The Greensboro City Council kicked off its yearly effort to produce a “legislative agenda,” which is a list of items the council would like the North Carolina state legislature to pass.
The major difference in this year’s legislative agenda is that the City of Greensboro has a brand-new employee dedicated to creating the legislative agenda – a task that previously had been done by the city legal department.
The new Intergovernmental Relations Manager LaToya Caesar-Crawford began her presentation with “What is a Legislative Agenda?” City Councilmember Hugh Holston and Caesar-Crawford have never been through the biennial legislative agenda process, but every other member of the City Council has had a hand in developing numerous legislative agendas. City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson has helped develop about 15 legislative agendas.
Caesar-Crawford, who has only been working for the city for two months, in her report states, the “City Council adopts Federal and State Legislative Agendas to guide its advocacy in a given legislative session.” In fact, the city does not adopt a federal legislative agenda.
The report, which Caesar-Crawford read aloud to the City Council, also states, “A legislative agenda’s defined outcome is to leverage federal and state opportunities/policies to enhance city services to residents and businesses.”
The state legislative agendas in the past have been a list of items that the City Council would like to have the state legislature pass as bills.
Caesar-Crawford’s report also includes what could be termed a current events update listing the size of the state budget and some of the initiatives in the state budget for the past two years.
And the report also had this: “Notable accomplishments of most recent session of the US Congress that support City strategic priorities
“• American Rescue Plan Act (2021
“• Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (2021)
“• Inflation Reduction Act (2022)
“• Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (2022)”
If any city councilmember didn’t know what Congress had been doing in the past year, now they do.
“Noble accomplishments”? Who thot that one up?
She flies in circles to the left obviously.
Oh boy…can you see where this endeavor is going? Sprinkle the pixie dust on everything. Another tax paid created job which will have little or no results.
All I can sa is “FUBAR” !
So, the city hired a new employee to do what an existing employee(s) has been doing for years. That begs the question, why? Was the legal department doing an unacceptable job of producing a legislative agenda? What other duties does the Relations Manager LaToya Caesar-Crawford do? My intuition is that Caesar-Crawford’s hire had nothing to do with City needs but a way of lightening the workload of the city manager; or, pure cronyism,
Rewarding the faithful.