Tribal council votes to create legislative office separate from executive oversight
When the Cherokee Tribal Council voted to create the Office of Legislative Support last week, it was doing more than ramping up tribal staffing.
“This is for this body and for this tribe to show that separation from the executive branch,” said Councilmember Travis Smith, of Birdtown, one of the ordinance’s sponsors.
Tribal Council already has staff at its disposal to act as aides, record keepers and providers of information, but the Tribal Operations Program, which fulfills those duties, is under the executive branch. The newly created Office of Legislative Support would absorb the employees at TOP, who would then be responsible to Council.
According to Councilmember Anita Lossiah, of Yellowhill, another sponsor of the ordinance, the change is just a necessary first step in empowering Council to do the job it’s tasked with.
“One of the things that I’ve spoken about multiple times in my community also was to try to focus on the duties of Tribal Council. Try to focus more on the legislation, more on the budgetary process, but one thing we realized very quickly once we took office is there’s lack of a developed staff for those duties,” Lossiah said.
It’s a topic that’s come up in council before, specifically relating to legal advice. Currently, Interim Attorney General Hannah Smith sits in all Council meetings, providing legal insight as required. But councilmembers have said that they’d rather have an attorney who reports directly to them, not to the principal chief.
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In an October council session, some even went so far as to say if they’d had their own legal advisor, separate from the attorney employed by the executive branch, they might not have voted for the 2014 salary bumps and backpay that prompted widespread anger among tribal members and a lawsuit against councilmembers who voted for the raises. Though her initial memo to then-Principal Chief Michell Hicks had said the raises would violate Cherokee law, Hannah Smith, who works for the chief, later told council the action was legal.
“The information that was presented was what we acted on,” said Councilmember Adam Wachacha, of Snowbird, in October. “I’m listening to what the attorney general’s office has to say. This body does need its own legal council.”
“We all was in agreeance that we needed to hire that person for ourselves and not come from the attorney general’s office,” Travis Smith said last week.
The new legislative office will also include a legislative director to oversee operations there. That person will report directly to Tribal Council Chairman Bill Taylor, who was the ordinance’s third sponsor.
Questioning the timeline
Nobody in Council chambers last week said outright that the concept of creating a separate legislative office was a bad one. But several people offered strong opinion that the ordinance was not yet ready for passage and deserved more discussion.
Principal Chief Patrick Lambert was among them.
“This is a wholesale change that is not budgeted for, and I think that needs to be discussed,” Lambert said. “There’s problems with this I see right out of the gate.”
One of the biggest issues, Lambert said, was a line exempting the Office of Legislative Support from obtaining approval from the Business Committee for contracts worth more than $50,000. Cherokee code says contracts that large, once approved by Tribal Council, must have Business Committee approval before they’re executed. Language in the newly passed ordinance says that requirement doesn’t apply to contracts from the Office of Legislative Support.
Lambert said he’s “not opposed to a concept” of creating a legislative office like that laid out in the ordinance but believes “there are some pieces of this we need to talk about.”
That’s a statement that councilmembers Tommye Saunooke, of Painttown, and Teresa McCoy, of Big Cove, agreed with.
“We have not even discussed this in council,” said Saunooke, later moving to table the ordinance for a work session later.
Travis Smith disagreed, saying plenty of discussion has happened already.
“We’ve had these discussions many times with several councilmembers,” he said. “We talk about these things daily.”
But not in open session, McCoy pointed out.
“We represent the people. They should get to see what we’re talking about,” she said.
Moreover, a lot of the particulars have not yet been discussed, McCoy said. Most notably, the price tag. How much will it cost to hire any new positions that are needed, provide any extra office space required or pay for all the hidden costs that come along with establishing a new office?
“I don’t disagree with this concept. I think it needs to happen,” McCoy said. “Council is a separate branch of government. It is a very powerful branch of government, but I think discussions like this warrant more than 15 minutes of our time.”
But from Lossiah’s point of view, the important point is to get the legal framework creating the legislative office in place now. That paves the way for more discussion of details and fleshing out of the basic structure.
“This would basically be just implementing the authority to start these things. Then after that we can start developing that,” Lossiah said.
That is typically how things work in other government models, agreed Hannah Smith, though the tribe has ordered the process both ways in the past.
“If you go and look at any state book of law, there are lots of enabling statutes that establish things like the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice,” Hannah Smith said. “Once those enabling laws are passed, the budget comes behind and funds it and the executive branch builds it and executes what the law enabled it to do.”
That’s fine, said Wachacha, but why not just let it sit for another month or two so tribal leaders can make sure they’re passing the best ordinance possible?
“We waited this long,” he said. “Why can’t we just make sure it’s right when we move forward with it?”
“I’m not opposed to the tabling it, I guess, but I don’t see why we would need to,” answered Councilmember Alan “B” Ensley, of Yellowhill.
In the end, though, Ensley voted along with the majority to pass the legislation, joined by Chairman Bill Taylor, of Wolfetown; Councilmember Albert Rose, of Birdtown; Vice Chair Brandon Jones, of Snowbird; Councilmember Marie Junaluska, of Painttown; Councilmember Richard French, of Big Cove; Travis Smith and Lossiah. Saunooke and McCoy both voted against the ordinance, with Wachacha abstaining.
The ordinance still requires Lambert’s signature to become law.
