The Surprise City Council voted 6-0 on May 5 to bring back the “resign to run” law that requires board and commission members to give up their seats once they submit nomination papers for City Council.
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The controversy surrounding Surpirse City Council candidate Jack Hastings’ removal last month from the Arts and Cultural Advisory Commission won’t be happening in Surprise again.
The City Council voted 6-0 on May 5 to bring back the “resign to run” law that requires board and commission members to give up their seats once they submit nomination papers for City Council.
Had it been in effect in April, Mr. Hastings would have been required to give up his seat on the commission once he submitted his papers for the Aug. 4 city election — instead of having to go in front of a committee and the full City Council to fight to keep it.
Councilman David Sanders, Mr. Hastings’s opponent in District 5, abstained from the vote, like he did April 21 when the full Council voted 4-2 to remove Mr. Hastings from the commission.
Mr. Sanders also removed himself from the Boards and Nominations Committee, which has oversight on the city’s various boards. That three-person board met April 10 to recommend Mr. Hastings’s removal for a series of violations. Among them, Arts commission chair Margaret Lieu accused Mr. Hastings of using his commission seat to boost his City Council campaign.
As the matter increasingly became a political hot potato, Mayor Skip Hall asked the City Council to pass a “resign to run” law that would take away that controversy in the future.
City Attorney Robert Wingo said the council approved part of a revised ordinance in November 2017, but Mr. Wingo said the council never OK’d the revisions that added in the “resign to run” portion.
Arizona has a law where members of board and commissions must resign to run for offices, but Mr. Wingo said the state law only applies to salaried, elected or appointed officials, not for volunteer boards.
Surprise’s new law clearly defines when somebody has offered themselves up for election.
“This has been a matter of contention in other jurisdictions,” Mr. Wingo said. “Someone will say, ‘Well, I’m thinking about running.’ And then someone calls them on it and says, ‘Well, you just offered yourself, so you have to resign.”
For Surprise, once a candidate files an official nomination paper, that is when he or she will be required to step down from their city board or commission.
“There’s a clear cut off,” Mr. Wingo said. “Once someone decides and is a serious enough to become a candidate, they file that nomination paper and at that point they would no longer be eligible to be on our boards and commissions.”
The new Surprise law won’t be in effect for members of boards and commissions who are interested in sudden vacancies on the City Council, however.
Vice Mayor Chris Judd pointed out that two members of the council — Patrick Duffy and Mr. Sanders — initially joined the City Council from the Parks and Recreation Commission to fill vacancies.
Mr. Wingo said he didn’t include that in the ordinance he brought for a vote because of the fast processes those seats usually get filled — sometimes as quick as a month.
“There are very strict timelines that have to be followed,” Mr. Wingo said. “I didn’t think it made sense to require that person to resign in that short span of time because a lot of the conflicts of interest that arise wouldn’t be present in that very quick appointment process.”
If multiple people resigned from the board to be considered, Mr. Wingo said the ones not selected would be eligible to rejoin the commissions and boards they left anyway.
Susan deJong, a member of the Arts and Cultural Advisory Commission, wrote an email into the record to ask the Council to not pass the rule.
“We have not had problems with candidates using their positions as commissioners during campaigns,” Ms. deJong said. “You’re choosing to use one instance, when the council could not unanimously agree that an actionable event had occurred, you penalize all future candidates.”
Ms. deJong asked the Council to delay its decision.
“I think it is too soon after this incident [with Mr. Hastings] to make a thoughtful decision on this subject,” she wrote. “I urge you to vote against it, or table this item and have further decision when some time has past.”
Editor’s Note: Jason Stone can be reached at jstone@newszap.com. Visit yourvalley.net.
Former NAU Lumberjack who loves going to concerts (or I did), watching sports (or I did) and hanging out with friends (oh, never mind). I also enjoy backgammon, surfing and men who are not afraid to cry.
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