In December of last year, a California court ruled that Los Angeles city council members must pay attention during testimony by parties appearing before council.
The Chronicle‘s Kristen Mack, assigned to the municipal politics beat once covered by John Williams, devotes her column today to considering how that ruling might apply in Houston:
The California court has no authority over City Council behavior in Houston. And granted, the council is not always weighing heavy matters during its weekly public session, in which residents can discuss issues of their choosing, though speakers often comment about items on the council agenda.
But the City Charter requires “citizens of the city shall have a reasonable opportunity to be heard at any such meetings in regard to any matter to be considered.”
It doesn’t say how attentive members should be.
It’s true that Houston’s city council is not always as attentive as common courtesy ought to require, but this ranks pretty low in the universe of important political topics in this town right now. A good blogger probably would have knocked out a few sentences on the matter and moved on.
Last week, Mack devoted part of her column to this bit of Democratic politics:
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer held a fund-raiser in Houston on Thursday for his 2006 New York gubernatorial race. Houston attorney Mike Gallagher and others hosted the reception at Damian’s. Spitzer, a Democrat, also raised money in Austin at the home of former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, who hosted a Wednesday event with Houston lawyer Joe Jamail, among others. With Democrats now shut out of much of the Texas political power structure, party faithful in the state are becoming major donors to Democratic candidates elsewhere.
Again, this seems more like fare for local Democrat bloggers than material for an engaged (and engaging) weekly column on local politics.
A newspaper serious about local coverage — or a newspaper pushed by a more vigorous New Times weekly (which seems to have lost its own local punch with the departure of Tim Fleck) — ought to strive for harder hitting material in its municipal politics column.
