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ABAG Admin Committee
The strange and telling story behind the regional planning merger deal - Part I
The plan to let the powerful MTC take over regional control is on hold, but by no means dead, and local control and social equity hang in the balance.
NOVEMBER 12, 2015 — An overture by SEIU Local 1021, which represents the workers at the Association of Bay Area Governments, averted a showdown over the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s proposed hostile takeover of ABAG planning staff and opened the way to a last-minute agreement on merging the two agencies that was unanimously approved on October 28 by MTC and the ABAG Administrative Committee.
The takeover proposal, however, is not dead. According to the agreement, it will be “pre-empted” if the two agencies approve a yet-to-be-devised merger plan before July 1, 2016. If they fail to meet that deadline, apparently MTC’s unilateral bid for “consolidation” would, vampire-like, revive, and ABAG would once again be stalked by its partner agency.
The union action that precipitated this turn of events was driven by two considerations: MTC workers have no union representation, and MTC’s plans to withdraw $4 million from ABAG would bleed the monies that fund the pensions of current and retired ABAG employees. Concerned about the potential loss of membership and threats to retirement security, SEIU asked MTC Commissioner and San Francisco Supervisor David Campos to reach out to the MTC Chair, Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese. Cortese was the sponsor of the proposal for MTC to absorb ABAG’s planning staff. Campos set up an October 22 meeting at the MetroCenter with Cortese, four ABAG employees and himself.
On Oct. 28 I spoke with James Muller, one of the four employees who attended the meeting. Cortese’s “big concern,” said Muller, was to protect the compensation and benefits of the 13 ABAG planners coveted by MTC. Neither the commission nor the MTC Executive Director had realized that morale was low in the ABAG workforce, and that people were angry and afraid—an obliviousness that speaks volumes about labor relations at MTC. Muller described Campos as “a great facilitator” whose mediating skills enabled an initially contentious exchange to morph into a productive conversation.
“The concerns of the union were raised,” Campos told me, “and out of those concerns….the idea of a resolution started to take shape,” crucially expedited by the ABAG employees’ support for a full merger, albeit one that protects the unionized employees’ benefits. SEIU agreed to play a key role in connecting ABAG and MTC.
That must have been a huge relief to Cortese, given the aggressive letters that the union and its law firm had sent to MTC in September, stating among other things, that they would oppose any state legislation authorizing the transportation agency to take over land use planning for the Bay Area.
The MTC chair went to work amending the resolution that had been posted online on Friday, October 23, with the rest of MTC’s October 28 agenda. The resolution, No. 4210, had MTC calling all the shots:
Principles for Functional Consolidation of MTC-ABAG Planning Departments
- MTC shall provide the remaining six months of FY 2015-16 planning funds at current levels, unless the functional consolidation and transition is accomplished sooner, as detailed in Amendment #2 to the MTC/ABAG Interagency Agreement (Attachment C).
- MTC shall offer positions at equal or better compensation to 13 ABAG planners through a right of first refusal retention process, and together with MTC’s planning department, shall create an integrated regional planning department (regional planning department).
- The regional planning department shall be employed and receive performance reviews through MTC. The regional planning department shall serve both the MTC Commission and the ABAG Executive Board.
- Creation of the regional planning department shall respect and maintain the existing statutory authority of MTC Commission and ABAG Executive Board. Further, the respective agency roles in preparing/approving the Regional Housing Needs Analysis [sic] (RHNA) and Plan Bay Area will be unchanged.
- After consultation with ABAG, MTC shall annually adopt a resolution identifying the scope of staffing services to support the work of the ABAG Executive Board, including the ability of the ABAG Executive Board to commission additional studies and other activities.
- ABAG will retain two planners to perform RHNA and five employees for Bay Trail and resiliency work (based on FY 2015-16 staffing levels).
- BATA [Bay Area Toll Authority] shall continue to fund Bay Trail activities at current funding levels and the function will remain the responsibility of ABAG.
- MTC shall provide $1.2 million in transition funding to ABAG through at least FY 2020-21, as detailed in Attachment B. The funding will be directed to ABAG’s pension liability or other specific expense to improve the financial stability of the agency, and will be subject to an annual fiscal audit.
- With the exception of principle #8 above, MTC shall retain the remaining planning funds (that were subject to the MTC/ABAG Interagency Agreement prior to Amendment #2) beginning in FY 2016-17, consistent with the revised MTC/ABAG Funding Framework (Attachment B).
- In the event that question concerning representation of MTC employees arises, MTC will adhere to its adopted MTC employer-employee organization relations resolution and current Memorandum of Understanding with the Committee for Staff Representation while maintaining neutrality.
- MTC shall retain a consultant to conduct a merger study of MTC and ABAG in FY 2016-17. The study shall examine the policy, management, financial and legal issues associated with further integration, up to and including institutional merger between MTC and ABAG.
In seeking an agreement that both ABAG and MTC would approve, Cortese was operating under heavy constraints. Along with widespread resentment over MTC’s brazen power play, there were the limitations imposed by California’s sunshine law, the Brown Act. The law forbids a quorum of a legislative body from communicating outside of a public meeting. That meant that a majority of the voting members of MTC and the ABAG Administrative Committee would not know about his proposed amendments until the meetings on October 28.
Cortese had another motive for brokering a deal besides solicitude for ABAG’s unionized staff: the wish to avoid a deadlock on the 28th. Rumor has it that the commissioners would have split 9-9 on his and MTC Executive Director Heminger’s takeover proposal. Because the unamended proposal didn’t come up for a vote, we’ll never know which way the commission would have gone.
What we do know is that since MTC’s prior meeting on September 23, concern about, not to say opposition to, the transportation agency’s unilateral consolidation of the regional planning staffs continued to grow beyond the already-substantial roster detailed in 48 hills on October 11. By October 28, letters asking for a more deliberative and inclusive approach had also arrived from the towns of Moraga, Tiburon, and Fairfax; the cities of Larkspur, Dublin, Novato, Oakland, and American Canyon; the Contra Costa Mayors Conference and the Alameda County Mayors’ Conference; the Santa Clara City Managers Association; Local 21, AFL-CIO, Professional & Technical Engineers; the Bay Area Planning Directors Steering Committee; the League of Women Voters of the Bay Area; Greenbelt Alliance; the San Jose Mercury News; and 14th District Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla of Concord.
The MTC proposal was endorsed by SPUR, the Bay Area Council, SFBARF, Joint Venture-Silicon Valley Network, the North Bay Leadership Council and SV@ Home, a non-profit advocating affordable housing in Silicon Valley, and former State Senator Darrell Steinberg, the author of SB 375.
On October 28 MTC was scheduled to meet at 9:45 a.m. A special meeting of the ABAG Administrative Committee was scheduled to start an hour earlier. The Admin Committee, as it’s familiarly known, is the executive board of the ABAG Executive Board, authorized to act in a timely manner when the larger body is unable to do so. This was such a moment.
One of the many peculiarities of the governance of ABAG and MTC is that four members of the ten-member ABAG Administrative Committee—Cortese, ABAG President and Clayton Councilmember Julie Pierce, Solano County Supervisor Jim Spering, Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, and Napa County Supervisor Mark Luce—are also MTC commissioners. This is the committee that will represent ABAG in the merger planning process. It’s perplexing, then, that three of these officials—Pierce, Spering, and Haggerty—also sit on the nine-member MTC Planning Committee, which will represent MTC in the merger planning process; Spering is the committee’s chair. The problem of divided loyalties is blatant.
Posted online on October 26, the agenda for the Admin Committee’s special meeting contained only one action/information item: “Report on ABAG-MTC Strategy.” No actual report was posted before the meeting.
My BART train arrived at the Lake Merritt station at 8:50am. On the escalator up to the street, I noticed Cortese standing beside me. We greeted each other, crossed the street, and walked into the MetroCenter. I went straight to the Admin Committee meeting on the right side of the MetroCenter; he headed off to the left. When I entered the downstairs conference room, the meeting had yet to start, because everyone was waiting for him.
Another Admin Committee meeting could have started without Cortese, but not this one. After people wondered out loud where he was, I said that he and I had gotten out of the BART station together, and that once inside the MetroCenter, he’d gone elsewhere.
A handout lay on the conference table, and I took a copy. Entitled “Association of Bay Area Governments Administrative Committee Resolution No. 12-15,” it read as follows:
WHEREAS, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is considering Resolution 4210, a functional consolidation of the planning departments of MTC and ABAG; and
WHEREAS, MTC Resolution 4210 would directly impact ABAG and its personnel,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that
- ABAG requests that MTC approve the full FY 2015-16 funding for ABAG; and
- MTC and ABAG shall expedite the retention of a mutually acceptable consultant to conduct a jointly-funded merger study and a merger implementation plan of MTC and ABAG to be completed by June 1, 2016. The study shall examine the policy, management, financial and legal issues associated with further integration, up to and including institutional merger between MTC and ABAG, and shall set forth the specific plans, benchmarks, and milestones for implementation. The plan shall be referred to as the proposed ABAG/MTC Merger Implementation Plan (MIP). The study and the plan shall be governed by the joint MTC Planning and ABAG Administrative committees and be informed by the full participation of designated ABAG and MTC representatives through public meetings governed by the Brown Act, and
- In the event ABAG and MTC approve the MIP prior to July 1, 2016, each in its sole discretion, and by formal resolution, the MTC proposal for functional consolidation of planning departments shall be pre-empted and voided.
The foregoing was adopted by the Administrative Committee this 28th day of October, 2015.
At the bottom were spaces for the signatures of Pierce, ABAG Executive Director and Administrative Committee Secretary-Treasurer Ezra Rapport, and ABAG Legal Counsel Kenneth Moy.
In one key respect, this seemed like an improvement on MTC Resolution 4210. Now a merger consultant would be jointly chosen by both agencies. But the time frame for devising a merger plan—a mere eight months—was much shorter than the one specified in 4210, which gave MTC until the end of FY 2016-17 to complete a merger study—never mind devising and adopting an actual plan. And then there was Paragraph C, which indicated that if the agencies hadn’t agreed to consolidate their planning functions by the beginning of FY 2016, MTC would again pursue its takeover.
Cortese finally arrived—the time must have been a little after 9am, which meant that the committee had less than 45 minutes to deliberate and act before adjourning to the main auditorium where MTC would be held.
As it turned out, the Admin Committee meeting was the main event of the day, not only because of the decision taken but also because of how that decision was taken. For the first time, the power relations of the two board were on full display. For the small and medium-sized cities of the region, and anyone who cares about democratic governance, local control of land use, and social justice in the Bay Area, the sight was sobering.
The proceedings showcased the disparate tactical and rhetorical skills of the electeds who preside over each agency, to Pierce’s disadavantage. Cortese is in the first year of a two-year term as MTC chair. In January Pierce will begin her second two-year term as ABAG president. This bodes poorly for the protection of ABAG’s interests during the merger planning process, an operation that’s going to be fraught with major disagreements.
The meeting also offered a disquieting illustration of the legislative style and capability of the Administrative Committee. I’ve written that their unfamiliarity with regional issues and lack of personal aides render the elected officials who sit on the of the ABAG Executive Board and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission unduly dependent on and deferential toward agency staff. At every meeting I’ve attended at the MetroCenter—and I’ve attended a lot of them—there’s been a lengthy staff report followed by desultory deliberation by the electeds.
The October 28 meeting of the Admin Committee was different. The senior staff who attended the meeting—ABAG Executive Director Ezra Rapport, Deputy Director Brad Paul, Planning Director Miriam Chion, Legal Counsel Kenneth Moy, and Interim Finance Director Charlie Adams—remained silent and poker-faced throughout the intense discussion about policy. Only Moy spoke at all, and that was to remind Pierce to do a roll call vote. The bulk of deliberation comprised dialogue between Pierce and Cortese, with a few interjections from their colleagues. Throughout the meeting, those colleagues deferred to Pierce, who in turn deferred to Cortese, allowing him to take over the meeting.
As soon as the MTC chair showed up, Pierce invited him to present “what you are requesting now.”
Referring to ABAG Resolution 1215, Cortese suggested that his request was a simple one: “Obviously, a resolution presented to this committee or any committee in writing speaks for itself—there’s not too much mystery to it.” He referred to the “breakthrough” that had occurred at the October 22 meeting with SEIU and Campos and had revealed a way “to go forward in a different sequence without abandoning any of the work that’s been done to date.”
At that point, a red flag should have gone up in the mind of every Admin Committee member.
Cortese continued: “The language in ABAG Resolution 1215 would reflect identically the modified language in MTC Resolution 4210 that MTC commissioners will see today.”Pierce interrupted him: ” So you’re going to append this language to 4210?”
Cortese: “Yes. I brought a copy of 4210 with the changes red-lined. I only have one [copy].”
Pierce: “Would you let us make copies of that so people can see it, or do you want to hang onto that?”
That question encapsulates Pierce’s weakness as a legislative tactician: her inclination to acquiesce to power. She’s the chair of the committee. She shouldn’t have asked Cortese’s permission for ABAG staff to make copies of 4210 or, worse yet, invited him not to do so. Instead, she should have insisted that before deliberation went forward, copies be made for the committee and members of the public.
Cortese finessed the issue. “It’s fine—we can make copies [shrugs]—and there’ll be copies outside well before anybody’s asked to vote [flips through the pages of 4210].”
“Copies outside”? Whatever that meant, Cortese didn’t make copies either before or after anyone at the Admin Committee meeting was asked to vote. The discussion proceeded with him in sole possession of the red-lined version of 4210. As far as I can tell from the video, the only other person in the room who had even the original version was Pierce. So much for his reference to mystery-free resolutions presented in writing.
The MTC chair continued: “If there’s any concern or nervousness as to whether or not the red here [taps 4210] and the black-and-white here (taps 1215) match up—absolutely, this is why I have this [the red-lined 4210] here.”
An axiom of legislative practice is not to act on something you haven’t read, especially when, as in this case, the matters at hand are complex, and the stakes are high. The members of the Admin Committee are all seasoned legislators—longtime members of their respective city councils and county boards of supervisors. None of them demurred.
Instead, Pierce conceded more ground: “Or maybe you could just summarize.”
Which is what Cortese proceeded to do, running through the proposed modifications of 4210 and pointing to places in his text. Principles 1, 2, and 11 had been amended, and a new, twelfth principle had been added, as follows:
He concluded: “That language is identical—please let me know if it’s not—we’ll try to correct it immediately, if there’s a typo or something.”
The offer was ludicrous: Cortese was the only one with a copy of red-lined 4210, so there was no way for any of the others to know whether the language was identical, much less whether there were any typos.
Cortese proceeded to outline the events at the upcoming MTC meeting. A “cursory presentation of what was in the packet,” i.e., his and Heminger’s proposal for consolidation of the planning departments, would be followed by his introduction of modified 4210.
Then, amazingly, with the clock ticking down, Pierce allowed him to introduce a request from Greenbelt Alliance to add a sentence to Resolution 1510 about taking “a holistic approach” to regional planning that addresses housing, transportation, conservation of natural and agricultural lands, social equity and economic development. The committee had no legal obligation to honor that request, and given the time constraints, Pierce should have said something to that effect and asked the group to focus on the resolutions before them. Instead, she and her colleagues spent ten minutes discussing whether to add that sentence. At least they decided that it would be imprudent to “add one more ornament to the Christmas tree,” and that doing so might invite accusations of favoritism.
In the course of that discussion, Cortese voiced the call for collaboration that he and his fellow commissioners would repeatedly echo at the MTC meeting:
If there’s any hope of us coming up with an agreed-upon merger plan between now and the end of the fiscal year, the electeds, the commissioners, the Executive Board members of ABAG—all of us who are in these positions are going to have to set a collaborative tone…as the most important principle. We’re going to disagree at times, and if we’re not able to come back in a collaborative spirit and work out those disagreements, as you well know, President Pierce, there could be opportunity lost.
This high-minded commitment to collaboration was immediately tested by Novato Mayor Pro Tem Pat Eklund, the only member of the Administrative Committee who routinely raises hard questions. She thanked Cortese for getting them to this point and then noted:
In the reach-out I’ve done to a lot of cities in the Bay Area, there’s not a lot of unanimity or consensus…which leads me to the question I have. If this merger study comes back saying that one agency may not make a lot of sense for the Bay Area—do you see that as a possibility…?
Cortese’s reply encapsulated his own tactical style: first he deflected the question, and then he rebuffed the challenge.
Unfortunately, there’s no off-the-shelf merger 3.0 app for ABAG and MTC that we can just go buy and install the software….Given two different agencies that have separate balance sheets and fiscal issues and so forth, what we might call a full merger here might look like a hybrid or something in some other jurisdictions….We have no pre-conceived notion about what’s going to come out of this process The idea of having the ABAG Administrative Committee and the MTC Planning Committee do the oversight of this process came from ABAG, not from MTC….It’s all the more reason that things need to move along in lockstep….Disagreement is fine. Impasse and emotional angst, I think, we’re going to have to try to avoid, or we’ll lose precious time in trying to invent a model here that will really work for the region.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that Cortese was speaking to a female colleague. In any case, telling a woman that she’s “emotional” is a time-honored way of discrediting her as irrational. It’s also an unwarranted denigration of feeling: emotions are a fact of life; only the dead lack them. Cortese’s brushoff of Eklund was as emotional as her question. Moreover, the Novato Mayor Pro Tem had broached a crucial issue: what happens if ABAG and MTC can’t agree on a merger? In refusing to address the possibility of an impasse, Cortese was the irrational party.
Pierce should have backed Eklund up. Instead, she sided with Cortese: “As far as I’m concerned, I’m more than committed to saying, let’s put all this other talk about consolidation aside. Let’s look forward about how we can be better together.”
As it turned out, Eklund’s question never got a direct answer, either at the Admin Committee or the MTC meeting. But it was indirectly addressed after Pierce invited comment from other committee members.
Jim Spering made what turned out to be both the most incongruous and the most pertinent statement uttered during both the Admin Committee and MTC meetings that morning. “Come July,” Spering said,
we have to have a strategy in place that makes a commitment that ABAG is funded in the long-term with a reliable funding source that’s not subject to the politics of what we’re going through right now. And as chair of [the MTC Planning] committee, I’m going to see that that issue comes forward, and we really start talking about it, so ABAG can do long-range planning that’s not subject to the shadow of MTC….That is a piece that has to be included in this discussion. You know, it’s not really mentioned anywhere. But at our first meeting, I’m going to raise that issue.
It was the most pertinent comment, because if ABAG were financially independent, it would be able to negotiate with MTC on equal footing. It was the most incongruous comment, because nowhere else, either in writing or in speech, was it addressed at the Admin Committee meeting (Spering would repeat it at the MTC meeting).
Instead of frittering away their time on Greenbelt Alliance’s vacuous, feel-good sentence, the committee could deliberated adding a statement that called for ABAG’s financial independence. Spering could have made a motion to that effect, and Pierce could have invited him to do so. Cortese’s second would have signaled a genuinely collaborative spirit. Needless to say, nothing of this sort occurred.
They then took a roll call vote on ABAG Resolution 1510. Everyone voted Yes.
Pierce barely had the words “This is unanimous!” out of her mouth, when Cortese threw a bomb:
So, Julie, I just want to say that the last version of the resolution that I got from ABAG last night has one additional sentence. [reads from a paper on the table before him]: “ABAG approves Resolution 4210 with the following modifications.” This [holds up the paper to Pierce, who’s sitting across the table from him] was sent to me.
In response, Pierce pushed back:
I understand that, Dave, and I think the reason for that is that there were a few Whereases [checks text in her copy of the un-amended 4210]—one Whereas—and several Resolves that are actually contradictory to what this new language says. So it’s confusing.
And then she pulled back:
So what I’m going to ask is that in the MTC meeting, you clarify that those contradictory statements are held in abeyance, because some of these Resolves talk about going forward in the resolution, and so what I’m hoping is that that intent is something that you clarify…so that we verbally confirm that we’re on the same page. Because 4210 with the modifications that you’ve just outlined that we’ve not officially seen yet at this committee is not able to be supported.
Unsurprisingly, Cortese ignored Pierce’s request that he call out the contradictions between 4210 and the ABAG position. Obviously, it was against his interests to comply. If Pierce wanted those contradictions to be specified at the MTC meeting, she should have said that she was going to do so herself. She did not.
Then Cortese brought down the hammer:
The language that was sent over to me says: ABAG supports Resolution 4210 with the following modifications. So nobody’s asking ABAG to support the pre-existing 4210, only with those modifications, and as you know, this [the ABAG Resolution] only has context within the Resolution [4210] itself….Otherwise it sets everything upside-down. It just puts the commission back moving the planning consolidation without the changes.
How would the Admin Committee’s failure to endorse modified 4210 “put,” i.e., force, MTC to “mov[e] the planning consolidation without the changes”? If collaboration were the real goal, shouldn’t MTC simply abandon its takeover effort?
Instead of asking these questions, Pierce backed down again: “No, no, no, I’m not trying to do that [derail the deal] at all.”
Cortese persisted: “These changes don’t stand alone. They have to be part of Resolution 4210.”But why?
Pierce: “As long as we all understand that the consolidation is put in abeyance with these changes.” But that wasn’t her earlier point, which addressed the contradictions between ABAG’s position and 4210’s Resolves and Whereases.
Cortese: “Like I said, when we first sat down here, the plain language of this red-line version does say that.”
But the “plain language” he referenced when they “first sat down” was the text of ABAG resolution 1510, not the red-line version of MTC Resolution 4210.
Cortese then read #12 in Attachment A in amended 4210:
Notwithstanding paragraphs 1-10 in Attachment A, in the event ABAG and MTC approve the MIP prior to July 1, 2016, each in its sole discretion, and by formal resolution, the functional consolidation of planning departments shall be pre-empted and the actions outlined in principles 2-10 shall be void.
“We’re putting [consolidation] on the shelf til the end of the fiscal year,” he said.
Napa County Supervisor Mark Luce quietly shot back: “The Resolves could cause you to think otherwise.”
Pierce, muddling the issue: “That’s why I want to make sure verbally that we’re all on the same page, and I think we are. So I think we’re good.”
Then Pierce gave away the store. She asked Cortese, “Do you want to amend the resolution that we just adopted?” In the video, Eklund can be seen shaking her head, No.
Cortese:
I would say in the future, if this process is going to work, if we’re sending each other back and forth documents [holds up a piece of paper, presumably the email] that we sign off on as leadership, and they show up differently at the meetings, we’re gonna have a trainwreck—okay? Because this came to me—I was working on this until 9:30 last night. I have the email here that says that ABAG senior staff approved this language [points to paper], and I went to sleep thinking we were done modifying this resolution. So we can’t have that kind of—I won’t call it bait and switch—because you’ve put on the record that you’re in support of Resolution 4210 with these modifications—that’s what I’m hearing here—so why take the language out after it’s been sent over? It’s just not good government process.
Even if Pierce did send Cortese an email saying that ABAG senior staff approved the modified 4210, neither she nor anyone else could single-handedly commit the Admin Committee to that position. Everyone present knew that; someone on the Admin Committee should have said so; nobody did.
Instead, Cortese used the email to manipulate the pliable ABAG officials into approving modified 4210.
Pierce:
Based on your representation today of the changes that you’re including, and the verbal representation that we will make, I think we’re probably okay adding that language back in, if that makes you feel more comfortable, I would ask for a reconsideration of that. Because I think that’s important, but some of the Resolves don’t say what we just agreed to, and that’s the concern.
Cortese: “Well, if you‘re opening up a motion for reconsideration, I’ll second it.”
Eklund again raised an objection. “So, President Pierce, my concern is that there are some Resolves in this 4210 that I’m not sure I agree with. And we haven’t really had a chance to talk about that.”
Eklund was only echoing Pierce’s own comments. Once again, Pierce should have had Eklund’s back. Instead, she again shushed her colleague: “And we don’t have time to talk about it here this morning.”
Eklund: “So I assume that we just go through the resolution that we just passed, and there will be the verbal…”
Spering interrupted her and, confusingly, asked Luce to second the non-motion, which Cortese had already seconded.
Luce: “I will, because I’m trusting you guys, because what we said just now is true.”
Spering : You have my word, and Dave…”
Luce: “That’s good enough.”
But what exactly had they said? Presumably that consolidation would not be pursued during the rest of the fiscal year. Nothing, however, about the contradictions.
Pierce: “I think that should be good enough for us. I mean, we’ve got to set the tone going forward, but”—apologetically—“I needed to tell you what those reasons were, Dave, because we hadn’t seen [the changes].” Strictly speaking, they still hadn’t seen them.
Cortese graciously accepted her capitulation: “I understand. That’s fine.”
Pierce: “We have a motion and a second to reconsider.”
Luce: “Just for clarification…ABAG supports Resolution 4210 with the following modifications.”
Eklund, however, was not quite ready to give up. “But what does that mean—‘supports 4210’?” she asked. “Because some of the Resolution and the Whereases…”
Pierce: “It will be made consistent with what we are adding to Attachment A. The rest of the resolution will be made consistent with the changes being made now.”
Cortese: “We’re only asking you to support 4210 if indeed the commission adopts these same modifications [places hand on the red-lined text of 4210]. That’s what the ask is.”
But Pierce had requested something more: that Cortese acknowledge the contradictions at the MTC meeting.
Eklund: “So we’re agreeing with the functional consolidation of land use planning and transportation.”
Pierce: “No, we’re not. This language takes this off the table.”
Not so. The language just temporarily moved 4210 from the center of the table to a place where MTC could retrieve it at a later date.
Eklund: “If we say we’re supporting 4210, it may give the appearance to some people that we agree that land use planning and transportation planning need to be functionally consolidated, and that may not be the case.”
Cortese:
The commission wants to keep consolidation, although in abeyance, as a backstop until July 1, as we start the new fiscal year, at the same time, ABAG wants us to turn our direction to a merger study and a merger implementation plan that would subsume and pre-empt this planning consolidation model….It allows both agencies at this point not to be throwing away the positions that they came in with….Nobody’s working on planning consolidation between now and July 1 at MTC.
But ABAG’s interest in a merger study is scarcely equivalent to MTC’s desire to appropriate ABAG’s planning staff and, as per unmodified Resolution 4210, regional planning at large.
Pierce made nice: “That’s what we need to hear.”
With less than two minutes left, they unanimously approved reconsideration and the revised resolution. Pierce adjourned the meeting, and everyone trooped upstairs to the MTC meeting.