"Thirteen months ago, we launched the Oakland Charter Reform Project by publishing an op-ed in this newspaper, "Broken Oakland needs more than a new mayor." In that piece, we laid out the four fundamental flaws that contribute to so much of the dysfunction in City Hall: a powerless mayor, a disconnected City Council, a conflicted city attorney and a city administrator caught between the mayor and council."
"Why is a strong-mayor system bad for Oakland? Because the city, as the recent Sheng Thao recall made clear, is not immune to the threat of corruption. The long-term damage that an unqualified, incompetent, compromised or immoral - but superpowered - mayor can inflict on the city is too great. The recall bar is too high, and four years is far too long to wait when change is urgently needed. Witness the current president of the United States."
The Oakland Charter Reform Project identified four fundamental governance flaws: a powerless mayor, a disconnected City Council, a conflicted city attorney, and a city administrator caught between mayor and council. Mayor Barbara Lee committed to modernize the city charter, but her hand-picked Charter Reform Working Group largely ignored those flaws and proposed a strong-mayor system. The proposed strong-mayor model risks corruption and concentrated power, especially given recent recall dynamics and high recall thresholds. The Model City Charter (National Civic League, 9th ed., 2021) offers a modern council-manager system where an elected council oversees a professional city manager and the mayor presides over council business.
Read at The Mercury News
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