Council members in Pearland will be restricted in being able to enter into any contracts with the city while they serve on City Council.
Pearland City Council at its July 11 regular meeting in a 4-3 vote passed the second and final reading of an amended ordinance that puts restrictions to the city from entering into a deal with a current council member that has a substantial interest in a business.
Council Member Alex Kamkar was not present at the meeting. The six council members’ vote ended in a 3-3 tie. Mayor Kevin Cole was the final vote in favor of the ordinance.
“The ordinance is really about how do we deal with a conflict when it arises,” Cole said. “It shouldn’t be there to penalize somebody, a business owner or anybody like that from doing business. It is there as a what do we do if a conflict arises.”
Council Member Joseph Koza at the July 11 meeting proposed the amendment to the ordinance that passed in a 4-2 vote.
The amendment reads current council members will not enter into a deal with the city unless the council member with the conflict of interest files a disclosure affidavit of that interest and abstains from voting on all items related to the matter; City Council makes an affirmative finding that the contract is in the city’s best interest; and the vote passes with a three-fourths majority.
According to the Texas Local Government Code, a person has a substantial interest in a business if that person owns 10% or more of the business’s voting stocks or shares; if the person owns $15,000 or more of the fair market value of the business; if funds received from the business make up 10% or more of a person’s gross income the previous year; or if a person related to the council member has a substantial interest in the business.
Pearland City Council originally postponed the vote of the second reading of the ordinance June 27 following concerns, such as one raised by Cole, who urged caution about the strong blanket law potentially hurting the city financially in the future.
Pearland currently follows state law, which allows cities to enter into a contract with a council member or business entity they have a substantial interest in, but that council member has to file an affidavit with the city secretary and abstain from the discussion and voting on the contract, City Attorney Darrin Coker said at the June 13 meeting.
The requirement passed by Pearland City Council is similar to what the state already requires. The addition of the three-fourths majority vote needed for the city to enter into a deal, with the affected member abstaining, is not required by state law.
Ordinance debate
Despite the ordinance’s approval, it did not come without debate. Council Members Adrian Hernandez and Layni Cade voted against both the amendment and the ordinance itself. Council Member Woody Owens voted against the ordinance only.
Hernandez brought forth to council what he called “enhanced disclosures” that would include public postings of pending and awarded contracts of any amounts on the official web page for each council member.
Additionally it would include additional posting of any gift disclosures, reimbursements and campaign finance reports on the official web page for each council member. Lastly he recommended a new, separate city web page about the city’s ethics ordinance.
Several council members and Cole were in support of Hernandez’s disclosures but did not include it in the ordinance because it was not necessary to be included in that specific ordinance to be implemented, Coker said.
While Council Member Jeffrey Barry voted in favor of the ordinance, he brought up questions about the need for the ordinance in the first place. Coker, when asked by Cole, said during his 26-year-long tenure in the city, he has never seen the city enter into contract with a business that a council member had a substantial interest in.
“I really don’t know how we got here to have so much conversation on ethics and moral values and things of that sort that we actually have to come up with an ethics ordinance to determine how we function as citizens of a city that we desire to live,” Barry said. “That to me is just appalling, and it is really sad.”
