A tale of three cities

Now what? Voters will decide in November on whether to form an elected charter commission. It’s too soon to say whether Mayor Kevin Johnson and his allies will work for a “no” vote, or try to stack the commission with pro-strong-mayor candidates.

“We’re currently evaluating all of our options,” said Johnson spokesperson Joaquin McPeek. Labor groups likewise may work to oppose the measure or may back their own candidate slates.

Meanwhile, city officials anticipate a lot of interest from potential candidates for the commission’s 15 seats. The nomination period opens July 16 and closes August 9. To qualify, candidates have to submit between 20 and 30 valid signatures from registered Sacramento voters.

The 200-word ballot statement will be a tougher obstacle, setting candidates back $2,100. (Candidates can raise money, up to $500 from individual donors and $1,500 from large campaign committees.)

No amount of campaign cash will help if voters reject formation of the charter commission. And there’s a good chance they will reject it. Only two charter commissions have been approved by voters in California.

In Los Angeles in 1999, dueling charter commissions made for a messy process, but one which ultimately created neighborhood councils, an executive mayor, the creation of an ethics commission.

A San Francisco charter commission was approved by local voters and formed in 1978. That commission raised much of its own money and recommended a number of reforms, including a fix to San Francisco’s “split executive” system that gave a fair amount of power to an unelected chief administrative officer.

Attorney Jim Haas, one of the members of the S.F. charter commission, says that given the diverse interests involved, it was at times difficult to rein the scope of the commission.

“The ACLU came in and wanted a bill of rights,” that would include, for example, a right to housing. They were rebuffed. Likewise, efforts to tweak labor and pension provisions “proved to be pretty dicey.”

The charter was finally able to come up with a set of “mostly procedural” recommendations, said Haas, but those were rejected by voters. He said it was opposition from then-mayor Dianne Feinstein that spelled doom for the commission report.

But in 1996, S.F. county supervisors advanced a ballot measure largely based on the commission’s 1980 recommendations, and this time voters approved it.

“The thing was, there was a big consensus that the charter didn’t work very well,” said Haas.

And that may be the key difference between the three cities. The S.F. charter was widely recognized as dysfunctional. In Los Angeles, there was a governance crisis, too, including secession movements in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley.

Other than Johnson and his political allies, nobody has been clamoring for charter change in Sacramento.

Rather than putting his agenda on the ballot, the charter commission measure asks the question, “Are you interested in charter change at all?”

“If less than 50 percent of the people vote for it, that’s a strong message that people don’t feel like charter reform is a high priority right now,” said Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn.