Chair Lee questions MOIA on challenges of being a mayoral office versus agency

Okay, so I'll go through my questions quickly because I know we have others that need to ask questions.

So since MOIA is a mayoral office technically and not a full-fledged city agency, what specific challenges and limitations does this structure present in terms of funding, operational capacity, and policy implementation?

Because I know you have to go across a lot of different city agencies.

Yeah, this is a great question.

I think it's actually a really important conversation that should be had.

And it does, you know, I think that it deserves.

More nuanced and sort of a binary answer of like should MOIA be an agency or not.

You know right now MOIA's structure as an office it does create certain limitations because we are like you said fundamentally a coordinating office rather than a standalone operational

agency and much of our work does require sustained partnership across city government.

But at the same time, I think that there are some real strengths to the current structure that we should take into consideration.

Being housed within City Hall, for example, gives MOIA

the direct proximity to executive decision-making on issues related to immigrants and immigrant inclusion,

it really allows us to also elevate our concerns as a citywide priority rather than being siloed into a standalone agency.

But I say all this to say that, you know, I think it's really important for me, and I'm glad you raised the issue of input and engagement with advocates.

I think this is a conversation that needs to be had more broadly with other stakeholders, you know, to fully understand, you know, what will the impact be, in fact, if we were to transition into an agency or not.

And is there, are there regular meetings or task force groups or conversations?