The Associated Students of Madison’s Legislative Affairs Committee announced Tuesday it will have the power to recommend the new student representative recently approved by the mayor for the city’s alcohol committee.
The additional citizen position was granted to the Alcohol License Review Committee by Madison’s City Council Nov. 3 and promised to a student by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on Nov. 2. The power to recommend a student to the new position, originally given to ASM, will now be deferred to Legislative Affairs.
“We are getting some institutional power that we really haven’t had in the past few years,” Chair Adam Johnson said.
He added the committee has received many commendations from alders on their interest in city affairs, as some have felt students have not shown this amount of interest in a long time.
Josh Molter, a second year law student on the committee, said he had strong opinions on the subject of the additional citizen position approved by ALRC and the initial controversy surrounding it, but was enthusiastic about the opportunity to recommend a student to the mayor.
Johnson said the committee hopes to recommend UW senior Mark Woulf, the current student technical advisor who sits on the committee without voting powers. Johnson put the recommendation on the meeting’s agenda in hopes of spurring conversation.
“[I] really had planned … to take it to tomorrow’s Student Council meeting. Then we could go ahead and recommend it to the mayor,” Johnson said.
However, no decision was made.
Woulf was appointed to the student technical position by Brittany Wiegand, chair of ASM last year, and was re-appointed by current ASM Chair Tyler Junger. If Woulf were to be selected for the citizen position for ALRC, ASM would defer to Legislative Affairs to screen and choose a replacement.
He added it would be prudent to recommend Woulf to the mayor for the citizen position, since Woulf is interested in the voting position, knows the system already and has a rapport built up with the alders on the committee, who would appreciate his value if he was going to work with them.
The committee also discussed switching to biweekly meetings to be able to attend more of the City Council meetings, which are held twice a month.
