A year-long effort to change how power is distributed in Oakland’s government just got a little more real.
A City Council committee will hear an official proposal later this month to turn Oakland into a “strong mayor” city. Then the full council will decide whether to put the proposal on the November ballot.
Currently, Oakland has a hybrid form of government, where authority is divided between the mayor, the city administrator, and the City Council in an unusual system that many people say is confusing and ineffective.
After she was elected last year, Mayor Barbara Lee set up a task force to explore changing Oakland’s charter. That group came out with recommendations early this year to adopt a strong mayor system.
This week, the mayor and Council President Kevin Jenkins proposed a ballot measure based on these recommendations. The Rules and Legislation Committee of the council will take up the item on May 21.
The mayor’s office and the task force facilitators have met and negotiated with councilmembers in recent weeks about the measure. The proposal this week indicates the mayor may believe she has the necessary votes to get it on the ballot.
What is a ‘strong mayor’ city?
Under Lee and Jenkins’ plan, the mayor would get veto power over the city budget and other legislation passed by the council. But the council could override a veto with a two-thirds vote. The mayor would directly oversee city departments instead of having that work filtered through the city administrator, who currently has more authority over day-to-day work. (The city administrator would remain in place, but their role would change.)
Some of these changes would be rolled out over time if the measure passed in November.
The council’s power would also be strengthened in other ways. It would have the authority to create an independent “budget and legislative analyst office” to assist councilmembers in researching and writing policy without relying on the mayor and their administration. (However, there is no funding baked into the measure for this office; officials would need to budget for it.)
The proposed ballot measure would also create a process for determining and raising councilmember salaries in alignment with how other positions in the city already work. The council would no longer be in charge of setting the mayor’s salary; that would be the Public Ethics Commission’s role.
In a press release Thursday, Lee’s office said that strengthening the mayor’s power and clarifying everyone’s roles will patch a “fragmented” chain of command.
“Residents want a system where there are no questions about who is responsible for delivering results on public safety, homelessness, infrastructure, and basic services,” Lee said.
One key piece of the task force’s recommendations is missing from the new proposal. The group had suggested eliminating the at-large seat on the City Council, currently occupied by Rowena Brown. Their reasoning: there’s already a citywide elected official — the mayor — and having an even number of seats on the council creates the opportunity for a tie. Brown had, perhaps unsurprisingly, balked at this proposal.
Brown was not available on Thursday to respond to an inquiry about whether she’ll support the ballot measure now that her position has been retained.
Previously, councilmembers Ken Houston and Zac Unger had expressed some opposition to a strong mayor city. On Thursday, Houston said “my mind is not made up” until he sees the full proposal and what’s changed, but said he still doesn’t support a classical strong mayor system.
“I would like the mayor to sit on the council with us — see the heartache, the joy; it’s a rollercoaster,” Houston said. He also said the council should have direct authority over the city administrator.
“I got elected under this charter,” he said. “I’m not running again if my power gets lessened.”
The proposed legislation from Lee and Jenkins, which we’ve reviewed in draft form, says councilmembers cannot order or coerce city staff to do anything, as is currently the case. However, they would be able to speak directly with city staff and request information, which has to be provided in a timely manner. The idea, the legislation says, is to enable councilmembers to better address constituent concerns.
Unger told us Thursday that he’s “undecided” and has been making suggestions to people working on the mayor’s proposal.
Would voters go for a strong mayor, or do they want something else?
Three recent polls — by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce; a new organization called the East Bay Polling Institute; and David Binder Research, contracted by the facilitators of the mayor’s task force on charter reform — have all suggested that a majority of Oakland voters favor the strong mayor system.
But an opposing idea has gained some traction. Even before Lee was elected, former Oakland City Administrator Steven Falk and others established an organization to look into charter reform.
The system they’ve landed on is more similar to the other classic — and more common, in California — model of governance, a council-manager system. Their proposal would convert the mayor into a voting member of the City Council. The mayor would chair the council and would have veto power over legislation. The council as a whole would hire a city manager to lead the administration. All in all, most power in the city would rest with the council, like Houston supports.
A couple of councilmembers expressed interest in that idea in the past. Falk on Thursday said his group has asked for sponsors on council to propose a ballot measure with their system, but he isn’t sure whether that will happen. In a recent newsletter, his group accused the mayor’s office of putting “intense pressure” on councilmembers to support its plan. (The mayor’s office declined to comment on this accusation.)
Falk said he trusts the council to make a considered decision on the matter.
“They’re fiercely independent,” he said. “They’re not going to just roll over and relinquish their judgment on this matter. This is a difficult decision for them because what a strong mayor system would do is empower the mayor’s office at the expense of the City Council.”
Proponents of the mayor’s plan reject this characterization, saying the measure on the table would give the council more resources and maintain checks and balances through the ability to override a mayoral veto.
The mayor’s task force held numerous community meetings and surveyed other cities and experts to come up with its recommendations. A number of people in the know have told us the mayor intentionally stayed away from that process and didn’t know what they’d end up proposing.
Nevertheless, it’s not surprising, Falk quipped, that a mayor and a former interim mayor (Jenkins) would support a plan giving that office more authority.
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