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Friday, February 10, 2012
A road map to the strong mayor debate
by Kathleen Haley, published on January 21, 2010 at 9:38 PM
Storyline: Sacramento City Hall / Politics
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Developments affecting Mayor Kevin Johnson’s strong mayor initiative have been highly controversial and complex.
Several entities have weighed in on the initiative, including the Sacramento City Council, the Sacramento County Superior Court and the Sacramento Charter Review Committee. Government officials, attorneys and citizens have interpreted the initiative in a variety of ways.
Here’s a road map to make sense of some of the key events in the strong mayor debate:
Johnson’s Day One Plan: Before taking office, Johnson promotes a strong mayor form of government in his “Day One” plan. An executive mayor system would mean that one leader would be accountable, Johnson says.
“Explore a change to the city charter moving to a strong mayor structure,” the plan states. “We need a single point of accountability in our city and to know where the buck stops. We should engage in a dialogue to determine if we can improve our city government through a different governance structure.”
February 2009: The City Council unanimously forms the charter review committee. Johnson votes in favor of the committee. Council members direct the committee to examine the strong mayor format.
May 18, 2009: The Charter Review Committee talks to academics about strong mayor government systems.
June 26, 2009: Sacramentans for Accountable Government (SAG), the group running the strong mayor campaign, brings to City Hall signatures from residents who favor the initiative. Acting city spokeswoman Wendy Klock-Johnson says the papers with the signatures filled 13 boxes.
Aug. 6, 2009: The City Council decides in a 5-4 vote to put the strong mayor initiative on the June 2010 ballot. Council members Sandy Sheedy, Rob Fong, Kevin McCarty and Bonnie Pannell vote against placing it on the June 8 ballot. Before the City Council made this decision, the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters had declared that SAG received the required number of signatures (32,433) to place the initiative on the ballot.
Sept. 3, 2009: The Charter Review Committee favors the idea to allow the Sacramento mayor to appoint the city manager.
Oct. 19, 2009: The Charter Review Committee recommends that the City Council maintain its existing council/manager system. The committee opposes the idea of a strong mayor government for Sacramento. However, the committee recommends altering the current system to give the mayor the power to appoint the city manager. In the city’s council/manager system, the city manager is appointed by the City Council.
Dec. 1, 2009: Bill Camp files a lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court challenging the strong mayor initiative. Defendants in the case are the city of Sacramento, the Sacramento City Council and Thomas Hiltachk, the attorney who wrote the strong mayor initiative. Camp contends in his lawsuit that the initiative breaks state law because it would create major changes to the city’s charter. He argues that that an initiative can amend, but not change, a city charter.
Jan. 14, 2010: Mayor Kevin Johnson reacts to Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster’s initial decision that the initiative should not go on the June ballot. “Voters deserve and have a right to vote on this initiative,” Johnson says.
Jan. 21, 2010: McMaster issues a final ruling saying the initiative should not be placed on the June ballot. He writes that the initiative would not align with state law. He determines that the initiative is a revision of the city charter, not an amendment.
Jan. 21, 2010: Thomas Hiltachk says SAG will appeal McMaster’s ruling to the 3rd District Court of Appeal.
Photo by Anthony Bento.
Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
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Yet you railed against the far more competent incumbent for issues that were not in her sphere of influence or area of responsibility, and you very publicly contributed to the cascade of events that brought this pathologically disturbed idiot and his tribe of suckups, sycophants, and siblings into political being.
Now you backtrack???
Well, that's par for the course apparently, for MANY of KJ's early supporters have done so, as have many among his kitchen cabinet of faux-volunteer staffers -- only those who can't get jobs elsewhere have stayed...
I'd suggest THINKING more clearly next time you provide a public platform, and are paid to do so, by some local pol attempting to dazzle and charm an audience you're trying to cultivate while neglecting the pesky details of their insidious past....
Shame on you!
Joe Sac has had some great articles on this issue over the past year. Like you, he's a good writer and believes in what he says. He's a good guy and I admire him 100%
I do disagree on one thing -- I'm the better writer...
Your description of SF is simply untrue -- it, to this day, is one of the great and beautiful and profoundly cosmopolitan cities in the world. I don't know what areas in the city you frequent, but I would suggest that your comparison with Chicago is simply unbased.
Chicago has its slums and ghettos, just like every other major city in the world. What it doesn't have is a naturally hilly landscape affording SF's views -- Chicago instead has highrises, impressive to some, but just more dangerous kleenex boxes to me.
When I was younger, and single, I would stop off in Chicago about every two months or so, to visit and snap photos of all of the major and influential buildings in and around the city, especially those of Frank Lloyd Wright. I know Chicago well enough to know that while it's a lovely town, SF is just 'better'....
To attribute Chicago's condition to either Mayor Daley is simply unfounded, though as with all politicos they tend to grab credit for whatever takes place on their watch, and to avoid blame for the same. The current Mayor Daley is a reaction to a former mayor, Harold Washington, who died far too young, and who was truly a man of Chicago's vast working population. Daley couldn't shine Mayor Washington's shoes in terms of integrity and achievement and effective LEADERSHIP, especially with regard to cultivation of employment.
Achievement doesn't take a 'strong mayor initiative' -- it takes LEADERSHIP, and the two are vastly different concepts. Unfortunately, most who tout KJ and his merry band of fops, are unable to distinguish between the two, or the realize that the latter is far more important than the former...
As for the cleanliness of our fair city....It is FILTHY!!! I have lived in many cities including San Francisco and Chicago. You can not possibly compare Sacramento or San Francisco to Chicago, ,Philidelphia or Boston. Yes, you will find trash anywhere, However, not to the degree I've witnessed in Sac or SF. The freeways here are littered with fast food containers, clothing and mattresses....etc....
I fully understand home town pride and will absolutely agree in that SF is beautiful. I had a Townhome in SF for 6 years and have nothing but wonderful things to say about my time there. I miss the view of the water. However, I will also say that my home in Belle Haven Conneticut is superior in every way. And why you might ask? It is because I am able to walk into a grocery store without being accosted by someone looking for money. When I do my morning run, I am able to walk in my house without having to first stop to hose what I can only hope is animal feces from my shoes (nearly every morning), I dont find food containers and liquer bottles tossed in the streets or along the sidewalks or even in peoples yards and shrubs! I could go on and on. I fully understand how someone might come to believe that this is normal behavior if they have never ventured far from their own backyard. Anyone who has spent time in other cities throughout the nation (and for the record I have met many who have) recognize the tremendous problem we have.
Rather than take offense, would it not be more productive to become an advocate for the city you clearly love. Dont you wish to protect what you love? I know that I do and will continue to work for what I care for.
okay, hang on now...shellbelle seems to have mentioned that she lives here, but also has a home in this expensive New England suburb? A vacation home, perhaps? And if she likes it so much more than Sacramento, why does she live here and not there?
My brother lives in EDH, and my sister, in Granite Bay, and I cannot think of two more loathesome places to call home than these utterly whitewashed, in so many ways, and starkly suburban burbs, with their faux contoured and meandering streets, and fake Tudor and fake Spanish colonial facades plastered atop plywood and concrete block, and country club lives spent more at the bar than at any constructive activity, where scions of whatever gather to champion the corporate cause of kinda sorta elite America... I absolutely CRINGE when visiting these Stepford West town-lites where icons of long dead eras are manifested next to McDonald's and Exxon stations and IHOP's and 7/11's and other mainstream architectural jibberish.... I always leave these places feeling slightly smeared with smugness and splooge and all that is wrong with this country....
I love the city. Granted, I get to exist in my own version of finery, but the city's messiness and culture and activity and outreach to the world, both here in Sacramento, with this lovely graceful canopy of trees and quiet weekends in places like the Cornerstone restaurant, or Freeport Bakery, or just my kitchen, and in SF, where a morning hop over to 'Your House of Bagels' provides an aroma that is unique in all the world, followed by a nosh at Ocean Beach before the great vast command of the Pacific Ocean -- all at my fingertips.... I believe this is a wonderful way to live...
So, I address those who don't appreciate urbanity, and believe a 'strong mayor' will somehow make Sacramento 'clean', or 'cleanER', than the disgust expressed about my beloved California towns... Great cities have less to do with leaders than they do with the collision and culture of those that live in them... I believe all cities share this universal trait... and I find it good...
Is the typical SMI supporters' idea of "cleaning up" Sacramento a complete leveling of the city, a la the demolition of the West End in the fifties and sixties but applied citywide, to replace it with more endless iterations of beige/taupe neo-Tuscan boxes and big-box power centers? I too share bbbbmer's discomfort with those places--not just for their cookie-cutter architecture and their unwalkable streets but their private homeowner's associations and private security forces, the surrender of the public realm to private interests, and the assumption that their artificial, horribly inefficient economic model should be the standard for every neighborhood.
Or is this attitude common among SMI supporters because most of them live outside of Sacramento, in those gated beige/taupe realms, and not in the city of Sacramento, but their business interests depend on regularly having something they can level and replace with these private cul-de-sac dystopias? And if that's the case, why do they even have a say in the matter?