| By Neil Johnson, Big Radio and WCLO Radio News |
A Rock County Board supervisor is asking Thursday for a new committee to police the county board’s own rules and polices.
It’s been years since the board has fully reviewed its own operating rules. She says some board members have increasingly exploited technical, parliamentary rules to try to challenge new resolutions when they reach the floor.
Mawhinney says that has sidetracked discussions on the substance of policies before the board and turned some board meetings into hours long loops of debate over legal interpretation of parliamentary procedures, sometimes referred to as “Robert’s Rules of Order.”
Mawhinney says she thinks the county board and the county’s legal team is better suited for such arguments. She wants those debates pulled from county board meetings and handed to a new county board committee: the Ad Hoc Committee on the County Board of Supervisors’ Rules and Procedures.
The board chairman would appoint the committee members.
The committee would comb through the board’s governing rules and recommend its first changes to the newly elected board this spring. Among items it could vet — whether to allow county staff to introduce resolutions that aren’t formally sponsored by a county supervisor.
