Making their actions easier to follow was on the mind of the Rule Committee of the Blount County Board of Commissioners on Thursday as it met for a second time in the new session calendar.
The five member committee comprised of Nick Bright (Seat 6-A), Misty Davis (6-B), Jessica Hannah (1-A), Jasmine Satterfield (7-B) and chaired by Tanner Jones (3-A) passed three motions that will be turned into a resolution for the full board’s consideration in November.
Bright introduced an addition to Rule 9, creating a new subsection to specify sponsorship of budget items. The new rule states that “Items presented to the Budget Committee shall be requests for appropriation. Such items shall not become resolutions until they have considered and acted upon by the Budget Committee. Upon favorable action by the Budget Committee the members of the Budget Committee, commissioners of the Budget Committee shall serve as the sponsor for the resulting resolution. If the commissioners fail to approve the item or the members of the Budget Committee decline to serve as sponsors, the chair of the Workshop Committee shall prior to finalizing the agenda solicit sponsors from among the remaining commissioners. If no commissioner agrees to sponsor the item it shall not be placed on the agenda.”
The committee voted 5-0 to recommend the change to the full board. Currently appropriation requests are largely unsponsored resolutions generated by departments such as Highway, Sheriff or the mayor’s office, that come before the Budget Committee. The items move on to the board’s workshop regardless of the committee vote but with the Budget Committee’s vote and recommendation for or against noted on the resolution. Many times in the past session, budget resolutions slipped by commission rules requiring two sponsors for a resolution to be placed on the agenda. Bright’s change would create a process for the unsponsored resolutions to fall into line with that general rule for resolution sponsorship.
On a similar line regarding procedure and the Legistar System that holds the county’s meeting agendas and resolutions, the committee and staff came to a work around solution to solve a confusing point for the public. Because the computer system only allows a resolution to sit with one committee at a time, appropriation items before the Budget Committee did not appear on the Workshop agenda until after the committee adjourned. As they meet the same night, it occasionally created confusion with a resolution not showing on the agenda until minutes before the Workshop was called to order.
Davis introduced a requirement that any letters from the county attorney advising on the legal merit of an agenda item must be filed and available to commissioners 72 hours prior to the meeting considering that item. The motion was adopted, 5-0.
The committee will meet again at 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, to consider any other changes. By rule, only a majority vote is needed to make changes to the board’s rules within the first 90 days of the term, which is a Nov. 30 deadline. After that, amendments to the rules require a two-third majority. Any additional recommendations from the Rules Committee will be beyond the Nov. 6 filing deadline for board resolutions, but those changes could be added as amendments to the Rules Committee recommendation during the workshop meeting on Nov.12 or the Nov. 17 board meeting.
