Nancy Sylvester is a certified professional parliamentarian who has traveled the globe providing parliamentary training and consulting services, has been called as an expert witness on parliamentary issues, and has been called “the parliamentarians’ parliamentarian.”  She has authored many books, including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Robert’s Rules, and has appeared in many parliamentary magazines and journals.

I recently posed the following question to Ms. Sylvester: “Does a motion to add an item to the consent calendar automatically mean the item is approved?”

Ms. Sylvester says no, “there must be a separate motion to adopt the Consent Agenda.”  Now, the consent agenda/calendar (they are the same thing) can be adopted by a roll call vote or by a formal statement by the chairperson that without objection, the consent agenda is adopted by unanimous consent.  Merely creating the consent agenda during a meeting does not also mean that the consent agenda has been adopted, therefore, the items on that agenda are not automatically adopted.

The Hartford City Council acts on auto pilot when it comes to the consent agenda/calendar.

On May 13th, four council members on the Labor, Education, Workforce & Youth Development Committee voted to send a resolution to the full Council approving Mayor Arulampalam’s five appointments to the Hartford Board of Education.

On May 28th, that resolution came before the full Council.  As the video of the meeting reveals, a motion was made to add nine separate items to the consent calendar, including the BOE resolution.  The motion to create the consent calendar was approved.  One and done.  There was no accompanying motion to approve the consent agenda, and no statement by the Council President Shirley Surgeon was made to adopt the agenda by unanimous consent. 

The minutes of the May 28th meeting are available here, however, the way in which they are created makes it appear as if each item on the consent agenda was voted on separately, which is not the case, nor do they clearly show a motion to add items to the consent agenda or a motion adopting that consent agenda.

Therefore, there was no formal approval of the Mayor’s BOE appointments by the full city council, and, therefore, following the idea of the fruit of the poison tree doctrine, any acts by that new BOE are null and void; “if the tree is poison, so is the fruit.”  The new BOE members were sworn into office at the June 18th Regular Meeting.

In normal practice, a consent agenda is created before the meeting begins and once the meeting begins the consent agenda and the items it contains become one item up for approval at the meeting.  Under this practice, no motion is made to create the agenda, which is the way the Hartford city council practices parliamentary procedure, instead, a motion is made to adopt the consent agenda, which is not the way the Hartford City Council practices parliamentary procedure.

The parliamentary procedure practiced by the Hartford City Council may be fine for a college frat house meeting or Rigueur-led BOE, but for official city business it opens the city up to possible litigation which they may not be able to defend.

As for the “new” BOE, despite being appointed with such hope and promise, there is now doubt as to whether they even have the authority to carry out their duties as set by state, city, and school district regulations; the Rigueur-board didn’t bother to do the work, this one may not be authorized to do the work!