Council Vote for Flock Took Center Stage, But Coupled with Houston’s Classroom Antics, Distracted from Significant Legislation That's Escaped Public Notice

In what appeared to almost be a parodic performance of untransparent governance, the City Council’s last meeting of the Calendar year passed a multitude of significant legislation—too much in one session for any meaningful public participation on all of them. A Flock contract expansion was rightfully the focus of much of the public’s attention but the outsized profile of the Flock contract allowed Council to pass several other critical changes to the ways Oakland does business with almost no public awareness, input or discussion. And in the aftermath, a viral video of Ken Houston flipping off constituents continued the distraction. But in the background, and outside of public notice and ability to respond, Council passed significant legislation with little fanfare. That legislation will affect the way the Council passes laws; could potentially affect City revenues; will give greater influence to campaign donors; and the awarding of a high end contract worth millions. Given that dynamic, OO has left the Flock reporting as the last in this list of major legislative changes passed on Tuesday.

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Ballot Measure for $1.5 MM in Corporate Tax Breaks on Consent Calendar

Legislation for a ballot measure that would give smaller companies a relatively minor tax break, but larger corporations founding a business in Oakland a break in at least the tens of thousands, was not discussed on Tuesday because it was on the Consent calendar–where items deemed to have no controversial component go in scheduling. CM Fife noted the incongruity during deliberation, highlighting another ballot measure for relatively trivial changes to the PFRS Board going to non-consent where CMs had little to say about it, and the more significant tax break legislation in the Consent calendar where it received no chance of discussion. 

Campaign Finance Rules

Changes to the campaign finance rules also ended up in Consent. These will increase the amount that donors can give to “office holder accounts—the accounts can allow donors to exceed the campaign finance limitations to a specific office holder. The legislation will also extend the increase in finance limits, creating little chance that democracy dollars will be revived in the near future. Some speakers noted scheduling the legislation to a packed agenda and on consent was itself untransparent. 

The Public Ethics Commission was required to review the proposed changes, and was opposed to the increase in officer holder account limits.

Rules of Procedure Changes 

This contentious item was heard in a near empty chamber after a nearly 5 hour deliberation on Flock cameras that saw few members of the public remain and only ten members of the public speak.

The item has a long ironic history. It tied on introduction, with its co-author Janani Ramachandran restating her proposal three times to failure, until she exhausted the patience of other CMs who were clearly nominally supportive of her legislation. At that meeting, a departure by Gallo and absence by Jenkins, allowed the two nay votes by Wang and Fife to tie the vote. When the item returned at the next regularly scheduled meeting, Mayor Barbara Lee declined to break the tie, and Council President Jenkins moved a vote to suspend the Council’s current rules in an attempt to deliberate it. That move failed. Despite having argued that the meeting was already overly impacted, Jenkins' partner in the legislation, Janani Ramachandran, nevertheless moved successfully to schedule the item to December 16 meeting. 

ABC Contract Extension and Payment

Initially a three year contract in 2018, ABC’s non-bid security contract will now likely have lasted close to a decade by the time the current contracting process is over.  With few members of the public left in the over 8 hour meeting, Noel Gallo, who publicly moved to simply give the contract to ABC during the committee process in July,  left the meeting ahead of the item, stopping to speak with Mario Juarez, who had arrived at the meeting at some point and was seated adjacent to this reporter.

The two then left the chambers together. During the meeting, CM Unger, the only member of the CED committee who supported Allied, the original winner of the City’s most recent purchasing process for the contract, criticized other council members for attempting to forego the city’s procurement process which requires open bidding, about an hour after he voted to suspend those rules for Flock. 

Flock Contract Approved

The Oakland Observer has reported on the long chain of the Flock contract proposal, from its initial fail at the Privacy Advisory Commission, to attempts by PSC Chair Wang to bypass the committee and its final scheduling with four day notice to the last meeting of the year with unsubstantiated claims of urgency.

Much of the mainstream reporting several weeks ago intimated that the contract was potentially dead several weeks ago, when the Public Safety Committee vote tied, resulting in the death of the original legislative iteration of the contract. At that meeting around 100 members of the public came to speak against the company. But after waiting several weeks, OPD reintroduced the item now arguing urgency to hear the item with little notice amid unsubstantiated claims that the contract would soon end. 

There were even more speakers during the full Council session Tuesday—this time, over one hundred Oakland residents spoke out on the litany of distressing national stories about Flock. A slightly larger contingent of Flock supporters also spoke, numbering in the few dozen.

All through public comment and afterward, CM Ken Houston telegraphed his annoyance at the large public participation on the item, culminating with Houston showing a video produced by the recalls-linked Alliance for Public Safety, a group invented about 5 weeks ago, according to the meta data on its website, that counts recall-leader Brenda Grisham as one of its principals. Houston claimed that “if they can go deep, we can too”, using his speaking time to show the video produced by the suddenly created organization. Council President Kevin Jenkins donated additional speaking time to Houston for the presentation. The video purports to show large levels of support for Flock in individual clips of ostensible interviews—but its not clear if all of the speakers in the video supported Flock. Some clearly did not understand what they were commenting on.

During the overwhelmingly anti-Flock commentary period, Houston appeared to “flip off” Flock critics at one point. Before hedging to CBS news, Houston admitted that the act was what it appeared when asked if he had intentionally "flipped off" members of the audience. "Not on purpose, but now that it's done? Yes, I did." Houston told the news company.

This was not the first of odd behaviors from Houston on Flock—during the committee meeting on the Flock contract, Houston appeared to fall asleep during public comment in his zoom link from home, at one point swaddled in a blanket. 

During the scheduling process, the Oakland Observer reported some unusual processes that may yet be an issue in the legislation. The OPD argued urgency to hear the item because, they claimed, the contract with Flock will soon expire—but did not state any dates and were not asked on the record to substantiate their request. The public record suggests there was no urgency, though OPD representative Carlo Beckman told CMs during deliberation Tuesday that OPD would "lose access to those cameras as of January 1st", a date that does not fit into any of the timelines in the MOUs. During public comment at the Rules Committee, Jenkins confirmed that Houston wanted to “participate” in the Rules meeting, and moved a vote to convert the Rules meeting into a Special Meeting to allow Houston to officially influence the vote. New filings in Brian Hofer/Secure Justice suit against the City’s use of Flock show that the plaintiff requested a temporary restraining order on hearing the legislation on Monday due to the rush to pass the contract before the suit could be heard at its first date in January.

In a list of rationales for the move, the plaintiffs cite the odd scheduling by Jenkins and the Rules Committee. The TRO was not granted by the judge and the suit will likely be heard in January. If the plaintiff prevails, the suit could annul any contract OPD undertakes with Flock—but it could also be a referendum on Council processes under Jenkins, who is the Rules Chair and the Council President,. As well as the City’s, and especially OPD's, habit of pursuing non-competitive bidding contracts with minimal explanation.

CMs Zac Unger and Charlene Wang co-wrote amendments into the contract, and CM Rowena Brown added more— most reflect issues already in use policy, contract and state law. All the amendments were introduced on the dais after public comment and were not in the publicly available packet. CM Carroll Fife reiterated her no vote, but in the end the Council passed the legislation 7 to 1. For more drilled down reporting, see the live reporting thread here. 

If you want to see a moment by moment snapshot of the meeting, please have a look at the Twitter Thread copies of OO's live reporting at the meeting.

Council 12/16, Entire Meeting Except for Flock

https://twitter-thread.com/t/2001034934916632676

Flock Only

https://twitter-thread.com/t/2001126687380267430