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Friday, February 10, 2012
Experts weigh in on "strong mayor" city governments
by Kathleen Haley, published on May 18, 2009 at 10:04 PM
Storyline: Sacramento City Hall / Politics
The ambition of local leaders and city crises are two reasons cities choose to give their mayors more power, an expert on city governments told a Sacramento committee Monday.
The Charter Review Committee is analyzing the rules in the city’s charter. The city charter is similar to a constitution.
The 11-member committee is researching the idea of changing city government to a “strong mayor” format that would give the mayor new powers. The committee is examining both the “strong mayor” system, and the city’s existing “council-manager” system.
Mayor Kevin Johnson backs the campaign by the Sacramentans for Accountable Government group to bring a “strong mayor” system to Sacramento.
Committee member John Taylor asked experts at Monday's meeting why communities decide to form a “strong mayor” form of government.
Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University, Fullerton, said the ambition of a city and its leaders plays a large role in a city’s decision to adopt a “strong mayor” system.
“I think it’s also a sense of unrealized ambitions,” Sonenshein said. When cities are growing and becoming more diverse, he said, many kinds of issues become seen as “political,” instead of “managerial.”
If a city is in such a situation, and also has one or more ambitious leaders, the public may then favor the idea of a “strong mayor” running city government.
Sonenshein said the ambitiousness of both the public and the selected leader to realize the potential of the city are major factors in a transition to a “strong mayor” government.
“I say it’s 70 percent ambition and 30 percent visible crisis problems,” Sonenshein said.
James Svara, an expert in local government at Arizona State University, said he generally agreed with Sonenshein’s view, but noted that many proposals for “strong mayor” governments fail. Crisis is often a “critical factor” in making a “strong mayor” proposal successful, he said.
While a leader in the city may say he or she want the new form of government to address the city’s potential, the leader may not be successful unless there’s been “some shortcomings in the performance of the city before that time,” Svara said.
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The current kangaroo charter review committee was formed for the sole purpose of stopping Johnson, or any other mayor from becoming powerful enough to thwart runaway government spending habits and to keep political power decentralized. Obviously, council members also have an interest in retaining as much political power as possible.
This issue boils down to one thing; Democrats & unions do not want citizens of Sacramento to have the option of electing a mayor who can control spending. Right now, the decision on spending is up to 9 council members, all with their own political agendas and all but one being owned by unions, developers and the Democratic party; none of whom have any interest whatsoever in controlling the City's spending habits.
If we had a strong mayor position in this city, fiscal conservatives could run for office and most likely win. The Democrats do not want the People to have this much power over our own tax dollars and they have proven this by forming this kangaroo charter review committee. They clearly have no interest in the democratic process. This committee was only formed because they feared that the voters of Sacramento would vote for Johnson's initiative.
If Johnson's team is to be believed, they had enough signatures to get it on the ballot. In response, and out of great fear, council members formed this kangaroo commission; they were also prepared to place a competing initiative on the ballot. They clearly backed Johnson off and he pulled the initiative. The problem is...he backed off, and they haven't...they are marching full steam ahead with their plan to prevent any future mayor from gaining power in this city.
Johnson's team have blown the last realistic chance of making real change in this city and have screwed the tax payers of this city for any foreseeable future. We can thank Kim Mack and Steve Maviglio for their help lubing us up....but then again...they are both well placed Democrats....maybe they are playing both sides of both sides...their true loyalties lie with the Democratic Party...maybe they screwed their boss and the tax payers of Sacramento intentionally to further their own careers...You see, Johnson is not supported by the local Democratic Party and many in the Party are still very angry about Fargo losing….gee whiz do you think this ever could happen in politics?
When this kangaroo commission issues its final report it WILL state that a strong mayor will harm our city. Remember this post so you will know that you read it here first on Sac Press.
Sacramento will never evolve into a “real” city until we have strong & accountable leadership with the power to make substantive change. Regardless of anyone’s personal views of Johnson, he will only be mayor for a relatively short time, if we want get control of our budget and become the City that most Sacramentan's want, we should follow Oakland, San Diego's and San Francisco's lead by giving our mayor the tools he/she needs to lead.
Or was it turning downtown Oakland in to a beautiful, vibrant & and safe work environment which has attracted many large new companies and created jobs?
Or do you mean what San Diego has done to it's downtown?
Exactly which of these things weren't worth doing Willie?
The Strong Mayor system is patterned after the system chosen by our nation's Founders & by all 50 States: a strong executive accountable directly to the voters with checks & balances provided by a City Council & Manager. Though Sacramento isn't facing the sea of scandals that San Diego faced in 2005 from its Council-Manager system, a switch to the Strong Mayor system, at least for a trial period, is worthy of voter consideration for increased accountability to the voters by a single indivdual.
If there is a problem with our city manager, all it takes is six City Council votes--AT ANY TIME, not just once in four years--to fire him and get a new one. A mayor with budget authority who fails to perform could only be removed by election--and if the ones with the cash are happy with that executive's inaction, they can just throw money at the problem and it goes away.
The citizens of this town did not elect Kerridge its that simple. I want the guy or gal who is responsible for the budget to be elected. If they fail, the people can throw them out. I trust that the People can also make the determination if the mayor is overly influenced by developers. We can start by seeing who the developers back for the office and make are choice based on who they are supporting. Right now they have 9 opportunities to corrupt our City...we need to reduce their influence and try to level the playing field a little more.
Not to say that Kerridge is anything but a developer's best buddy in the whole wide world.
The developers have the power because their money determines whose message gets heard the loudest. The people will listen to whoever has the best and most advertising. Take your own advice--we CAN start by seeing who the developers back for office. The developers are the ones behind the "strong mayor" initiative--they're the ones who fronted the money, what does that tell you about the motives behind the initiative?
The idea of consolidating power into a smaller number of hands doesn't decrease chances for corruption, it just makes it easier. An example I used a while back was the creation of the state Railroad Commission in the 19th century. The idea was to have a 3-member board make decisions about state railroad policy instead of the state Assembly. The idea was, as you mention, to limit the opportunities for corruption. The railroads actually liked the idea, because instead of having to bribe half the Legislature they just had to bribe 2 of the 3-member board.
Having to convince a majority of a 9-member council is a more difficult proposition. The "strong mayor" ordinance is NOT, as mentioned above, based on the federal government: analysis of the proposition shows that it is a particularly strong form of "strong mayor" with few of the curbs and balances common to such systems. It's an autocratic position with few limits on power.
What we have now is a completely corrupted city council who is completely controlled by developers. So please explain to the audience how having a council/manager system has helped the People of Sacramento or kept our council members out of the pockets of the developers.
The only reason I support the strong mayor type of city government is that, we will have a ONE person, a mayor who is accountable for MOST of the city's ills, not spread out amongst nine puppets of the developers. It will be cheaper and easier to defeat ONE mayor...and we can have the option of electing a fiscal conservative. Right now, even if a fiscal conservative were to run for office, and win, they have no power to control the budget.
We can elect a strong mayor who is not in the pockets of the developers, by simply looking at where their campaign money is coming form...This would open up the field for those wanting to run for mayor.
But like I said...The Democrats have no interest in democracy, nor do they want the People to have the power to control the direction of this cow town; this issue boils down to that simple fact.
I'm not sure how the math works in this...let's say that the developers have, at most, $1 million to spend to promote their candidate or candidates. If they spend it on nine city council races, that's around $111,111.11 each. If they spend it all on one mayoral race, that's all $1 million to elect the mayor they want. In either case, to match them, opponents would still have to raise $1 million.
But wait, you say! They don't have to pay for all nine votes on the council, just a simple majority, so they only need to back five of them! So that means $200,000 per candidate, for a total of $1 million, and to match them, opponents would have to raise...$1 million.
Math isn't my strong suit. What am I not getting here?
"We can elect a strong mayor...by simply looking at where their campaign money is coming from." Well, why can't we do that now, with city council races? Maybe because knowing where the money is coming from isn't enough--opponents still have to spend more in order to get the money out?
What Democrats are you referring to? Personally I'm not a Democrat so maybe I'm not as familiar with the players. Aren't Mayor Johnson, the figure behind the "strong mayor" proposal, and Steve Maviglio, the spokesguy, and Kim Mack, the political organizer behind "Sacramentans for Accountable Government," all Democrats? Aren't the developers who paid for this initiative the same ones who have been supporting council members who are Democrats all along? If so, then I suppose that I'd agree that the Democrats backing the "strong mayor" proposal have no interest in democracy or wanting the people to control the direction of Sacramento. So I'll give you that point.
B: Many campaigns that spend large sums of money, even up to ten times that of the opposition still lose by big margins, case in point the campaigns behind the propositions, they outspent the opposition by 3 to 1 and still lost. It's not the amount spent on the campaign always, it's the message of the campaign and the anger of the People who hear the message.
Outside of the bubble that most public employee's live in in Sacramento or even California...most registered voters are neither Democrats or Republicans. Most are now registered as Independents or decline to state.
The citizens of this country are sick and tired of out of control spending by our narcissistic elected buffoons. Tuesday's election should have woken some our elected officials up, the message was loud and clear. But it wont in the end. Only throwing them out of office will work.
I'd also be interested in seeing you back that statement up--are there really more independents than Republicans or Democrats? I mean, in some ways it's heartening, as I have been a "decline to state" for about 20 years...but it seems unlikely.