Mayor Kevin Johnson’s office released an older draft of the strong mayor proposal one month after The Sacramento Press requested a copy of it. Kunal Merchant, Johnson’s chief of staff, wrote in a note accompanying the old draft that the strong mayor campaign is no longer using it. Johnson used the old draft months ago when he tried to convince the City Council to put a strong mayor measure on the June ballot, Merchant said. The mayor gave up on the idea of the June ballot in February, saying at the time that council members were not backing a June timeline. Read the old draft and Merchant’s note here. Johnson’s campaign referred to the old draft as the “Collaborative Reform Package,” a

Mayor Kevin Johnson’s strong mayor campaign has released a draft of Johnson's proposal and plans to pitch it to the City Council in July. The release of the new report marks a change in tactics for Johnson’s campaign because third-party attorneys — not the city attorney — wrote the draft. For weeks, Johnson’s strong mayor campaign has said that City Attorney Eileen Teichert should write the formal language for the proposal. But the City Council prevented Teichert from writing the draft in a 7-2 vote last month. The first strong mayor initiative was written by Thomas Hiltachk, a third-party attorney. That initiative was struck down by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge in January.