FEATURE
Illustration by John G.
THE PACE OF PASSAGE What purpose do rules about city council proceedings serve if they’re always disregarded?
By Doug Breehl-Pitorak and Cleveland Documenters DURING A JULY FORUM FOR mayoral candidates, Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley answered what seemed like a simple question: “What are your thoughts on what constitutes adequate public notice and public participation?” Kelley, who called public participation “crucial,” said during his seven years leading council, he’d made sure residents had advance notice of meetings and agenda items and that he cut down on the use of a tactic called “passage under suspension.” When council passes an ordinance under suspension, it waives the normal rules that require proposed legislation to be read by the full council on three separate days before it can be approved and limits the window of discussion, debate or public input between the introduction and passage of a law. “It almost never happens unless it is a small issue like a liquor [license]
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or a hyper-local issue,” Kelley told the voters gathered underneath a pavilion at Edgewater Park on July 27. It happened “all the time” prior to his becoming council president, Kelley said. “Now it does not happen unless there’s an extreme time emergency.” Cleveland Documenters’ review of records found that what Kelley said isn’t true. Between January 2020 and May 2021, Cleveland City Council voted to suspend its own rules and shorten the legislative process 99.5 percent of the time, according to The City Record, the official journal of council’s proceedings. Council passed legislation the same day it was introduced nearly a third of the time. The introduction of legislation is often the first opportunity for the public to learn about it. Kelley, through his executive
| clevescene.com | October 6-19, 2021
assistant, declined to answer questions about his statements or about what Cleveland Documenters found. The habit of “suspending the rules” may seem mundane or bureaucratic. It’s easy to overlook with hundreds of pieces of legislation churning through committees and council meetings each year. But it raises questions about why the rules exist if they are almost universally disregarded. By shortening or skipping the committee process, council also fuels doubt about its capacity to vet legislation. And if sparing use of passage under suspension aids public participation, as Kelley implied, does routine suspension — what actually happens in council — obstruct the public from getting involved? That’s what several community members contended in 2020, when council officially set in motion Operation Relentless Pursuit (ORP),
a federally funded policing initiative also referred to as Operation Legend. Though the federal government announced that Cleveland was selected for the program in December 2019, council authorized the city to use the first wave of funding — $1,428,571 — by passing legislation the day it was introduced in June 2020. It covered overtime pay, benefits, computers and undercover police cars. Resist Operation Relentless Pursuit Cleveland, a community organization that was formed to oppose the program, noted in its fact sheet that ORP was counterproductive to community safety and would especially harm Cleveland’s Black and brown communities. Now renamed Clevelanders Against Federal Policing, the group was among several that signed a petition to City Council demanding
