A.G. Gancarski
A sign of the times in Jacksonville’s City Council as discussion of expanding the Human Rights Ordinance begins next week: requests for press passes to the February 14 meeting when the full vote is expected to occur are already being taken.
The public hearing in January drew an overflow crowd to the council chambers, leading the fire department to bar entry.
Two more rooms, then the conference room in the public library, were opened up for the discussion of expanding Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance to include employment, housing, and public accommodations protections for the city’s LGBT community.
What will the evening of the vote be like? No one really knows.
With each attempt to pass the bill, passions grow more intense on both sides of the issue among the public, while most members of the council demur from offering a position with any conviction — never mind intensity.
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Meanwhile, Council President Lori Boyer wants a clean process.
“I am hopeful that this bill moves through committees without deferral and that committee reports (votes) up or down are taken in accordance with the original schedule allowing final action at Council in mid-February. Any delay will cause the procedures outlined herein to be extended,” Boyer wrote in a memo last month.
“The bill has been assigned to NCIS (because it addresses housing issues), Rules (because it addresses consumer issues and unclassified matters) and Finance (because it purports to have economic development impact),” Boyer added.
Of course, that time table may be altered by the expectation that Councilman Bill Gulliford will offer an amendment with a referendum option of some type.
Gulliford is in the first committee (Neighborhoods), and the last committee (Finance), to consider the bill. And he delights in exploiting parliamentary procedure to frustrate adversaries.
As is known, and as vexes many expansion opponents, there will be no public comment on the bill in committees or the council meeting Feb. 14.
If Gulliford were to offer that amendment in Finance on Wednesday rather than on Monday in Neighborhoods, that may create enough confusion to throw off the whole process.
Advocates are confident in their vote count being enough to pass the bill, though there are real worries about getting the 13 votes required to make the mayor’s position irrelevant (and a general belief that the mayor would prefer the bill pass with 13).
Some quasi-informed speculation about the vote count follows:
A total of six council members seem like hard no votes at this point: Councilman Gulliford, along with Danny Becton, Al Ferraro, Doyle Carter, Matt Schellenberg, and Sam Newby.
People who seem like maybes: Scott Wilson, Council President Lori Boyer, Garrett Dennis, Anna Brosche, Greg Anderson, Reggie Brown, and Katrina Brown.
The remaining members of council — Aaron Bowman, Jim Love, Tommy Hazouri, Council VP John Crescimbeni, Joyce Morgan, and Reggie Gaffney — seem like yes votes headed into the committee process.
Many of those in the maybe column are more voluble on the HRO in private conversations than in public. But the game is played in front of a crowd.
If all those in the maybe column vote yes, then there is no problem for Mayor Lenny Curry, who can simply say “look, the city council is the policy making body,” and move on.
If the bill passes with 10, 11, or 12 votes, will the mayor sign it or put it in his pocket?
A veto, though it would delight the GOP base, undoubtedly would inflame many others — diluting his political capital and eviscerating his ability to build city-wide consensus.
We are hearing that the referendum option Gulliford supports leaves the mayor cold.
If the HRO were to be litigated by the city’s activists on both sides of the issue for over a year in the media, one needn’t have a vivid imagination to surmise that the spectacle would be devastating for corporate recruitment, leading to the kind of national reporting spotlight that shined on North Carolina in the wake of HB 2.
All of this discussion and speculation purposely elides what may be happening in Tallahassee and Washington on the matter of LGBT protections in law.
