{"id":322784,"date":"2026-05-19T12:29:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T12:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322784\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T12:29:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T12:29:24","slug":"borenstein-oakland-mayor-barbara-lees-audacious-power-grab-has-tone-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322784\/","title":{"rendered":"Borenstein: Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee\u2019s audacious power grab has tone of Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

An octogenarian elected official wants greater executive control<\/a> at the expense of the policymaking branch. No, not Donald Trump; we\u2019re talking about Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee.<\/p>\n

Lee, who turns 80 in July, wants to convert the city\u2019s government into a \u201cstrong-mayor\u201d<\/a> big-city system under which she would fully control the administration if reelected in November.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s disappointing that Lee \u2014 elected to office after her predecessor was recalled<\/a> due to incompetence<\/a> and federal corruption charges<\/a> \u00ad\u2014 wants to put more, not less, power in the mayor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s power grab would also weaken minority influence at City Hall. As more local governments across California rapidly adopt district elections<\/a> to enhance diverse representation, Lee would downgrade Oakland\u2019s district-elected council members.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange move from a former member of Congress known for defense of the underrepresented and contrarian challenges to the federal executive branch.<\/p>\n

With the Oakland governance debate ramping up this week, most agree the city\u2019s current structure is broken. But becoming California\u2019s smallest strong-mayor city is not the answer.<\/p>\n

Rather, Oakland needs professional, not political, city management, with policy set by a council and a mayor who actually attends meetings. That\u2019s what almost all California cities do. It\u2019s time for Oakland to return to it.<\/p>\n

Dysfunction<\/p>\n

Under the strong-mayor system Lee proposes<\/a>, the mayor would be solely responsible for city operations, including hiring and firing the city administrator.<\/p>\n

Only four California cities \u2014 Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Fresno, all larger than Oakland \u2014 use a strong-mayor system.<\/p>\n

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

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\u2019s current structure \u2014 a unique hybrid, in which no one and no entity is clearly in charge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The mayor, with only City Council confirmation, hires the city administrator, who serves at the mayor\u2019s pleasure. Thus, the City Council, has no practical authority over the city administrator.<\/p>\n

Conversely, while the mayor proposes a budget, it\u2019s up to the council to approve it. In Oakland, the mayor doesn\u2019t usually participate in council meetings and votes only to break a tie.<\/p>\n

The resulting dysfunction leaves neither the mayor, the council members nor the top administrator, who\u2019s loyal first to the mayor, looking beyond the next election.<\/p>\n

That helps explain, for example, the city\u2019s perpetual long-term budget shortfalls that elected leaders, and their union backers, try to paper over by repeatedly asking voters to raise taxes<\/a> on already heavily taxed residents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Flawed reasoning<\/p>\n

In December 2024, Steven Falk, who served twice as Oakland\u2019s interim administrator after 22 years as city manager elsewhere, triggered overdue discussion when he published a critique of the hybrid system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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\u2019s Rules and Legislation Committee will consider the issue on Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The working group\u2019s members were enamored with the notion of one person in charge. \u201cWith a growing structural budget deficit and limited margin for inefficiency,\u201d the group writes, \u201cthe city cannot afford diffuse authority or fragmented implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems the working group, and the mayor, don\u2019t want the bother of diverse viewpoints that a district-elected City Council brings.<\/p>\n

But Oakland\u2019s problem is not the lack of a supreme leader. It\u2019s the lack of objective financial guidance from an independent professional administrator, and leaders willing to put the city\u2019s long-term good ahead of their immediate political ambitions.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s biggest problem. After a year in office, while continuing the drumbeat for more taxes<\/a>, she has not put forth a meaningful plan to address the city\u2019s structural deficit, last forecast at $115 million-$130 million annually<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The working group also claims a strong-mayor system would better represent the voters than the council would: \u201cA strong-mayor system ensures that all residents \u2014 regardless of district \u2014 have an equal vote in selecting the city\u2019s executive leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bizarre argument. In fact, Oakland\u2019s mayor is selected disproportionately by voters in the wealthiest parts of the city. According to Falk, in 2022, 45% of the mayoral election vote<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Despite recommending a strong-mayor government, the working group succinctly identifies its dangers. It\u2019s unfortunate the group did not heed its own warnings.<\/p>\n

Strong-mayor government \u201ccan heighten risks of politicization, misuse of authority, or governance driven by short-term electoral incentives,\u201d the working group wrote. Its success \u201cdepends heavily on the competence of the mayor; an able campaigner is not necessarily an able administrator.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Any change in governance should be designed to withstand the test of time, and the variable quality of elected leaders.<\/p>\n

A better option<\/p>\n

It\u2019s mind-boggling that council members would consider undermining their own authority and the influence of their constituents. Especially when there\u2019s a much better alternative.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. It\u2019s designed to diffuse special-interest power and eliminate politics from municipal hiring, firing and contracting.<\/p>\n

As the working group notes, council-manager government \u201caims for professional administration and unified legislative power, with a clear boundary between policy setting and management.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> structure.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s sympathetic to the working group\u2019s desire for a single political figure with some accountability for outcome. So, he suggests a key modification.<\/p>\n

Under Falk\u2019s \u201cthird option,\u201d<\/a> 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\u2019s budget. It could, he argues, impose a new level of fiscal discipline.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not suggesting that the mayor would administer the city. Rather, the mayor would have additional influence on the council\u2019s policy-making.<\/p>\n

With or without his modification, council-manager government is exactly what Oakland needs. That\u2019s where the council should start its discussion this week instead of with Mayor Lee\u2019s raw grab for power.<\/p>\n

Daniel Borenstein is editor-at-large for the opinion section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An octogenarian elected official wants greater executive control at the expense of the policymaking branch. No, not Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,7,964,332,181,205,100,143,145,406,144,975,2082,13],"class_list":["post-322784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-commentary","tag-east-bay","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-mayor","tag-oakland-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}