The first job for Atlanta’s new city council president is to appoint the 15 newly inaugurated council members to standing committees, which cover everything from community welfare to transportation, zoning, and utilities.
But on her first day in office last Monday, City Council President Marci Collier Overstreet mistakenly appointed eight members to both the Community Development/Human Services (CDHS) committee and Committee on Council.
According to city code, standing committees can only have a maximum of seven members. Most obviously, eight members could produce tie votes. What’s more, an eight-member meeting creates the quorum for a city council meeting, since it constitutes a majority of the 15 council members. That would make each standing committee meeting a full council meeting, opening up a problematic and uncharted legal scenario, according to local government experts.
In response to the Jan. 5 snafu, Overstreet on Thursday rescinded District 5 Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari’s assignment to the Community Development committee, and District 12 Councilmember Antonio Lewis’s assignment to the Committee on Council.
Overstreet, who previously served eight years on council representing District 11, said in a text to Atlanta Civic Circle that she made the extra appointments because there were “overwhelmingly more” requests from members to serve on the Community Development committee this year.
She added that she intended to propose legislation to increase the allowed number of committee members to eight by mid-year. “I want to accommodate more council member requests and fully intend to have the option soon,” she said in the text.
When District 4 Councilmember Jason Dozier initially spotted the error, he double-checked with Kyle Kessler of the Center for Civic Innovation. Kessler pointed to the city code section that caps committees at seven members to prevent their meetings from de facto constituting a full council assembly.
“It’s creating a quorum of the council. It seems unnecessary,” Kessler told Atlanta Civic Circle. “Per the Georgia Open Meetings Act, [an eight-member committee] would have to give notice that it’s not a meeting of the full city council every time,” he added.
Otherwise, the “full council” committee meeting would have to comply with the state Open Meetings Act, which requires that any agency meeting be specially noticed — for instance with an announcement in the county legal publication.
That said, all standing committee meetings and full Atlanta City Council meetings are open to the public. Here’s a link to the upcoming meeting schedule.
Overstreet’s updating of the committee assignments left Lewis with just two posts – Community Development and Public Safety – instead of the usual three or four. “My entire time I’ve been on council, I’ve always been on about four committees,” said Lewis, who is starting his second four-year term. “But it’s the [council] president’s decision.”
With the loss of the Community Development assignment, Bakhtiari is now on three committees: the Committee on Council, Utilities, and Zoning. “Obviously I’m disappointed in the outcome, but I trust that this wasn’t an easy decision,” they said in a statement.
“Committee assignments are a power solely vested in the council president, and it is the president’s prerogative to ensure that they reflect the varied interests of the city,” Bakhtiari added. “Irrespective of committee assignment, my work to champion meaningful policy that improves the lives of residents will remain unimpeded.”