Just yesterday, we put out our story on the proposed changes to Spokane City Council’s 2025 rules.
Well, this morning, council members submitted a flurry of amendments to the rules just before the 10 am deadline. Not all of those amendments will be approved, but we’re going to cover the changes proposed by members of the progressive supermajority, which seem likelier to make it into the final draft of the rules than those posed by the council’s two conservatives. The rules will be voted on Monday, December 9.
The biggest change is that the council is walking back the proposal to move meetings to Tuesdays, which would have broken a decades-long tradition of Monday meetings. They’ll be keeping their schedule the same — at least until January of 2026 — per an amendment from Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon.
At 9:59, one minute before the deadline to make changes, Wilkerson submitted her final list of board and committee appointments. It came with a few surprises — she replaced the more senior Council Member Zack Zappone with freshman Dillon as her second-in-command — and concessions — after a year of complaints about the lack of District 1 representation, Wilkerson put Council Member Michael Cathcart on the Spokane Transit Authority Board. She also booted Cathcart from his position on the Council Operations committee, and from his role as the Finance and Administration Committee Chair, replacing him with Dillon in both cases. That’s a quick rise and a lot of additional power and responsibility for Dillon.
Cathcart and his fellow District 1 representative Jonathan Bingle were both frustrated with the list of assignments. The transportation committee assignments were a pyrrhic victory — Bingle wanted to be on the STA board — and Cathcart lost his leadership positions.
“No longer does seniority matter at all, but apparently being fiscally prudent and reform minded under two completely different administrations … earns you the right to be kicked out as chair of Finance or chair of anything,” Cathcart wrote in a text to RANGE this morning. “They also conveniently waited until the exact amendment deadline to ensure that we couldn’t propose anything else in the agenda packet.”
Though they couldn’t submit amendments on the board and committee assignments, Dillon told RANGE Cathcart submitted “a record number of his own amendments,” on other sections of the rules before that 10 am deadline.
An amendment submitted by Dillon would change the rules of what council members can and cannot say from the dais, limiting their comments on any given agenda item to discussion of that item or “pending questions.” The new policy would limit each council member to speaking just twice on any pending question for a total of 10 minutes, forbid council members from questioning “the motives or intentions of other council members,” or criticizing “a prior council action that is not under debate.”
Dillon says the point of the policy is to ensure council “debates the merits of the policy not the character of the person.” He added that this is extremely similar to rules at the state legislature intended to keep electeds on track and voting on the policies at hand, rather than rehashing past political fights.
This change, combined with the likely passage of the rule requiring three sponsors on any given piece of legislation, incensed Bingle, who told RANGE it was clear the progressive supermajority is trying to silence him and other conservatives.
“Local governments are supposed to be nonpartisan, but the era of nonpartisanship in Spokane is over,” Bingle said. “A democracy always descends into tyranny.”
“I’d like to thank the progressives for their care for the disenfranchised in District 1. I’m thankful for their big giant hearts,” Bingle said this morning, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "If you are trying to shut me up, listen, I’m going hard. If you think you can bully me, you’re dead wrong — I went to Rogers High School and I was the smallest kid there.”
If he is required to play by their new rules of decorum, Bingle says he plans to comply, but maliciously. That could mean weekly press conferences to share how he really feels about the actions of the council, or it could mean carefully preparing 10 minute speeches to ensure he uses every last bit of his time to speak, he said.
Dillon said he was hoping to start 2025 fresh, “leaving the tensions of 2024 behind,” but if Bingle wants to have press conferences, that’s okay: “I wish him the best.”
When asked about the fiery debate about the rules that has been raging since this week’s Briefing Session, Dillon said he was reminded of a quote by Carl Sandburg:
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
