City council postpones lobbying ordinance

The San Marcos City Council voted to postpone an ordinance creating new restrictions regarding lobbying. But not before yet another continuous debate regarding the proposed legislation.

The ordinance would require lobbyists to register and periodically report contacts they make with elected city officials, board members, commission members and city employees.

Councilmember Shane Scott motioned to postpone the ordinance until Nov. 3, 2021, citing concerns that the ordinance is unfair to certain groups and that it isn’t specific enough in its intent. 

“It’s too broad,” Scott said. “To actually name people whether you like them or not, your police officers’ association, your fire department or any other group and say they’re the only people named on this when you’ve got the (San Marcos) River Foundation who are huge lobbyists. There are so many different groups that are lobbyists. Everybody is a lobbyist because they talk to you about things that they want to do. That’s the nature of this.” 

The ordinance aims to improve transparency regarding city business and services to the public.

The ordinance states that it’s designed to “maintain public confidence and public trust in our city officials and employees when public resources are used and municipal decisions are made; and require certain individuals to register as lobbyists and report exchanges with city officials and city employees.”

The ordinance defines a lobbyist as a person “who engages in lobbying for compensation or economic benefit, whether directly or through the acts of another,” specifically outlining self-employed lobbyists; a person that has one or more employees who are lobbyists on behalf of a client or clients other than that person; and the San Marcos Police Officers Association and the San Marcos Professional Firefighter’s Local No. 3963.

The ordinance also creates a criminal penalty not to exceed $500 for anyone who violates it and states that each day in which a violation occurs is punishable as a separate offense.

Councilmember Maxfield Baker questioned Scott’s true intent with his motion to postpone. 

“It’s really frustrating for our community to hear from one of our colleagues to postpone this again because we debated this, right, in our last meeting,” Baker said. “We talked about postponement and the merits of that, and we barely eked it by to where it didn’t need to be postponed. And to hear this motion come from somebody (Scott) who has openly flaunted ... he said it from the dais that he would not respond to ethics complaints.”

Baker’s line of questioning drew the ire of Mayor Jane Hughson, who worried whether his questions were germane to the discussion of postponement. Baker, however, continued pressing the issue, which ultimately led to the Mayor quipping at him to, “hush up.”

“Mr. Baker, I’m going to ask you to not go into that this evening. It’s derogatory comments from you and I’m going to ask that you not do that the rest of the meeting to your colleagues. I’m done,” said Hughson, later saying that his questions provided him an opportunity to “say bad things about your colleague. I’m done with that … Quit imposing motives on your colleagues … The motive doesn’t matter.” 

Councilmember Melissa Derrick said it was clear that the ordinance’s postponement was an effort to allow for a different makeup of the council to vote on the item. 

“It’s obvious that, to me, it seems that it’s wanting for another council to vote on this after the elections in November,” Derrick said. “At which point none of these councilmembers will know that much about the lobby ordinance other than things they’ve heard, which we heard in citizen comment tonight that aren’t true.” 

Several speakers and letters read during the citizen comment period took concern with the inclusion of the SMPOA. As well as concerns that the ordinance requires residents to register as lobbyists. 

City Attorney Michael Cosentino said that the ordinance doesn’t prohibit an individual from making contact with councilmembers.

“As far as actually prohibiting someone from contacting the elected officials, it doesn’t do that,” Cosentino said. “As far as why the police officers’ association and firefighters local are named in the ordinance, it’s been explained that that wasn’t done to target those organizations. But if an ordinance like this passes later on, people shouldn’t have to guess about whether or not their activities are regulated by the ordinance or not.”

Hughson said she worried this ordinance was a “sledgehammer approach” and offered suggestions that would meet the transparency desired without the sledgehammer.

“Note that in this ordinance councilmembers are required to report (conversations with registered lobbyists). So what I was going to propose is that instead of this ordinance as it stands today, that we ask councilmembers to report,” Hughson said. “We ask the same reports that are noted in the ordinance. Mostly the same notations on what kind of communications to report. I will volunteer to report and I hope others will also. My suggestion is that we try this for a while and we see how it works. If it doesn’t work we can go back to the ordinance as it stands and make some changes and discuss it again.” 

The council ultimately decided to vote on the motion to postpone, which passed, 5-2, with councilmembers Baker and Derrick voting against.