Making it work—Implementing the Strong Mayor – Part 2
By Glen Sparrow, SDSU Professor Emeritus
Between the passage of the Strong Mayor proposal in November 2004 and its kickoff January 1, 2006 San Diego had a political and financial meltdown.
As the regularly scheduled mayor’s race headed for a November 2004 show down between Mayor Dick Murphy and County Supervisor Ron Roberts, write-in Donna Frye threw her hat into the ring. This race was finally decided when a state court declared Murphy the victor with 34.5 percent of the vote. He hung on for seven months then resigned abruptly in July 2005 without really giving a reason. San Diego had to hold another election and Jerry Sanders took office in December 2005 as the city’s last council-manager mayor destined to become its first strong mayor a month later.
The need, on January 1, 2006, to create, then transition to the city’s first strong mayor government however, clashed with the necessity to solve the financial woes facing the city. The city needed to: prepare audits for the previous four years in order to reenter the bond market; deal with a structural budget crisis; and stabilize a financial system reeling from pension underfunding and recent SEC, FBI, and US Attorney investigations. The city’s last city manager and first Chief Operating Officer (COO) Ronnie Froman told me her first months as COO were like “performing open heart surgery on a marathon runner—while she was competing in a race.”
Then, in 2008 the global financial meltdown not only reduced tax revenues and damaged the city pension system’s already dangerously underfunded investments, it also effectively shut down the municipal bond market, just as the city had satisfied the ratings agencies, having wrapped up those delinquent audits.
In the midst of this, the city leadership moved tentatively toward a strong mayor government. Mayor Sanders was circumspect in his re-creation of the mayor’s office, his tenure was steady but cautious. He was not the leader and innovator envisioned by those who led the strong-mayor campaign. He was a steady and calm executive, in a time of great fiscal uncertainty, who displayed control as he guided the city through some very difficult times.
The other side of the government, the legislature/city council was less coherent, as might be expected from a body of eight individuals, five of whom were holdovers from the council-manager days. The legislative side had been strengthened by the charter changes in order to create a municipal “separation of powers.” The president of the council now was responsible for the structuring and operation of the council, setting the agenda, determining the committee structure and members, and controlling the flow of legislation. While the first president of the council tried hard and defined the position better initially than the mayor did his, the council was not to speak with a single voice or even a few voices. The council did not take kindly to herding. The council continued in the city manager tradition of reacting to executive proposals, not creating policies of its own.
The bright spot in these early years was the transition to multi-year and more transparent budgeting process. Terminating the “black box” of the city manager years in which staff kept close control of information, the charter change brought about a new budget procedure that was more open and unclouded. A greater burden was now placed upon the council to analyze and respond to the mayor’s proposals. A very important part of the council’s new budget energy came from the creation of an office fashioned after the Congressional Budget Office. Council appointed and controlled, an Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) provided expertise to review the mayor’s spending proposals.
These first years of the strong mayor in San Diego could in no way be called a textbook transition. Due not to the unwillingness or inability of those responsible but more because the great recession and surviving financial and legal conditions placed an inexorable burden upon the city and deflected time and energy from the transition. However, the city endured.
In the final article I plan to see if and how the promises of those who led the charge for the change have been delivered.