Commentary: Laguna council’s subcommittee process inherently biased

When we were very young, many of us learned that the fairest way for two people to share a cookie was to have one person split it in two and let the other person have first choice of the resulting pieces. It gave the cookie breaker the motivation to be as fair as possible when splitting the cookie.

Recently, two local issues that could have a long-term impact on the character of the community and our quality of life — design of a community survey and drafting an alternative to the Planning Commission’s recommendation regarding short-term lodging — have been relegated to council member subcommittees.

While presumably not illegal, the process is at least questionable and potentially less than fully democratic.

Here’s how the process works: The City Council sends two members to work on an issue and come back with a recommendation. By definition, they will come up with something on which they will agree. And if they come back with a recommendation, they will look pretty silly if they then don’t vote for whatever they recommend. So now the full council deliberation starts off with two votes already determined.

All that is needed is one more vote. And since a majority of the council had agreed to trust the two on the subcommittee with the responsibility to study the issue and the authority to recommend an action, it would be awkward for the remaining council members to not abide by the recommendation of the subcommittee. So in essence, the process has a built-in bias.

There are alternative ways to address this problem:

Simply eliminate the practice of assigning projects to two-council-person subcommittees.

Increase the number of council members from five to seven or nine.

Or, and this may be the fairest and most practical, like the cookie breaker, retain the two-person subcommittee but don’t allow its members to vote on the issue.

After the subcommittee does its work and makes its recommendation, like any other issue where there is a conflict of interest, the subcommittee members leave the room and the remaining three council members deliberate and make the decision.

JOHN THOMAS lives in Laguna Beach.