Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
People waiting to testify on the nondiscrimination ordinance spilled out into the stairwell when the City Council met June 9.
All eyes will be on Mayor Tom Hanel Monday night, when the Billings City Council is finally scheduled to vote on a nondiscrimination ordinance.
Hanel appears to be the swing vote on the 11-member council, and on a roll-call vote the mayor is traditionally the last one to cast his vote.
“I would hate to be in Mr. Hanel’s position,” Ward 5 Councilman Shaun Brown said. “If a guy is going to vote politically, then this is just really tough. There is no right or wrong. You’re going to get slammed whichever way you go.”
Dick Pence, a leader of those opposing the NDO — which would prohibit discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identification or expression — certainly sees Hanel as the linchpin on the vote.
In an email he sent out to other opponents last week, he said “our best resource” on the City Council “tells us that we may have a chance with Mayor Hanel — in their opinion — to defeat this NDO on the 11th.”
Pence, who did not identify the “resource,” said in an interview that nobody really knows how the mayor will vote Monday, but “we’ve certainly been praying for him, and for Robin,” Hanel’s wife.
Pence said Hanel is the swing vote because the council “is divided 5-5 basically along lines of fairly ultraliberal against various shades of conservatism.”
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Mayor Tom Hanel is widely seen as being the swing vote when the City Council meets Monday to vote on the NDO.
Liz Welch, of Billings, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender coordinator for the Montana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Hanel has waffled on the ordinance. After voicing strong support for an NDO before it was brought to the council, Welch said, Hanel voted to table work on the matter, then voted to bring it back for consideration, and then voted to seek a state attorney general’s opinion on the legality of adopting such an ordinance.
“That has given him a very soft leadership position, to be seen as someone who can be swayed that easily,” Welch said.
Welch said the mayor has said more than once that he has “very good friends who are gays and lesbians.”
“I just hope he steps up and shows some really strong leadership on behalf of his friends,” she said.
Hanel, for his part, is not giving any indication how he’ll vote Monday.
“I think my decision will be made Monday night,” he said. “I’m not at liberty to say at this time.”
He did say, though, that he is definitely opposed to delaying the vote any longer, meaning he won’t support any motions to postpone action or to table the ordinance again.
“We need to get it resolved. … It’s important for the sake of our community,” he said.
The City Council has been consumed with the NDO since December, when the city’s Human Relations Commission made a presentation on the subject at a City Council work session.
On Jan. 27, on a motion by Councilwoman Jani McCall, of Ward 4, city staff was directed to bring forward a draft NDO for council review. That touched off months of intense lobbying and public involvement by people for and against the NDO.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
With people lined up in the sidewalk in front of City Hall on June 9, an NDO opponent with a sign reading “Marriage 1 man. 1 woman” harangued people from across the street.
The council has been flooded with thousands of emails and countless letters, phone calls and petitions. Council members have listened to hours and hours of public testimony — including an all-night session on June 9 that apparently was the longest council meeting in the city’s history.
There is a sense on both sides that council members — and everyone else — have heard quite enough on the subject.
“If I had my choice, we wouldn’t speak at all,” said Pence, head of Billings Family Action. That group was formed by the Montana Family Foundation, a very conservative organization based in Laurel, to lead the fight against the NDO, Pence said.
“I’m hoping that eight or 10 or 12 of us will get up and speak very briefly,” Pence said, but there is little he can do if opponents decide to march to the lectern and make one more stab at swaying the council.
Welch said she, too, has been urging supporters of the NDO to allow just a few proponents to speak, and to keep remarks short. But like Pence, she didn’t know what might happen once the public hearing starts.
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t pull strings on everybody,” she said.
Besides McCall, consistent supporters of the NDO on the council have been Brent Cromley, of Ward 1; Becky Bird, Ward 3; Al Swanson, Ward 4; and Ken Crouch, Ward 5.
Those generally opposed have been Mike Yakawich, Ward 1; Denis Pitman and Angela Cimmino, Ward 2; Rich McFadden, Ward 3; and Shaun Brown, Ward 5.
Welch said she thought Brown might possibly join supporters of the NDO, but Brown said in an interview Sunday that that was unlikely.
Brown said he could live with that exemption, but there is another part of the ordinance he sees as a deal breaker. That is the section prohibiting discrimination by business owners.
Brown said he could support a ban on discrimination by “widget makers” and similar businesses, but not by the owners of businesses that provide personal services, like bakeries and photography studios.
“That’s part of having your own business, is doing what you want to do,” Brown said. He might make one last attempt to amend the NDO to address his concerns, he said, but “at this particular point, there seems to be absolutely no give on either side.”
If the NDO stands as is, he said, he will vote no and hopes Hanel will, too.
In the agenda packet that went out to council members last week, city staff outlined six options the council could pursue. The staff recommendation is to approve the NDO on first reading and give it final approval on second reading on Aug. 25, but then to delay the effective date of the ordinance until the attorney general has issued an opinion on the city’s authority to enact such an ordinance.
Other options would be to approve the NDO on first and second reading and allow it to take effect 30 days after second reading — the normal procedure; do the same thing but with amendments to the NDO; put the ordinance up for a public vote sometime in the future; postpone action on the NDO; kill the ordinance outright.
City Administrator Tina Volek said the recommendation was essentially hers. She said it would be imprudent to spend the time and money to create a process for handling complaints of NDO violations, and then to begin actually processing complaints, until the attorney general has issued a ruling. She said late last week that Attorney General Tim Fox’s office has not given any indication of when an opinion might be issued.
McCall said she wants to get the NDO passed, even if it means voting for an ordinance with the locker room exclusion and the delayed enforcement.
“It’s too important,” she said. “Nothing is ever going to be perfect.”
DETAILS: The City Council will meet Monday night at 6:30 on the second floor of City Hall. To accommodate the large crowds expected, the city will allow people into the lobby and conference room on the first floor of City Hall, at 210 N. 27th St. There will be a television in the conference room.
If need be, a line for those wishing to testify during the public hearing will stretch from the lobby through City Hall to the council chamber, on the second floor of the Police Department, 220 N. 27th St.
Street-level doors will open at 5 p.m., and doors to the council chamber will open at 6. Once people testify, they will be asked to leave the chamber to give others a chance to get in.
The meeting will be broadcast live on the city’s cable channel, Community 7, and also streamed live on the Web.
Supporters of the NDO will again be gathering at the First Congregational Church, 310 N. 27th St., where orange shirts and water will be handed out. Supporters can also watch the meeting on TV at the church. Opponents of the ordinance are being encouraged to wear white.
The full text of the ordinance can be seen here, and a short video produced by opponents of the NDO can be seen here.
