It looks like Denton has entered the homestretch in the
marathon reform of its natural gas drilling and production ordinance. On
September 11, City Council approved a second extension of the moratorium and
unveiled a timeline leading to adoption of the final ordinance in December. It
will begin with release of the draft ordinance at a meeting of the Gas Well
Task Force on October 1. This comes after a long “scientific and legal review”
conducted by City Staff and consultants. Indeed, since the last Task Force
meeting on March 26, the process of drafting a new ordinance has been
sequestered behind a veil of technical expertise.
Even City Councilmembers have not had a peek behind the
curtain. Yet during the May 8 City Council meeting, our elected officials requested
a process that would be more iterative and transparent. They wanted to see what
the scientific and legal experts made of minority recommendations that were not
unanimously passed by the Task Force. They wanted a Council work session on
such alternative proposals. They also wanted to see a comparative report of
other city ordinances to show what they are doing that we may not be doing and
explain why. They wanted a comprehensive summary of the legal landscape, which
details relevant lawsuits faced by other municipalities. And they made clear
that these steps should happen prior to
the release of a draft ordinance.
Yet none of this has happened as we approach the grand unveiling
of the draft ordinance. This gives me a sinking feeling that over the past six
months this expert review process has outrun the democratic process. Rather
than provide some initial suggestions and alternative options for Council input
and public deliberation, it looks like it is going to supply a finished product
for an up or down vote.
My concern is that the product of this technical review
process is going to be presented as a fait accompli – as the shape that our ordinance must take. It will be a juggernaut
with so much momentum provided by the heft of scientific and legal expertise
that democratic deliberation will be bowled over. Any ideas the public may have
will not fit with the current framing and will derail the process. The train
has left the station and is chugging down the tracks.
In the May 8 meeting, Mayor Burroughs said that for Staff to
present a finalized legal document would be “a waste of a lot of resources” and
that the ordinance must be in a “developmental stage” if public input was to be
effective.
There is clearly a culture clash at work here between
Council and Staff. The root of it is the fact that such an ordinance is Janus-faced.
On one hand, it is a technical document that must be enforceable and
justifiable according to complex legal standards. Doing this part well requires
experienced and expert crafting. On the other hand, it is a political document
that expresses community values. Doing
this part well requires democratic deliberation and leadership from elected
officials.
What makes balancing this core conflict between experts and
citizens so challenging is that there is no clear dividing line between the
technical realm of expertise and the values realm of the public sphere.
Yet the ordinance review process presumes just such a strict
dividing line. This is the heart of the problem. The assumption is that the experts
are taking the values expressed at Task Force and Council meetings and
packaging them into technical language. This packaging is seen as a neutral act
that leaves the values untouched. If that is the case, then the public can now
passively await the technical outcome of their deliberations.
But things are messier than that. First, the values are contested with remaining disagreements about how to prioritize basic goods and
goals (thus the Council request to include minority recommendations). Second,
even if there were consensus on this level it is not possible to remain
value-neutral when writing technical language. The final wording will
inevitably give the underlying values a certain valence and trajectory (just
think about how a clause like “whenever feasible” could change things entirely).
Third, the technical review process necessarily included only a very limited
sub-set of scientific and legal experts. But there is a great deal of
disagreement even among the experts when it comes to shale gas development and
its regulation by municipalities.
This means that over the past six months, as citizen
involvement has been forced into hibernation, values judgments were being made
and built into the ordinance. But this has happened behind closed doors and has
been masked as a supposedly neutral and technical operation. This is what I call black-boxing:a process where values judgments are made behind the cloak of neutral, expert calculations. Just as the magician does
not let us peek behind the curtain where the crucial transformation occurs.
Viola, a rabbit! Viola, an ordinance!
It may not be too late to restore democratic legitimacy and
genuine public involvement. But doing so will require treating the draft
ordinance for what it is – a document that reflects the hard work of our
dedicated Staff and consultants, but one that retains a great deal of
contingencies that could legitimately be altered. We must be wary of treating
the ordinance as a black box that simply must be the way it is because the experts have made it so.
When I started the process of speaking before the city council in 2009 I knew in my heart it would come down to this. "Just quit" my husband would say "the city is not listening to you" "your wasting your time" "you are going to lose" but Sharon and I kept on trying. We suggested the city look at Southlake and Coppell's drilling ordinances but were told "we don't want to copy another city's ordinances". It felt at times as if Sharon and I were demonized and called extremist, tree hugger, leftist socialist, but still we kept on fighting.
ReplyDeleteWhen Adam and Dag came into to the picture it gave me renewed hope. Maybe the citizens of Denton would get their voices back. Maybe we could get stronger more protective ordinances passed. All my hopes were crushed when Ed Ireland was placed on the drilling task force because I knew then it was all about the industry's demands and not the publics needs. I tried to tell people during the last election that in order to bring about change we needed to change the makeup of the city council but I failed at that also.
Now, as a group, we will try and shape the new ordinances to represent the wants and needs of the citizens of Denton but once again in my heart I know we will fail.
I can hear my husband over my shoulder saying "quit wasting your time" "they are not going to listen to you" "you will lose" and this time I know he is right.