An octogenarian elected official wants greater executive control at the expense of the policymaking branch. No, not Donald Trump; we’re talking about Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee.

Lee, who turns 80 in July, wants to convert the city’s government into a “strong-mayor” big-city system under which she would fully control the administration if reelected in November.

It’s disappointing that Lee — elected to office after her predecessor was recalled due to incompetence and federal corruption charges ­— wants to put more, not less, power in the mayor’s office.

The Sheng Thao debacle and the Trump presidency teach us that we should treasure checks on executive power, not undermine them, and strengthen professional, not political, administrative leadership.

Lee’s power grab would also weaken minority influence at City Hall. As more local governments across California rapidly adopt district elections to enhance diverse representation, Lee would downgrade Oakland’s district-elected council members.

It’s a strange move from a former member of Congress known for defense of the underrepresented and contrarian challenges to the federal executive branch.

With the Oakland governance debate ramping up this week, most agree the city’s current structure is broken. But becoming California’s smallest strong-mayor city is not the answer.

Rather, Oakland needs professional, not political, city management, with policy set by a council and a mayor who actually attends meetings. That’s what almost all California cities do. It’s time for Oakland to return to it.

Dysfunction

Under the strong-mayor system Lee proposes, the mayor would be solely responsible for city operations, including hiring and firing the city administrator.

Only four California cities — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Fresno, all larger than Oakland — use a strong-mayor system.

Under the alternative, a council-manager structure, the City Council and mayor hire a professional administrator to run city operations. According to Common Cause, 97% of California cities use council-manager government.

Oakland did too from 1931 until 1998, when then-incoming Mayor Jerry Brown convinced voters to change the system. In 2004, voters made permanent the city’s current structure — a unique hybrid, in which no one and no entity is clearly in charge.

The mayor, with only City Council confirmation, hires the city administrator, who serves at the mayor’s pleasure. Thus, the City Council, has no practical authority over the city administrator.

Conversely, while the mayor proposes a budget, it’s up to the council to approve it. In Oakland, the mayor doesn’t usually participate in council meetings and votes only to break a tie.

The resulting dysfunction leaves neither the mayor, the council members nor the top administrator, who’s loyal first to the mayor, looking beyond the next election.

That helps explain, for example, the city’s perpetual long-term budget shortfalls that elected leaders, and their union backers, try to paper over by repeatedly asking voters to raise taxes on already heavily taxed residents.

Flawed reasoning

In December 2024, Steven Falk, who served twice as Oakland’s interim administrator after 22 years as city manager elsewhere, triggered overdue discussion when he published a critique of the hybrid system.

As Lee took office five months later, she appointed a working group to study the issue. The result was a poorly reasoned report calling for strong-mayor governance.

Lee has glommed on to that document as she presses the City Council to place a strong-mayor charter amendment on the November ballot. The council’s Rules and Legislation Committee will consider the issue on Thursday.

The working group’s members were enamored with the notion of one person in charge. “With a growing structural budget deficit and limited margin for inefficiency,” the group writes, “the city cannot afford diffuse authority or fragmented implementation.”

It seems the working group, and the mayor, don’t want the bother of diverse viewpoints that a district-elected City Council brings.

But Oakland’s problem is not the lack of a supreme leader. It’s the lack of objective financial guidance from an independent professional administrator, and leaders willing to put the city’s long-term good ahead of their immediate political ambitions.

Not even Lee, a revered member of Congress for 27 years who entered office with broad labor and business support, has been willing to take on the city’s biggest problem. After a year in office, while continuing the drumbeat for more taxes, she has not put forth a meaningful plan to address the city’s structural deficit, last forecast at $115 million-$130 million annually.

The working group also claims a strong-mayor system would better represent the voters than the council would: “A strong-mayor system ensures that all residents — regardless of district — have an equal vote in selecting the city’s executive leader.”

It’s a bizarre argument. In fact, Oakland’s mayor is selected disproportionately by voters in the wealthiest parts of the city. According to Falk, in 2022, 45% of the mayoral election vote came from two of the seven City Council districts, from North Oakland and the Oakland hills, which tend to be White, wealthy, college-educated homeowners.

Despite recommending a strong-mayor government, the working group succinctly identifies its dangers. It’s unfortunate the group did not heed its own warnings.

Strong-mayor government “can heighten risks of politicization, misuse of authority, or governance driven by short-term electoral incentives,” the working group wrote. Its success “depends heavily on the competence of the mayor; an able campaigner is not necessarily an able administrator.”

That last point has been repeatedly proven in Oakland, which has a history of bad mayors: Ron Dellums was absentee; Jean Quan was dismissive of mounting pension liabilities that today strangle the city budget; and Thao was unprepared for the job and allegedly corrupt.

Any change in governance should be designed to withstand the test of time, and the variable quality of elected leaders.

A better option

It’s mind-boggling that council members would consider undermining their own authority and the influence of their constituents. Especially when there’s a much better alternative.

The council-manager system was an early 20th century Progressive Era reform that followed years of widespread corruption, graft and nepotism in U.S. cities. It’s designed to diffuse special-interest power and eliminate politics from municipal hiring, firing and contracting.

As the working group notes, council-manager government “aims for professional administration and unified legislative power, with a clear boundary between policy setting and management.”

Falk, the former city manager who triggered this debate, has led his own group studying the issue. Warning that the City Council would be further disempowered under a strong-mayor system, Falk supports moving to a council-manager structure.

But he’s sympathetic to the working group’s desire for a single political figure with some accountability for outcome. So, he suggests a key modification.

Under Falk’s “third option,” the mayor, who would chair the City Council, would also hold veto power, which could be overridden by two-thirds of the council. The power would include a line-item veto for the city’s budget. It could, he argues, impose a new level of fiscal discipline.

He’s not suggesting that the mayor would administer the city. Rather, the mayor would have additional influence on the council’s policy-making.

With or without his modification, council-manager government is exactly what Oakland needs. That’s where the council should start its discussion this week instead of with Mayor Lee’s raw grab for power.

Daniel Borenstein is editor-at-large for the opinion section.