Board Needs, Wants Direction

Jeff Gahan’s appointees could use a refresher course in due process. After all, it is a tenet of representative government and basic justice.

Yesterday we reported on a decision by the city’s Board of Public Works and Safety (BoW), appointed by Gahan and chaired by former mayor Warren Nash (1971-75) that appears to thwart the work of one of the nation’s most-respected social research institutions.

I believe that decision was misguided and does not comport with the relevant city ordinance. A strong case can be made that the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (ISR) needn’t have even appeared before the board and I will try to make that case tonight at New Albany’s city council meeting and, if necessary, at next week’s BoW meeting (10 a.m., city hall).

Further, due process requires that a board with such broad public responsibility state its reason for withholding its approval. In the absence of a defensible rationale, that approval should be forthcoming. After all, the relevant city ordinance says nothing about prohibiting the requested activities – if it’s applicable in the case at all, it’s only about regulating them.

Witnesses report that even before the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Nash showed sheer annoyance that the ISR notification letter had been placed on the agenda. He griped that “Kathy (Cousins) knows we never approve these.” He went on to reject the notification, saying, “Since I’ve been on the board, we’ve never approved anything like this.”

That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, isn’t it? The body charged with evaluating and approving solicitations (again, this is hardly applicable) has erected barriers to even be heard.

The ordinance, again, does not ban solicitations at all. That is not its intent. There is a legitimate public purpose in regulating and, perhaps, limiting door-to-door solicitation. And it addresses people who are engaged in the business of selling or canvassing for business purposes.

At one point during the meeting proper, I’m told that Mr. Nash inquired of his colleagues about whether the “council has given us any guidance.” He was informed that the council had specifically addressed so-called “roadblocks” wherein teams flock to key intersections to collect money in buckets. But no guidance regarding the solicitation ordinance had been given.

I’ll state again that the mayor could remedy this injustice easily and by the end of the business day. He could provide direction.

In its absence, I hope to engage the council tonight in a discussion of the ordinance. Over the years, efforts at cleaning up the city ordinances have failed miserably. But if the council can send a clear signal tonight that the ordinance does not apply in this instance, it may go a long way toward fixing things.

ISR is not engaged in business. They are not randomly going door-to-door to conduct their rigorously designed survey. They are not comparable to the free-lance cable/satellite/internet salesmen who do go door-to-door-to-door soliciting for new business – without license from the BoW, without registration with the City Clerk, and without being cited and fined by the New Albany Police Department.

To reiterate:

1. ISR has been conducting national surveys since 1946 under the umbrella of the University of Michigan. Its annual survey results are shared with public policy-makers from Congress on down to local governments and aid them in evaluating changes in conditions and attitudes toward public policy.
2. ISR is funded by government and foundation grants.
3. ISR, in order to conduct reliable surveys, chooses census tracts that are demographically representative of the nation. Many of these are “longitudinal” surveys in which the go back to the same households year after year.
4. ISR’s protocol is to notify local law enforcement when they are working in a jurisdiction so as to appease any fears about “strangers” knocking on doors. I’ll wager that they meet municipal resistance rarely, and even then only when there is a gross misunderstanding of their work.
5. ISR sends letters to likely households within the chosen census tracts informing residents that they will be visited by interviewers. That visit is solely to determine if that household meets the criteria for the survey. For example, the eligible resident may have died or moved, or some other aspect that was at first believed to be true is no longer so.
6. If the residents agree to be part of the survey, an appointment is made to come back for the interview. Participants are paid stipends that are, to be discreet, surprisingly generous.

I hope the council will speak tonight and communicate to the mayor and the BoW that it is not the intent of the ordinance to inhibit projects like this that are not engaged in business. A strong case can be made that the language of the ordinance implicitly exempts ISR from the city’s approval or disapproval.

Suppression of social research, especially when conducted by legitimate and respected institutions, is never a good thing for government to do. It’s embarrassing to think that New Albany is an outlier among the thousands of communities in which ISR and similar organizations conduct their work.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve to hear about what else Mr. Nash said during the meeting. Facing the ISR representative, he said, “Don’t ask.”

Various interpretations can be divined, but one could well be that if organizations like ISR don’t ask, the BoW can’t say no. Alas, it was diligently reported by the local newspaper that the BoW rejected ISR’s letter and prohibited it from conducting its survey work. Without a correction to date, it’s kind of hard to unplow the ground now.

So, city council? Help the members of the BoW. They need, lo, they asked for your guidance. Can you give it tonight and remove the stain on our city?

Now, can we talk about those scofflaw ice cream trucks?