News from Patrick Flynn

For those who might be considering a visit to tomorrow evening’s Assembly meeting with the intent of voicing your opinion about the administration’s sidewalk ordinance, you may be interested to know the administration now intends to ask the Assembly not to act on the matter.  The plan, I am told, is to send the measure to the Public Safety Advisory Commission for further review.

This change in direction is noteworthy for two reasons:

• Unlike the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, the PSAC is made up of public members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the Assembly.
• Last year the administration proposed an increase to aircraft registration fees and the ensuing uproar in the aviation community caused them to refer the matter back for further study.  No study results have been reported to date.

My take?  This is likely a face-saving measure aimed at preventing the Assembly from flat-out rejecting the proposed ordinance.  If the Assembly votes to “postpone indefinitely” – meaning the measure is dead unless reintroduced at some future date – I’m likely right.  If we instead vote to postpone to a date-certain then I’m likely wrong and the PSAC is actually expected to report back a recommendation.  In case it’s the latter circumstance readers may be well-served to hold off on testifying tomorrow night because, technically, citizens are only permitted to testify once on any given piece of legislation.  (If we do review a substantially different substitute version at a later date I’d ask the chair to waive that rule, but there are no guarantees.)

Now you know what I know, but I’m sure we’ll see another development or two on Tuesday…

Regards,

Patrick