A Growing Frustration

I didn’t go into the office Friday. It had nothing to do with being sick, but rather another commitment. You see, I had been invited by Lewis & Clark College in Portland to participate in their Indigenous Ways of Knowing program, something that has just gotten off the ground for them and one which I am eager to see progress. I felt a twinge of guilt for not alerting staff of my absence this Friday, because often I am one of a few Council members who stays past lunch on the last day of the week. Given the start time, there was really no way I could make it into the office. So this Friday, July 20th, 2007, I would not be in the office, would not be able to make the Elders’ Honor Day, and would not be able to mark my calendar.
On my desk sits a large calendar, 18" by 24", with each day large enough to where you can draft a sentence. For my first two years, this calendar was nothing more than a desk matt, but since December of 2006 it has served a very important purpose: This colorful calendar, which always bears some sort of catchy “nature” photograph, serves as my attendance log. Most days, when I remember, I mark who on Council was in, who was out, why, and where. I think members would be shocked to come in and look at it.
Being a Council member must be in many ways like being self-employed. More than anything it takes a whole lot of discipline, especially just to crawl out of bed every morning and come to work. When I first got elected, the most shocking aspect of this job was the leniency regarding our attendance. Council members can not show up for just about any reason. In fact, they can not show up for no reason.
Last summer with an outgoing Council member I saw that taken to an obscene level. I barely saw him last summer, maybe nine or ten times tops, as he was not seeking re-election and obviously didn’t feel the need to come in. Most mornings upon arriving from work I would look at our status board, the one which lists all Council plus our supporting staff with convenient “in” and “out” columns and times, and would see simply “personal leave”. Of course this particular Councilman was no longer making a concentrated effort to be productive when he did show up, so I can’t say we really missed him. But still, as Angie Blackwell pointed out when she questioned his attendance one morning during Legislative Action Committee, how different is collecting a paycheck for work not done from actual stealing?
Given the partisan position of this Council member within our nine-body board, it was obvious to raise this issue was just going to yield unproductive and mean-spirited arguing. We still had a job to do, and let the issue pass. Looking back, I realize it was a mistake to let him off the hook.
I can’t really say that things improved after the election. In fact, towards the end of the year, I would venture to say they got worse. Bad enough, at least, to where in November during a staff update a pretty notable staff member timidly, if firmly, informed us that it would be nice to have a quorum to conduct business. I jumped on the bandwagon then, tossing in my own comments. For a couple of weeks, I would almost say this little outburst, if one could call it that, worked. But as the holidays rolled around, that work session quickly became forgotten.
Council has recourse, there is language in the Tribal Council Ordinance for dealing with missed meetings, it revolves around “excused” or not. But the real issue is would a majority of Council be willing to enforce this? More importantly, is it worth the time and headache?
The Ethics Task Force included some very forceful rules regarding attendance in their new language, but that ordinance died back in February. I’ve often wondered if reverting Council pay to an hourly basis, clocking in and clocking out included, would provide some sort of antidote to what is becoming a major problem. I’ve also wondered if we need more guidelines for what warrants travel, since right now the policy for which to send Council members to conferences are basically the whims of each person.
My frustration reached a new high in June. In one of the only months during my three years on Council, I had to travel twice, for the first week of the month and the third. I was to learn upon my return that of the four days scheduled with work sessions during my absence, three of them were canceled completely. Three whole days of business were wiped clean and postponed for later. The reason: lack of quorum.