City business or Trump speech?

When is it appropriate for an elected official to skip their duties?

That was a point of discussion at the Medical Lake City Council’s regular meeting Tuesday, Feb. 5, after one councilman chose to skip the meeting to instead watch the State of the Union address.

The council was a total of three members shy Tuesday. Councilwoman Laura Parsons was home tending to a sick child. Councilman Don Kennedy was vacationing in Hawaii. And Councilman Ted Olson chose to stay home to watch the president’s address.

His absence and the underlying reason for it sparked a question from freshman Councilman Tony Harbolt: just what constitutes an excused absence?

After some paper shuffling by council members and support staff, a policy document outlining legitimate absences was found and read aloud by Mayor Shirley Maike.

The purpose of the policy, titled “City Council Meeting Absences,” is to “encourage City Councilmembers that attendance at City Council and Council Committee meetings is an integral part of the job of an elected official.”

The document provides a list of valid reasons for authorized absences, including attending to city or employer business, military orders, illness or injury of the councilmember or their family, vacation, or “other valid reasons case-by-case.”

Excused absences require council pre-approval while “in session,” according to the policy document, and must be submitted in advance in writing to the council on a form for that purpose.

The policy also provides for an excused absence between meetings, but “only upon a showing that it was not possible to request the excused absence before the meeting.”

Kennedy’s request was included in the meeting agenda packet. It was dated Jan. 21. The last City Council meeting was Jan. 15.

City Administrator Doug Ross noted that “vacation” was not defined, and suggested it could mean going to a child’s basketball game.

“He probably shouldn’t have said what he said,” Maike said about Olson’s reason for his absence, which she said was marked as “other” on his absence request form, and stated that the reason was to watch the president’s address.

“If that’s a vacation to him, then that’s what I would say,” Ross said.

Having clarified the policy, a motion to approve the absence of Kennedy and Parsons was seconded and passed unanimously.

The vote for Olson’s absence, however, ended in a tie.

Although the mayor doesn’t normally vote, it is the mayor’s role to cast a deciding vote in the event of a tie.

“Based on our policies and what we’ve just discussed I’ll say yea,” Maike said, and Olson’s absence request passed on a 3-2 vote.

“And if it’s the pleasure of the council, we will have Doug (Ross, city administrator) do official counts (of councilmember absences) and periodically report if requested,” she added.

Such a count is already stipulated in the policy document.

Asked in a phone interview later about her vote, Maike said she, “didn’t think anything out of the ordinary about it.”

She felt it better if Olson had simply checked the box marked “Vacation” rather than “Other” on the absence request form. Marking “Other” requires elaboration in a space provided on the form.

Going on, Maike said she felt it wasn’t the council’s role to judge if a vacation was legitimate.

“That’s not our role,” she said. “I should say the councils role.”

Yet Olson himself passed the approval buck to the council for judgment. In a phone interview he said he’d been watching State of the Union addresses since the 1960s.

“I put in a request to be excused,” Olson said, “and then it was up to the council and they decided it was OK.”

He stated “it had occurred to me” that the president’s address could be accessed on the Internet after the fact. Asked if he felt comfortable missing the meeting for something that could be seen later, he said he was.

“And like I said, it was up to the City Council together to approve or disapprove it,” Olson said. “If they would have disapproved it then they would have seen fit that it wasn’t a legitimate excuse. However, they did.”

Olson said he was unaware that two fellow council members, Elizabeth Rosenbeck and A.J. Burton, had voted to disapprove his absence request. Neither responded to a request for comment.

Councilwoman Jessica Roberts and Councilman Tony Harbolt voted in favor of approval. Both stated they felt the request was within the city’s attendance policy.

Although somewhat unclear, the council policy document notes that council members are allowed to miss two council meetings and two committee meetings annually for reasons of illness or injury, a work related absence, or vacation, but cumulatively cannot miss more than three total.

The “Other” category is not listed in the cumulative count on the policy document.

In other business, the council considered and approved on first reading an amendment to the city’s sign ordinance that would bring it into compliance with a 2015 Supreme Court ruling.

The amendment will be codified if approved on second reading.

The change applies to any signs, temporary or permanent, that are placed within city limits. The proposed revisions can be viewed as an attachment to the council meeting agenda available at https://bit.ly/2I33h0D.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected]