Endorsement: Oakland voters should reject Measure EE plan that politicizes administration

The big issue for Oakland voters this year is not who should be mayor but rather how much authority the mayor should have.

Barbara Lee, 80, seems almost certain to win reelection. But voters should reject her proposal that the mayor serve as the top administrative official, weakening the district-elected City Council. Measure EE would affect not just Lee but also any mayor that comes after her.

One shudders to think what might have happened if such power had been concentrated in Lee’s predecessor, recalled Mayor Sheng Thao, who budgeted recklessly and is now charged with corruption.

The last thing Oakland needs is a politicized city administration with the mayor running the show. Instead, it needs a professional city manager who is accountable to the mayor and council members.

That’s what almost all California cities do. And that’s how Oakland was governed 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.

On the other hand, while the mayor currently 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 is loyal first to the mayor, clearly in charge.

Most agree the current system is broken. Lee’s proposal would make it even worse. She would make Oakland the smallest “strong-mayor” city in California.

The mayor, rather than a professional city administrator, would manage most departments and appoint most department heads. And under Measure EE, the mayor could veto legislation or items in the budget approved by the council. An override would require support of three-fourths of the eight-member council.

This plan is horrible. So horrible that Lee, despite her current political influence and popularity, could not convince a City Council majority to put Measure EE on the ballot. The council split 4-4, forcing Lee to cast the tiebreaker.

Not even the sweeteners added to assuage council members were enough. Measure EE contains council salary increases and the creation of a separate Office of the Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst to advise the council — all estimated to cost an additional $2 million to $2.6 million in the first year.

But Lee still didn’t win over a council majority for good reason: Measure EE would weaken Oakland’s district-elected council members, giving voters less influence at City Hall.

The whole point of district elections is to give local regions of the city more voice. That’s why state law now pushes most local governments to adopt district elections, rather than elections at-large. Measure EE would undermine that in Oakland.

There’s no doubt the city’s current structure is broken. But Lee’s scheme would exacerbate the problems rather than fix them.

To understand why, look no further than the comments of the working group Lee hand-picked to study Oakland’s government structure. It recommended a strong-mayor system, but only after warning that it could “heighten risks of politicization, misuse of authority, or governance driven by short-term electoral incentives.”

The success of a strong-mayor system, the group wrote, “depends heavily on the competence of the mayor; an able campaigner is not necessarily an able administrator.”

Ain’t that the truth. Oakland 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.

Instead, the city should be looking at returning to a traditional council-manager form of government, which 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. According to Common Cause, 97% of California cities use council-manager government. It would also require the mayor to attend council meetings and participate in open debate.

Voters should reject an imperial mayor system. They should vote no on Measure EE.