I been having trouble with the Chambers' "One Voice" Program.
A week ago Thursday, the Chamber submitted
Item 8a to our City Council.
For what wasn't exactly clear to me, but the Council tabled it indefinitely by a 6-2 vote with Christiansen absent and Councilors Patrick and Gomez voting NO. The immediately preceding Item 8a was a vote for '
Approval of the City of Tulsa’s proposed Legislative Agenda for 2009', which passed 8-0 and contains 9 issues of mostly local interest but with some Federal and State implications.
Last Thursday's Council Agenda had two items related to the Chambers' 'One Voice Program' again listed, Items 8a & 8b.
8a "Reconsideration of Approval the Tulsa Chamber’s 'One Voice' Legislative Program. 08-2049-4"
8b "Approval of the Tulsa Chamber’s 'One Voice' Legislative Program."
Here's a link to the entire
'One Voice' Legislative Program PDF File which lists 10 Federal, 10 State and 3 Local issues the Chamber intends to seek. There's many issues addressed in this Program, which amounts to a Political Agenda for the Chamber's operations intent.
One item relating to immigration issues, and directly counter to our popular HB 1804 to which the Chamber is formally opposed and has joined suit to have it stopped, is the reason Councilors tabled the thing the first time.
As I read this entire document, I started to wonder why the Chamber even sought the Council's approval in the first place. It is, after all, the Chambers' political agenda, not the City's, and includes segregated issues at the Federal, State and Local level.
Then it dawned on me. The Chamber is using, or plans to use, this Resolution as wholesale, Council-authorized support of not only its' own agenda, but to authorize the spending of City provided funding to assist in achieving them. IOW, this is how the Chamber intends to spend all the Hotel Tax we provide the Chamber.
Now it makes sense. They need the City to sign off on what they will be spending our money doing.
Doesn't that seem more than a bit bass-akwards?
After all, why would we want to authorize them to spend our money fighting against something we generally support?
Seems to me our Council and Mayor should get together and determine the City's Legislative Agenda (
as they apparently have in the prior week) and ask the Chamber, via their Board and by their vote, if they're willing to adopt it, and spend our money doing the associated work, not the other way around.
Isn't the Chamber doing this effectively handing them a bunch of money then asking what they intend to spend it on? We, the City, should be telling the Chamber how we expect them to spend our money.
If there's some particular policy they can't embrace, then they can just do nothing, not spend our money, or do something else with their own money, and/or not take our money in the first place.
My gut instincts were correct, it is odd the way it's being done.
It's also flat out wrong. Let's start with the Chamber adopting the City of Tulsa's Legislative Agenda and let them spend our money helping to achieve those things. 'One Voice' would work fine, so long as it's ours. Besides that, the 'Chamber' is a regional organization, not specific to the City of Tulsa, remember? There is absolutely no reason the City Council should be adopting their agenda, especially those parts where there is disagreement.
I haven't heard yet what happened last Thursday, and the 'Minutes' portion of the form is blank at this point, but hope the thing remains tabled so it can be discussed further.