Strong Mayor - How has it worked out—so far? - Part 3
By Glen Sparrow, SDSU Professor Emeritus
During the strong mayor era three white men have been elected Mayor: Jerry Sanders 2005-2012, Robert Filner 2012-2013, and Kevin Falconer 2014-2020. Seven Councilmembers have served as Council President and three persons have been elected as City Attorney.
A Review of the almost 15 years of mayor-council in San Diego provides a few observations:
Most of those who collaborated on the “strong mayor” project over the years would no doubt agree with me that the one issue we never thought would be a major outcome was exactly what has kept the system from launching. Full use of the powers granted to the mayor OR council have not been utilized.
The three mayors have been seemingly hesitant or unwilling to power up the mayor’s office. Disgraced mayor Filner appears to have understood the levers of power now intrinsic to the office, but a failed moral compass yielded a shortened term and hence his inability to explore the office fully.
The council led—sometimes--by the president has shown the greatest evolution in the new structure. Different Presidents have taken different paths—some early ones building the office, some building their careers, some exhibited a citywide perspective, and some were managers. The presidents spent time early defining and organizing the new office, then the role of the council, and currently we are witnessing the birth of a council policy agenda to rival that of the executive. Helped by the research and analytical ability of the Independent Financial Analyst’s office the council now has the capability to review and impact the annual budget and to develop a policy agenda.
Interestingly, of the three “branches” it was a series of city attorneys who moved to reveal the power of their office more than the mayor or council did theirs. The elected city attorney had always been powerful in San Diego under the council-manager, but that power remained pretty well hidden, not so anymore.
It is evident that one significant undertaking that cries out for attention is: getting the City Charter to more clearly reflect San Diego’s form of government, getting rid of the clutter left over from the council-manager form and overcoming the seeming reticence to “modernize” a 1931 document.
Why has there been such a hesitancy to implement the strong mayor charter?
The former system—city manager based—was utilized in most of the West for close to a century, in San Diego for 74 years. It was the accepted form of government; people were accustomed to it and understood it. When the 2006 change came it was natural for the “new” system to take time to become understood and accepted. The people who governed and staffed and the civil society it served were used to it and were slow to understand the change intrinsic to the new system—or in some instances zealously resisted the change.
Taking power and governing are not that easy when all your experience is with a hired professional that in instances of contention provided direction and cover for public decisions.
As those councilmembers and staff comfortable with or devoted to the manager system exited the government and newly elected and hired people took their places there were fewer beholden to the previous system. And these new faces have been at the forefront of the change that has taken more years to come than was originally contemplated.
San Diego will elect its first mayor that did not serve during a council manager government in 2020, no current councilmembers have served under a city manager, nor has the City Attorney.
What has been the effect of a “strong mayor” on the city?
Certainly, we have not experienced the robust change anticipated and promised by those making the argument for the new system.
Slow, thoughtful, measured progress drawing together three entities of the governing structure—Mayor, Council and City Attorney—may take more time than had been anticipated.
There have been bumps in the evolution: the convention center stumbles toward a vote, finally; a way to get rid of an unwanted mayor and how to succeed him/her still remain confused; the clumsy handling of the initiative to “reform” the pension system proved an embarrassment, and the Hepatitis A outbreak made San Diego look like a third world city.
However, the crisis that provoked the change “mounting pension deficit, federal investigations into its retirement system, and subsequent allegations of illegal accounting and public corruption” have not resurfaced, no FBI raids on city hall have occurred, the pension deficit while not solved has been managed, and there seems to be a modicum of trust developing.
In reflection, perhaps it is the nature of the San Diego culture to require greater time for familiarity and comfort with the new system before fully embracing fundamental governmental change. And perhaps the 2005 conclusion of the Rand study: Facing The Challenge of Implementing Proposition F in San Diego remains cogent today:
[T]he political culture of San Diego will change. Reliance on the City Manager is no longer possible. Political decision-making processes will change. The process of doing the people’s work must be more transparent. The information used to support public decisions must regain credibility—along with that of some of the individuals generating and using this information. An open, questioning culture that is fair but firm should supersede the all-too-invisible murky decision-making of the past. Trust, even if spelled with a lowercase t, must begin to replace mistrust, a word used sooner or later in virtually every interview we had with San Diegans.