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Thursday, May 23, 2013
Council puts elected charter commission on November ballot
by Melissa Corker, published on June 21, 2012 at 7:42 AM
Storyline: Politics
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Mayor Kevin Johnson’s strong mayor initiative may be dead, but charter reform is still on life support at City Hall after a 6-3 vote at a City Council meeting Tuesday to put a measure on the ballot that will let voters decide whether a new, elected charter commission should be formed.
The measure puts two questions on the November ballot: Do the voters want to form an elected charter commission? And if the answer to the first is yes, then who do the voters want to be on that commission?
The second question will be followed by a list of candidates, and voters will be asked to select 15 commissioners from among them.
If elected, the commission will have up to two years to study the city charter and recommend any changes, which would go to the voters for approval in the 2016 election.
“If Sacramento elects a charter commission, it can take its time to do this correctly and look closely at what Sacramento needs instead of sneaking through major charter revisions during the Christmas holidays,” Anna Molander, former chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County, said Tuesday.
“It will give Sacramento the opportunity to transform itself through the work of its citizenry, as it has always done,” she added.
Council members against putting an elected charter commission on the November ballot included Johnson and fellow council members Angelique Ashby and Jay Schenirer – both of whom said the idea is fine, but the city’s economic concerns need to come first.
“When we are talking about money, people will be saying ‘that’s two police officers or one rescue boat’ or something else that has been on the chopping block,” Ashby said Tuesday. “We could make these choices – and they would definitely be spending choices. It’s just not the right time to push for this.”
McCarty said he understands the costs involved and believes they are valid.
“There is no free lunch, and democracy does cost something,” McCarty said.
Putting the measure on the ballot will cost the city roughly $305,000 in election costs, according to the city staff report. If a commission is elected, another estimated $316,500 will be spent to support the commission through its two-year term, including staff time, meeting support and supplies.
Council members also voted Tuesday to set contribution limits for commissioner campaigns at $500 for individuals and $1,500 for large political committees, and the council selected members Kevin McCarty, Steve Cohn and Angelique Ashby to write arguments for and against the proposal that will also appear on the ballot.
The idea of an elected charter commission has been floating about City Hall since early this year when the City Council rejected Johnson’s push for a strong mayor initiative to go to the ballot – which would have been the third incarnation of the proposal from the mayor’s camp since he was first elected in 2008.
Cohn said the issue has been discussed repeatedly at the City Council and needs to be finally resolved.
“We can’t keep running away from this,” Cohn said Tuesday. “At some point, the people of this great city need to have a say on it.”
If an elected charter commission gets the go-ahead from Sacramento voters, it will be only the third one created in state history after San Francisco’s elected commission in 1978 and another in Los Angeles in 1996.
Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter @MelissaCorker.
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The sausage she wanted to make was not made of organic products.
Somehow, six months ago putting charter change on the November ballot was highly important to Johnson, Ashby and Schenirer. Now they appear to have flip-flopped on this issue. My question is, why?
"Financial Considerations: The estimate of staff time associated with the activities of a charter commission reflects the cost of existing staff and will not require additional City resources."
The "costs" of this program are already included in the approved city budget, except for the costs from the county to print the ballots. Those costs, as outlined in the document I provided the link to above, will actually come in much lower than as stated, because the city will already have (by all best guesses) at least two other measures on the ballot, and the county offers a discounted rate for printings in groups.
If we were to use the logic that the exsisting staff time should be included in the overall costs of city projects, then the costs associated with the failed arena plan would be much larger than reported.
It's the same problem that we had with the arena actually. It remains my (very strong) belief that if it were not for the strong mayor and arena distractions we could have had a City budget that, while by no means pretty, would have avoided some of the more draconian cuts. For example, we might have had the staff time to go after additional federal, state and even private grants and to properly document the expenditures made under existing grants. That alone might have "saved" us a couple of million dolars.
What I find very interesting is:
1) That Ashby, Johnson and Schenirer were perfectly happy to have a vote on this Exact resolution after the November elections;
2) That Ashby, Johnson and Schenirer expressed support for the Charter review in discussion (but then voted against it)
3) That when asked about the greater opportunity costs associated with the arena fiasco Schenirer called them an "investment"
4) That none of the three seemed to think it a big deal that they spent $700K on the failed arena
5) That one of the reasons Ashby, Johnson and Schenirer gave for their votes no is "lack of public interest" when my streamer kept pausing--and this meeting went past 11 PM--so people were watching; just not in Chambers, in jammies.
To be honest, before I listened to the debate I was quite opposed to the Charter Commission but as I listened to it, I changed my mind. If nothing else, the .. dirty pool that opponents of it were willing to engage in, in the public eye was (to me anyway) quite shocking.
1 - I never voted to support strong mayor. I did vote to place it on the ballot for voters to decide once and for all, so we could be done with it. It is a distraction for this council.
2 - I am fine with placing the Charter Commission on the ballot as well, for exactly the same reason... Let the people decide.
3 - The only difference to me is total cost and timing. Placing the commission on the ballot is a minimum half million dollar commitment because the ballot measure is the least expensive part. If it passes the City will need to sustain 15 new electeds, staff their efforts and provide support for at least two years. Then place another ballot measure on a future ballot.
Two cities have done this in California. Both ended up with strong mayor systems. I personally am not vested in either form of government and am fine with whatever Sacramento wants. By the way, the most recent effort (in the 90's) actually cost the City of LA in excess of a million dollars. We are grossly under estimating the cost of this commission. McCarty's solution to that issue was a cap on the process... But then what if they run out of money half way into the process? I feel if we make a commitment to it we need to be able to see it through.
However, we JUST told every employee in the city that we need them to pay their own pensions because we don't have any money. Going into Tuesday night we were very close to a tentative agreement with police that in combination with all the other employee groups would have given us just that - pension reform.
But a vote to focus on charter reform with a minimum cost of half a million dollars is disingenuous to the efforts we were currently focused on for pension reform.
My motion to wait was intended to avoid sabotaging our own pension reform efforts. I feel like we can do both reforms, if we take them in turn.
4 - A question for all of you.... don't you think the most fair thing to do (and maybe this is just the Mom in me) is finish pension reform and then, if folks really want to weigh in on the charter, place all options on the ballot.... Let Sacramento choose - strong mayor, charter commission, leave it as is and move on? I'd be fine with that too.
5 - The question I asked during council that the City Attorney didn't like was to the person who has to ask fire fighters if they will agree to give up their pension benefits. I asked him if this vote to place a charter commission on the ballot will make that effort to reform pension more difficult. I wanted to be sure we examined the potential outcomes of our actions and I disagree with our attorneys position by the way.
6 - As for any comparisons between money spent on this effort versus money spent on the arena effort. Much of the money used for the "arena" discussions has already paid off in spades. We used environmental impact reports, data and economic projections paid for during the "arena" process in our application to the federal government for our transit station which was selected for a fifteen million dollar grant. The point here is that much of the research was associated with the location (the railyards), not just the project (an arena). So it will be useful moving forward, not all of it, but a great deal of it can be used for cross purposes as we work to develop the largest urban infill project in the country.
7 - My focus is making sure we provide services to residents. Pension reform is a critical component to that effort. We need to cut expenses (reduction of some city services), reform systems of financial structure (pension, retirment tiers) and grow economic engines (repair the levee to lift the moritorium in our new growth community, build out the railyards, fix our infrastructure, support and recruit businesses). This three pronged approach is our way out of the economic downturn, but it is a balance of timing, compromise and hard work. You can't expect our partners (employees or voters) to trust us with their pay or retirement or taxes if we are not cautious, honest and fair in how we proceed. By the way, on the line in this year's budget are 16 police officers (that is in addition to the more than 60 we laid off last year), 60+ fire fighters, our hazmat unit, land and water rescue and any ability we may have had to begin restoration in the next two years.
I don't want more brown outs, nor do I want to reduce police, fire or parks services any further. My goal while in office serving this great city is to protect services to our citizens, everything I do is focused on that outcome.
I hope this clears up some of the assumptions, questions or misunderstandings throughout this comment chain - at least as those comments relate to my position on this issue, how or why I voted a particular way or what the heck I was thinking when I said or did something from the dias that you didn't understand. Thank you for the opportunity.