On the council and upcoming Winter Session: The special session on inauguration day ended with a coin toss. The council was selecting a temporary Speaker to administer the official duties of the Council until Winter Session where a official Speaker can be selected. The council ended with an even split 12 to 12 between 2 candidates prompting a coin toss to settle the tie. This suggested a divided council which is further reinforced by the bills being put up for consideration next Monday. A unified or mostly unified council would have been nice in definitively concluding the presidential fiasco. But, I guess that just wasnt meant to be. Possible items for the next council: A bill modifying the Language requirement for the elected offices of the Navajo Nation including president. This is essentially the same bill from the last council, with a better introduction and sponsored by Nate Brown, a 1st time delegate. It seeks to modify the current requirement by adding the wording saying that fluency will be determined by the voters. The same type of bill was vetoed by Shelly once, the council attempted to override the veto and failed to get enough votes. Leonard Tsosie passed the same bill minus retroactive language a 2nd time, which again was vetoed and without time to attempt a veto override. President Shelly on both vetoes stressed the importance of formally presenting this question to the voters in the form of a referendum. Since Shelly is temporary president it is likely he will veto this bill if passed again. But hey, 3rd times a charm? Of course if Shelly wasnt president and the council appointed a President the veto would be less of a threat, speaking of which... There is a bill by Witherspoon suggesting we install Shelly until the next President is elected and sworn in. The original agreement between Bates and Shelly calls for the Branch heads to meet and discuss what is in the best interest moving forward. Passing this bill would make removal more difficult. However not passing it would be just a first step towards removing Shelly. Shelly did sign the bill authorizing a special election into law that the last council passed. However Witherspoon is pushing a bill asking to void the bill entirely. This would cancel the special election putting us back to the first election between Shirley and Begaye. The problem with carrying out that election was a matter of funding. A problem Witherspoon attempted to previously solve only to see his amendments and attempts to fund the election fail. He is again sponsoring a bill for funding. Tsosie is sponsoring bills to add a write in option and to change the process for emergency legislation. The courts are waiting for briefs to be filed. So it is coming down to the same faction(s) vs faction inter council struggle that plagued our last council. Hopefully during debates and committee they are able to find a compromise and stop the legislation, counter legislation and litigation threatening to push this election even further into uncertainty.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 03:19:44 +0000
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