City Council discusses ballot issues: charter amendments, abortion ordinance wording

The Amarillo City Council held an extended discussion on Tuesday on the amendments to the city charter and the wording for the abortion ordinance that will be sent to voters on the ballot in November.

Among the eight proposed charter amendments that were presented as possibilities, four were generally agreed upon by the council, with some changes to be made in language: recall of an elected officer, increasing the size of the council to seven members, changing terms of office to four years, and revising vacancy provisions for open council positions. The consulting team recommended that the council move forward with four amendments so as not to overload the voters with too many at one time.

Councilmember Tom Scherlen pushed back on the notion that there only need to be four amendments, stating that other municipalities, such as Dallas, passed 21 measures in their last city election, so he felt that fewer ballot initiatives are not exactly the way to go. He felt voters could handle more charter amendments, which would not affect whether they pass or not.

The ballot measure that Scherlen was most passionate about including in the election was an amendment requiring three seats on the expanded council to be tied to living in the area that a councilmember represents.

“All we are asking them to do is say they are for or against,” he said in the meeting. “I think it's a good move, getting more representation in more areas of the city.”

He said that this was a topic of great discussion with the charter committee, with the majority pushing for this measure as a good idea for a city that is represented greatly by only one area of the city. With this measure, it would be a citywide vote but with residency requirements. The measure depends on passing the vote to increase the council's size.

According to Mayor Cole Stanley, the city would have to assess the cost of a demographic study to enact the geographic residency plan. He also agreed to drop the suggestion that the mayor position does not move to four-year terms.

On Aug. 2, the city council will hold a special meeting to decide on the charter amendments, including the residency requirement amendment for three of the six city council positions.

Later in the meeting, the council discussed the proposed ballot language for the petition-initiated abortion ordinance. One of the greatest challenges the council has found in wording the amendment is putting the context of an 18-page ordinance into a single paragraph.

At contention was the wording on abortion-inducing drugs being called a criminal action, even though it would be treated as a civil action.

“That 18-page ordinance does refer in that section as criminal even though it is a civil action,” Stanley said. “Much of the struggle with this document is it does not just say what it says."

Councilmembers agreed that while the wording was contradictory, a civil action enforced it. Councilmember Don Tipps said that the wording should be changed, but Scherlen stated it should reflect what the ordinance refers to it as.

“I do not want it to be misleading,” Tipps said.

Even if passed, most of the council members doubt the legality of the ordinance, which, according to the council, has negligible effect on whether it gets put on the ballot.

“The issue that I see is that we are not in the position of educating the public through this brief summary of what this 18-page document could do in legal theory that has not been proven in a court of law,” Stanley said. “There is no case law to refer back to, and this is descriptive language only.”

Michael Ford, a citizen who has been a vehement advocate against this abortion ordinance, addressed the council during the discussion.

“We are talking about an ordinance that has such broad-reaching, long-term effects,” Ford said. “You are talking about an 18-page ordinance, and you guys are good with this. That is not OK. That is a misstatement. All those declarations from the declaration section are specifically barred in the ordinance itself. We do not have to be partisan, but let us just take what the statement says and put it in there. The people should know about the potentially harmful changes that are being made to local law."

He stated that this ordinance allows for double jeopardy with no allowance for recovery of fees in defending oneself from a civil action suit.

Stanley suggested that printable copies of the 18-page ordinance be made available to the public during voting.

“Beyond that, we are tasked with the very tough task of taking 18 1/2 pages of a document we have not been able to make sense of with ultimate clarity for the last year, with over 100 hours of discussion, and put it into a short paragraph,” he said. "This can definitely be critiqued and criticized. I do not know how much more we can improve on it.”

The ballot language is expected to be approved by Aug. 13 to be able to make the November ballot.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: City Council discusses ballot issues: charter amendments, abortion ordinance wording