[Editor’s Note: Mr. Clarke’s 400-word explanation of the City Council’s stance on gun control legislation is below.]
[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]Effective City Councilman that he is, armed with reliably keen insight, Jim Clarke was, you will excuse the irony of the expression, well armed entering last evening’s meeting.
He had read the newspapers after the previous Council meeting from a number of residents upset with the Council’s asserted inaction on out-of-town gun control legislation.
“Anticipating that there were several people in the community who seemed to be upset at the action the Council took at the last meeting regarding gun violence prevention, I wanted to put the circumstances in context,” Mr. Clarke told the newspaper this morning.
“I wanted to be able to explain what we did.
“There was even one woman who spoke last night who thought we took no action at all. She was surprised to learn we did take action.”
Unraveling the abstraction corner of a community debate since the Council meeting of two weeks ago, Mr. Clarke said that, far from declining to take a vote, “Council members were interested in adopting principles, not in going through a list of specific bills.
“I am trying to balance a fine line here,” he said. “Historically, the city has not gotten involved in things like this.
“If someone says to us, ‘I would like you to consider S.150.’ Then I would say, ‘Are we going to look at the other 26 (gun control) bills?’
“They would say, ‘Wait a minute. We don’t have time to do all of that. That is not what we are here to do.’
“The idea behind all of this,” Mr. Clarke said, “was to establish guiding principles that staff could use in looking at legislation to determine whether we should take a position.
“Because gun violence was not on the list of issues we passed last December, I felt it was important to have a discussion so we could adopt some principles. It’s a national discussion, and I would like to see Culver City be part of it.
“That is the difference in what we have been talking about. (Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wellls, the new Vice Mayor) thought we were going to take up these four specific items,” Mr. Clarke said. “Instead, what we wanted to do was to adopt good, strong principles.”
Mr. Clarke’s formal statement last night:
Historically, the City Council has been reluctant to take positions on legislation. I felt it was important that the city make its voice heard, particularly on issues that have an impact upon our government operations or our residents.
Along with my colleague Councilwoman Sahli-Wells, I requested the Council establish an ad-hoc Legislation Subcommittee in order to develop procedures for the consideration of, and taking positions on, federal, state and county legislation.
The Council agreed. Councilwoman Sahli-Wells and I became the subcommittee. Working with city staff, our intent was to develop a list of issues impacting the city and broad principles regarding those issues so that the staff could be guided in the development of letters of support or opposition that were consistent with Council’s intentions.
That list was presented to Council and approved last December. It has served its intended purpose of guiding the staff and of not requiring them to return to Council for approval for each specific bill.
Issues you would expect to see include economic development and redevelopment, fracking, environment quality, local government financing and taxation, public safety, etc.
Gun violence prevention was not on the list because, fortunately, we do not have a gun violence problem in Culver City. However, I felt, as did my colleagues, that this was a national issue. As such, Culver City should participate in the national discussion. For that reason, a separate agenda item was requested and approved. Speaking for myself, the primary purpose for that session was to adopt principles to guide our staff when considering various legislative proposals.
And indeed there are many. Currently, there are 24 separate bills in the Congress, not including the seven amendments that were considered in the Senate and defeated. There are another 22 bills in the state Legislature. Time would not allow us to take up each bill.
What we did at our last Council meeting was to adopt principles. Those included:
1. Calling for a ban on assault weapons.
2. Outlawing high-capacity magazine clips.
3. Calling for universal background checks.
4. Closing loopholes and going after straw purchasers.
In adopting these principles, I believe we clearly put Culver City on the side of common sense gun violence prevention legislation in the national debate, and we gave the city staff the guidance they needed to be able to evaluate and prepare correspondence on relevant legislation. I am proud of the action we took.
