Although the firestorm over the Marine Recruiting Center died down over six months ago, the issue is still fresh in the mind of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.

If reelected, Bates said he would attempt to fix the system that he says contributed to the controversy.

Last January, the City Council decided to call Marine recruiters in Berkeley "uninvited and unwelcome intruders," following a recommendation from the Peace and Justice Commission. The resolution touched off a 2,000-person protest outside a subsequent council meeting.

Currently, reports from the city's 40 citizen-run boards and commissions go straight to the council agenda. These commissions are designed to bring new ideas to the council, but sometimes, council members say, commission reports can lack essential information, leading to issues like the recruiting center controversy.

If reelected, Bates would strive to enable the preexisting, mayor-appointed agenda committee to ask for more information from the comissions or more time for city staff to prepare analyses before the reports reach the council.

But critics of the idea say it would decrease government transparency and keep commission ideas from being heard.

In Bates's mind, there is no doubt as to whether the controversy could have been prevented under his plan.

"The Peace and Justice Commission recommended volatile language and it was not properly vetted by the City Council," he said at a candidate forum hosted by The Daily Californian. "It could have been handled in a much different way."

But commission members differ on whether Bates's plan would have helped prevent the recruiting controversy.

Bob Meola, chair of the Peace and Justice Commission, said the issue would not have been prevented by Bates's proposal.

"There's absolutely no problem there except that the City Council supposedly read something and passed it and then wished they hadn't; there was no lack of communication," he said.

While Meola doesn't support Bates's proposal, others said it would make the governing process more efficient.

Agenda committee member and Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said the new setup would allow for a dialogue between the committee and the commission, which currently does not happen until council meetings.

"The agenda committee would have the opportunity to review these things and say, 'Gee, we don't think it's quite complete yet,' or 'We should wait for a staff report laying out the costs and implications,'" he said.

But Meola said the new system could hurt time-sensitive reports.

"When a commission passes something, it's well thought-out and it's ready for the council," he said. "To review it could be damaging to the time-sensitivity of the issue and I think often would also be just totally unnecessary."

Others disagreed on whether Bates's proposal would impact government transparency.

Currently, the council can ask for more information or the city manager can ask for additional time to evaluate a report, but these procedures can still create long debates at meetings where the council does not often reach a decision.

James Samuels, chair of the Planning Commission, said Bates's idea would increase transparency by shortening meetings.

"The whole thrust of that is to increase public awareness and connection to what's happening in the city," he said.

But Bates's opponent, former mayor Shirley Dean, said his plan would actually decrease transparency because it would suppress reports.

"What the mayor is really talking about is the power to kill the item out of the view of the public and I think that's wrong," she said.

Bates defended his idea as allowing other voices to have input into the process.

"We should have a chance to vet it and we can say, 'Wait a minute, this is not ready to go in this shape and we want to revise it,' and we have the opportunity to have other people look at it," he said at the forum.

Tags: LOCAL ELECTIONS 2008, CITY COMMISSIONS, CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS 2008, TOM BATES