

Mr. Kyle agreed that staff support for advisory committees should be under COO.

Ms. Hammerstad spoke to 3B, Budget, policy and legislative analysis. The budget was normally drawn up and presented by the COO.

Mr. Hilderbrand said 3B would report to COO.

Chair Condit said the COO had the responsibility to prepare budget and present it to the Council.

5.  Citizen Communications

There being no further business to come before the Metro Transition Advisory Task, Chair Condit adjourned the meeting at 5:05 p.m.

Prepared by,

Chris Billington

Clerk of the Council

Attachments to the Public Record for the Meeting of February 6, 2002

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