I think that refers to the council proposals. There's a standard 'opening set' that you see in Chapter 1. After that, they're randomly chosen from a fairly long list about once every three turns.
If you play a 'custom campaign' then the council decisions are random from the outset, but you won't be going through the three phases or have the Raven elements of the story that appear in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of the Story campaign. (You also start out married in a custom campaign.)
