Ordinances are a team sport

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Readers have asked what's up with the Certificate of Compliance ordinance, and why it keeps appearing and disappearing from consideration.

Actually, there are several reasons, but they all boil down to one -- enacting ordinances is a team sport.

Like any team sport, success depends both on the quality of the players and the quality of the teamwork.

And that's where it gets interesting.

ORDINANCES are laws intended to be permanently binding within the City of Plainfield.

(As opposed to RESOLUTIONS, which generally only bind for the life of the Council enacting them -- each Council considered a separate entity upon its reorganization every January -- or the date certain specified in a contract.)

ORDINANCES may come to the Council in several ways -- generally they are proposed either by the Administration (through its various Departments and Divisions) or occasionally by the Council itself.

How exactly they are drafted varies from administration to administration, but basically the nuts and bolts of what is desired is put into a framework by the Department or Division as a Microsoft Word® document.

The Corporation Counsel then reviews and/or formally writes or rewrites the ordinance.

Once the Corporation Counsel and the responsible Department or Division have worked out the wrinkles, it goes to the Municipal Clerk.

The Clerk, working with the Council President, decides when the proposed ordinance will be placed on the Council's agenda.

This must be done with an eye to allowing enough time for the proper legal notice to be published as required by law. (There are, as always, exceptions.)

All this may seem straightforward enough.

But when ordinances actually come before the Council and there is PUBLIC COMMENT, the Council may ask for changes or the Administration may withdraw the ordinance to rework it.

Then it gets tricky.

Making sure the changes are made as requested needs to be done by one of the team players. Could be the Department or Division. Could be the Corporation Counsel. And reviewed.

The REVISED proposed ordinance then needs to go to the Clerk, to be RESCHEDULED and READVERTISED.

If the Clerk's office gets the WRONG VERSION from the party doing the changes, or if the Clerk's office accidentally sends the wrong version to the newspapers, the ordinance will need to be rescheduled and reprinted (your tax dollars at work, again).

The LEGAL NOTICE must detail the action that the Council is expected to take at the meeting announced (with again, SOME wiggle room).

As if there weren't enough chances for confusion and delay here, the Council holds a trump card because it has parliamentary methods for avoiding or refusing to take action on an ordinance when it finally does come before it.

Think the play diagrammed at the top of the page can be tricky?

Try diagramming an Administration/Council/Clerk play.

So, when it appears someone has dropped the ball, an observer will be hard-pressed to find out who.

Why?

City government has no instant replay.

-- Dan Damon

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