Framingham City Council Chair Neglects Key Business and Suns in Aruba

SUMMARY:

Phil Ottaviani cannily captured the City Council Chair, despite the old guard on the council becoming a minority (5-6), then stacked two vital council subcommittees, so they are controlled by the old guard (3-2), to ensure that as little change as possible occurs. Leaving town ensures one of them is also paralyzed till he gets back. However, there is a small possibility that the new guard majority will assert its authority and rescue the City Council from its dysfunctional last term.

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In its first meeting of the year on January 1, the City Council elected Phil Ottaviani to a second term as Chair and Tracey Bryant as Vice Chair. This was a little unexpected, as the principal power bloc in the City Council from the last term had been pruned to a minority of 5 by John Stefanini’s defeat in the last election.

The original old guard of {Ottaviani, King, Leombruno, Cannon, Stefanini, Alexander} used to be a 6-5 majority and was able to dominate all important City Council proceedings and decision making. With Stefanini gone, the old guard is now a 5 member minority. A possible new guard of: {Steiner, Mallach, Long, White Harvey, Bryant, Ward}, could have come together to enable significant change by electing Adam Steiner to Chair.

However, this new guard, with its two newly elected Councilors, does not march in lockstep like the old guard. They are more independent thinking, more inclined to bring needed change to Framingham, but less coherent as a group. They certainly did not cohere sufficiently to change the City Council Chair, so they struck out on their first opportunity for change.

Ottaviani astutely planned for a possible new guard, supporting Brandon Ward early on in his campaign, and assuming the role of dominant supporter for Tracey Bryant’s re-election bid. Phil read the odds early and built relationships which were critical to his re-election as Chair.

So far, that is simply canny politics.

But now we have the interesting dynamics of a minority power bloc member capturing the Chair.

That has consequences, as the Chair has complete control over critical City Council Subcommittee memberships, dominates agenda setting for City Council meetings and most importantly controls any review of the way the council operates.

Ottaviani could have brought more balanced leadership to the council and fostered needed change.

However, rather than rewarding Ward and Bryant for their support by taking such an approach, he has taken every step possible to block any change which would upset the old guard.

At the start of each new City Council term a Temporary Rules subcommittee is formed, with a charge from the Chair to review all the rules which govern City Council operations. That includes what the subcommittees are, including creating new ones, removing old ones if they don’t make sense anymore, and updating subcommittee missions, membership count, procedures, and so on.

Changes made at the start through this mechanism can vastly change the way the City Council operates. It is a very important time for the City Council as it goes through this change process.

In light of that, it is remarkable that Ottaviani appointed a Temporary Rules Subcommittee to review the rules and make recommendations for change, but then included himself on it and left town for Aruba, disabling the ability of this vital subcommittee to meet until his return.

Further, he appointed a Finance Subcommittee ahead of the rules recommendations, even though the rules might change for this subcommittee’s membership, mission, and procedures. The Finance Subcommittee should have been a temporary subcommittee simply designed to manage immediate financial recommendations to the full council till the new rules were adopted.

What is truly astounding is that for both of these subcommittees, Ottaviani did not produce the balance which the full City Council needs and the electorate voted for. The newly elected Councilors were excluded from both subcommittees, while Mike Cannon was appointed to both. There is method to this, as it guarantees control of both subcommittees by the minority power bloc.

Here is the current subcommittee membership:

Rules:

Chair Ottaviani, District 6 Councilor

Vice Chair Bryant, District 9 Councilor

At-large Councilor Janet Leombruno

District 1 City Councilor Christine Long

District 4 City Councilor Michael Cannon

Finance:

At-Large City Council George King Jr.

District 3 Councilor Adam Steiner

District 4 Councilor Michael Cannon

District 5 Councilor Noval Alexander

District 7 Councilor Leora Mallach

In each of these the minority power bloc of {Ottaviani, King, Cannon, Leombruno, Alexander} holds a 3-2 advantage, so it can control the Chair/Vice Chair of both subcommittees, as well as their scope and agendas.

That is a recipe for no change, as the old guard are in charge out of the gate, and the Rules Subcommittee has much less time for effective action. It would have been easy for Phil to simply not serve on the Rules subcommittee, so it could operate while he was out of town, but that would have produced an even 2-2 old guard/new guard split and that would not have sat well with the old guard.

One of the major problems of the prior City Councils is that all finance matters are dealt with by the Finance Subcommittee. That means that the entire annual city budget process will be handled with a majority of the City Council entirely out of the picture. Further, that subcommittee process is now dominated by 3 old guard Councilors, so it is very badly disconnected from the full City Council. Here is where a rule change is desperately needed, so that the city budget review process is done by the full City Council, with all Councilors contributing to the most important financial decision making the City Council does.

The rules can still be changed, but the new guard need to do a better job of working together to achieve vital change than they did with the Chair election. The Temporary Rules Subcommittee can be against changes 3-2, but the full City Council can reverse that 6-5, with a coherent new guard effort.

One other change would also be very helpful.

Councilors know that finances and planning & zoning are critical domains for City Council decisions, so there is a lot of pressure to get on those subcommittees, which is why they have 5 members each. That is because in reality, most of the decision making goes on in those subcommittees and is simply rubber stamped by the full City Council.

It would be much better practice if those subcommittees were more inclined to develop options for the City Council to choose from than to provide neat pre-decided packages for the full City Council to rubber stamp. There should be much more serious discussion by the full City Council of finance and planning & zoning.

One way to achieve that would be to cut the size of these two subcommittees to 4 with 2 from the old guard and 2 from the new guard to provide needed balance, then have the subcommittees wade through all the details to produce a balanced set of options for the full City Council to choose from. No pre-decided packages and no rubber stamping.

There are many more rules considerations which should be engaged in by the Temporary Rules subcommittee, so it needs to get going and the new guard needs to assert its power in the full City Council meetings to make sure the right set of rules is adopted.

It also baffles me why Brandon Ward was not appointed to this subcommittee as, of all the City Councilors, he is clearly the best schooled in principles of good governance, having worked at the Harvard Kennedy School for a decade, with 7 of those years in the Harvard Center for Public Leadership.

Let’s see what happens when Phil Ottaviani gets back from Aruba. Maybe the break will have given him a new perspective as well as a suntan, and he will make sure the new City Council delivers the improved performance the electorate expects.