When I first downloaded the Mayor’s proposed budgets, I had two immediate questions. One, despite all the doom and gloom and talk about how this is the worst budget in history, why do the cuts in all scenarios except for the one that includes no employee give-backs not seem all that bad? Two, why are the budget documents so short? I mean, normally the budget is like 800 pages, but every budget the Mayor presented is less than 300 pages. That seems weird, right?

Three incomplete budgets

So I have figured out the answers to both questions. The reason the cuts don’t seem all that bad are threefold:

1. None of the scenarios anticipate any payments to PFRS: The Mayor seems to think that we’ll just bond again to cover this debt, but as many people have pointed out before, that could expose the City to much greater damage down the road (PDF). Should the Council not elect to just bond it out, that’s another $46 million liability we could be looking at this year.

2. None of the scenarios factor in any potential Federal and State cuts: The Mayor says that we can’t budget for them since we don’t know what they will be yet. I understand that it’s difficult to budget for losses that are yet to be determined, but it seems reasonable to expect that there will be at least some reduction in revenue from those sources and plan for something.

3. All three scenarios rely on property sales to balance the budget: No real details are provided with respect to these property sales. The transmittal letter (PDF) notes that the primary revenue source for these sales is the Kaiser Convention Center. However, the estimates in each scenario for the revenue to be generated by the sale vary wildly: $29 million in Scenario A, $12 million in Scenario B, and $20 million in Scenario C. There is no explanation provided anywhere for why these estimates are so different.

In short, these budgets are not complete. In her transmittal letter (PDF), Oakland Mayor Jean Quan acknowledges as much, saying “The worst case scenario of additional federal and state cuts and a decision not to bond the PFRS pension could lead to an additional $78 million deficit.” O.M.G.

I kind of dismissed Scenario A yesterday, since it is totally unrealistic to expect no employee givebacks (budget Scenarios B and C each rely on roughly $29 million in concessions). But after reading the budgets in more detail and realizing that none of them really account for the actual deficit we can expect, I’m kind of flipping out about it. Is that going to be the Mayor’s response to the inevitable need for further cuts? Shutting down fire stations and the Library System? Geez, I hope not!

All budgets lack specifics

The reason the budget is so short is that it includes far less information than previous budgets.

In the past, the budget’s Financial Summaries section (PDF) has included a lengthy history of fund balances for each fund going back 10 years, detailed breakdowns of expenditures for all the tax funds (LLAD, Wildfire Prevention Assessment District, Emergency Medical Services Retention Act, Paramedic Services Act, Measure Q, and Measure Y), detailed explanation of negative funds along with 10-year negative fund repayment schedules, and a detail listing of projects included in the Capital Improvement Program.

This budget includes none of that (PDF). The negative funds summary lists the funds and their projected balance, but does not include any information about status or repayment schedules.

The proposed budgets by department also contain far less information than was available in previous budgets. To give you an idea of just how much less, the CEDA section in the FY09-11 budget (PDF) was 53 pages long. The CEDA section in the proposed FY11-13 budgets (PDF) are 6 pages long. Some of that reduction may have been achieved through a switch to a more space efficient budget template, but previous budgets provided detailed listing of every funded position by position title in each department and revenues, expenditures, performance measures, and FTEs by fund for every program in the department side by side. Not only are the lists of funded jobs not included in this budget, the information about FTEs, revenues, and expenditures are all displayed separately. Revenues and expenditures are displayed in only one list, with no breakdown of which different funds that money comes from for each program.

As another example, take a look at the Non-Department budget from the previous cycle compared to this one. In the past, budgets contained a detailed list of grants provided by the city, showing where each grant is going and what the amount was. In the new budget, this is reduced to “Citywide Grants, Programs and Subsidies”. That’s it. Then:

now:

In past budgets, the Non-Departmental section (PDF) included detailed lists of all debt payments by fund, as well as a lengthy explanation of all the City’s outstanding debt. In this budget, none of that information is provided.

The entire presentation is extremely opaque. I find the lack of completeness as well as the lack of transparency in the Mayor’s budgets alarming.

Major Changes common to all scenarios

All the budget scenarios include a number of changes to City operations and the City’s organizational structure. I don’t have too much to say about them, since virtually no information is provided in any of the documents to explain how these changes might improve or disrupt service or the anticipated cost savings of any of them.

I’m assuming more detailed explanations of these changes will be provided at next Thursday’s Council meeting, but for now, this is all I have.

• Contracting and Purchasing Department merged with other departments: Under all three scenarios, parts of the city’s Contracting and Purchasing Department would be absorbed by other departments — purchasing would be moved to Finance, contract administration would be moved to public works, and contract compliance would be moved to the City Administrator.

  The Contracting and Purchasing department was created in 2007 in former Mayor Ron Dellums’s first budget (PDF). In his transmittal letter (PDF), he offered:

  My goal is to make Oakland’s contracting and purchasing process more effective and more transparent…In this proposal, we have consolidated the various purchasing and contracting divisions previously in various departments and have centralized this function in a single department.

  I guess it didn’t work out? And that’s fine, I suppose. Maybe the change should have been scrutinized a little more in 2007? In any case, I think there is often a strong temptation to solve problems through reorganization. Sometimes it’s the right move, sometimes it isn’t, but I think these kinds of changes need to be considered a little more carefully than we’ve done in the past, or you just end up going back and forth every couple of years.

• Parking would be split up: Parking Payments would be moved to the first floor instead of the 6th floor of 250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, and practical administration of parking would move to the Finance and Management Agency, while parking policy would remain under Public Works.

• The creation of a Life Enrichment Agency: Human Services, the Library, and Parks & Recreation would be combined into a Life Enrichment Agency in FY 12-13. The budget does not specify how this would work, only that details will be figured out by a task force at some point in the next year and the anticipated savings are one million dollars. It was less than 10 years ago when these departments last existed under the umbrella of a Life Enrichment Agency. I wasn’t really paying attention then, so I don’t know why they were separated, but it seems reasonable to presume that it was done, like most reorganizations, to save money. (Can someone older than me fill in the details there?)

  This goes back to what I was saying about Contracting and Purchasing. Maybe the shift would save Oakland money, maybe it wouldn’t. But these things shouldn’t be done at random or without thought. What kind of service disruption would such a change involve? Any? How many positions would be reduced? Where does that million dollars in savings come from? I don’t know how the Council can be expected to make decisions like this based on so little analysis.

• 15% cut to all elected offices: No specifics are given for how these cuts might be achieved or the staffing or service impacts that would arise from them.

• Severe reductions to KTOP: Under all three scenarios, KTOP programming would be reduced to televising only meetings of the City Council, Port Commission, and Planning Commission. It is unclear to me whether this change would include stopping recording Council committees or not, which I would view as completely unacceptable. It would definitely eliminate the broadcast of the Public Ethics Commission, Measure Y Oversight Committee, Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, and the Cultural Affairs Commission.

  Adding to my confusion over this item is the fact that nowhere in the budget does it explain what kind of cost savings the City would realize from such a move. Eliminating the broadcast of public meetings is a severe step backwards in the realm of open and transparent government, and one that should be approached with serious caution. I could see some scenario where maybe some reduction of televised meetings might be acceptable in order to preserve vital services, but of course it isn’t possible to make that judgement without actual information about the trade-offs we’re looking at.

  In the FY09-11 budget, KTOP receives almost no funding from the General Fund (PDF) — it is paid entirely out of Telecommunications (Fund 1760) and Redevelopment (Fund 7780). In the Significant Changes sections of the Mayor’s proposed budget, there is a transfer of one IT position to 1760, with a General Fund savings listed of $120,000. Total KTOP revenue in the Mayor’s proposed budget goes from $1,143,720 in FY10-11 to $1,298,114 in FY11-12, whereas funding for the program goes from $1,454,000 in FY10-11 to $1,193,628 in FY11-12. Why? It doesn’t say anywhere. Could these cost savings be realized instead through reducing production of original programming instead of broadcasting public meetings? Who knows.

• Civilianization of Police Department: all budget scenarios include a civilian Inspector General managing the Police Department’s Office of the Inspector General and reporting directly to the City Administrator. No details are provided about the impacts for or reasoning behind this change.

I’ll hold off on judgment as to whether any of these changes are a good idea until more details are provided. In general, I have to say that the lack of rationale or explanation provided for any of them causes me concern. It adds to the overall sense I have that these budgets are kind of slapdash — in one of the three budget documents offered by the Mayor, three departments are missing entirely!

Bite-sized budget documents

I don’t know about you guys, but I have a hard time working from huge PDFs, especially when I am trying to compare between documents. When you’ve got hundreds pages to scroll through, it’s easy to kind of miss certain parts. So something I usually do to help digest these big files is to break them up into pieces, which allows me to really focus on one part at a time, and ensures that I don’t miss anything.

I don’t know if anyone else has that problem, but just in case, I thought I might as well post the files here to make it easier for you guys to examine different parts of the budget. So below, I have listed links to the Mayor’s budget proposal broken down by department (plus the full budgets, transmittal letters, financial summaries, and such) in each of the three budget scenarios that were offered. For comparison, I have also included each department’s section from the Adopted FY09-11 budget (keep in mind, though, when reading those, that cuts have been made since that budget was adopted). All files are in PDF format.

Have fun!

Complete Budget Documents

• FY 09-11 Adopted Budget (783 pages)
• FY 11-13 Proposed Budget: Scenario A (233 pages)
• FY 11-13 Proposed Budget: Scenario B (246 pages)
• FY 11-13 Proposed Budget: Scenario C (232 pages)

Transmittal Letters

• Transmittal Letter: FY09-11 Budget (18 pages)
• Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s Transmittal Letter for proposed FY 11-13 budget (common to all three scenarios) (7 pages)
• City Administrator P. Lamont Ewell’s Transmittal Letter for proposed FY 11-13 budget (common to all three scenarios)

Proposed Budget Financial Summaries and Budget Detail by Department

• FY 09-11 Adopted Budget (585 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (148 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (156 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (144 pages)

Financial Summaries

• FY 09-11 Adopted (146 pages)
• Organizational Summaries: FY09-11 Budget (3 pages)
• Debt Capacity: FY 09-11 (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (75 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (83 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (71 pages)

Significant Changes

• Summary of Significant Changes: FY 09-11 Budget (14 pages)
• Summary of Significant Changes: FY 11-13 Budget Scenario A (8 pages)
• Summary of Significant Changes: FY 11-13 Budget Scenario B (7 pages)
• Summary of Significant Changes: FY 11-13 Budget Scenario C (7 pages)
• Comparison of Significant Changes listed in FY 11-13 Budget Scenarios A, B, and C (16 pages)

Mayor

• FY 09-11 Adopted (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

City Council

• FY 09-11 Adopted (7 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (1 page)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

City Auditor

• FY 09-11 Adopted (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

City Attorney

• FY 09-11 Adopted (13 pages_
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

City Administrator

• FY 09-11 Adopted (21 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (4 pages)

City Clerk

• FY 09-11 Adopted (10 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

Contracting and Purchasing

• FY 09-11 Adopted (8 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• Department not included in FY 11-13 Scenario B document
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

Information Technology

• FY 09-11 Adopted
• FY 11-13 Scenario A
• FY 11-13 Scenario B
• FY 11-13 Scenario C

Finance & Management Agency

• FY 09-11 Adopted (14 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (3 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (3 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (3 pages)

Human Resources

• FY 09-11 Adopted (7 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

Police Services

• FY 09-11 Adopted (24 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (3 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (3 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (3 pages)

Fire Services

• FY 09-11 Adopted (21 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (4 pages)

Oakland Museum

• FY 09-11 Adopted (10 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• Department not included in FY 11-13 Scenario B document
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

Oakland Public Library

• FY 09-11 Adopted (12 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (3 pages)
• Department not included in FY 11-13 Scenario B document
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (3 pages)

Parks and Recreation

• FY 09-11 Adopted (21 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (4 pages)

Human Services

• FY 09-11 Adopted (18 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (4 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (8 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (4 pages)

Public Works Agency

• FY 09-11 Adopted (38 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (7 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (7 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (7 pages)

Community and Economic Development

• FY 09-11 Adopted (53 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (6 pages)

Non-Departmental

• FY 09-11 Adopted (27 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (2 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (2 pages)

Capital Improvement Program

• FY 09-11 Adopted (98 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario A (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario B (6 pages)
• FY 11-13 Scenario C (6 pages)

On January 4, the day after her inauguration, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan promised a budget by the end of March. At her weekly press conference on February 18, she told the media she was still on target, although her budget would present options, not just a budget.

Last Wednesday, Mayor Quan released her “Informational Report on the City’s Fiscal Condition and Framework For A Balancing Plan,” which contained no budget at all. Instead of a budget, the mayor gave us a history of the City’s well-known economic woes and a calculation of the effect of cutting department requests by 15%. In her report, she proposed no priorities, no specific innovations, no specific department consolidations and no new ways of funding city government functions.

Instead, Mayor Quan laid out facts that are well-known to anyone who follows city government and asked City Council members to send her a memo by April 8 outlining what their priorities are. The San Francisco Chronicle summed it up by quoting Council Member Ignacio De La Fuente: “It’s leadership afraid to make real decisions.” Make Oakland Better Now! believes that thoughtful, disciplined, collaborative and innovative thinking in can solve many intractable problems. So we were thinking: Why don’t we give Mayor Quan a do-over? Instead of largely unspecified and hypothetical across-the-board cuts and pleas for help to the City Council, why don’t we give her the chance to take a different approach, something like this:

Dear President Reid and Members of the City Council, Department Heads, Public Employees, Unions and Citizens of Oakland:

If you have been paying any attention to what is happening in Oakland, you know revenue has plummeted in recent years and expenses have skyrocketed. You also know that in trying to deal with those realities, we in City government have subjected city services to death by a thousand cuts. So I really don’t need to spend any more time telling you about those problems. My job as Mayor is to make proposals that will solve them. Since November, I have spent all of my waking hours trying to find new and innovative ways to provide essential services with less money. I appointed a transition committee consisting of some of the smartest people in Oakland, people with deep backgrounds in business, government, economics and public policy. I spent a great deal of time listening to others. The result is the very difficult proposed budget I now present to you.

From the start, it was clear to me that we could not solve our budget problems without a complete understanding of what they were. So, I asked our budget director and her staff to provide a clear analysis of the structural deficits faced by the City over the next five years. The resulting numbers were worse than anything you or I have seen before. Previous city presentations (including this one, at page 13) have never included the unfunded PFRS obligation or the need to repay some $33 million in negative fund balances (PDF) for which there is no repayment plan. If we include these, the five year general purpose fund deficit totals at least $690 million (all numbers below in millions):

It was also clear that neither I nor anyone else had a monopoly on wisdom when it came to solving this very large problem. So in the past three months, my transition team and I have met regularly with representatives of the City Council, department heads, and union leaders to try to work collaboratively on reimagining the City’s budget. All of them were asked to contribute their innovative ideas on how to make City government more efficient, more responsive, and less expensive. And I have listened to them. Finally, I imposed an overarching guideline for the budget process. Whereas past budget deliberations have been marked by increasingly strident discussions among interest groups competing for resources (arts vs. police, parks v. public works, etc.), during my administration decisions are based on a holistic, prioritized view of the City’s needs. As Mayor, it is my primary job to set priorities for consideration and adoption by the City Council.

Not everything can be a priority. Since at least the Roman Empire, civilization has known that governmental “core services” consist of keeping citizens safe, maintaining infrastructure, and upkeep for public property. My budget reflects these few critical priorities. Here are the other steps my administration has taken in the past ninety days:

Mediating salary and benefit issues with all public employees: While nearly all of my public pronouncements about public employee benefit costs have addressed police retirement, a full contribution by our uniformed police officers will only reduce the deficit by around $6 million to $8 million. The benefits expense problem is much greater than this, and Oakland has proved itself completely unable to reach negotiated solutions to date. Therefore, I have offered to enter into a multi-party mediation process with all of the City’s unions and representatives of the retirees to find solutions that are fair, collaborative, and manageable. I have suggested several respected third-party mediators, and have agreed that, particularly as to police and fire, there should be a full airing of issues between the unions and the City. We will be presenting second-tier salary and benefit structures, changes to employee contributions to health and retirement benefits, and “anti-spiking” changes, with estimates of the budget savings to be achieved from each proposal. We realize these are very sensitive subjects for our City’s employees, and welcome their ideas about alternative measures that can achieve similar savings.

Consolidation and Reliance On The Community and Private Sector: This budget contains much consolidation, and requires public/private partnerships. We propose combining departments. We propose combining facilities. We propose an increased reliance on community support organizations for our libraries, parks, and many other parts of government.

Leveraging Technology: Technologically, Oakland is living in the twentieth century. We need to leverage “Government 2.0” and social networking technology in a way that makes City government cheaper and more responsive. I am announcing the formation of an Oakland Technology Advisory Committee, consisting of leaders in the social networking world, to recommend ways to completely re-envision the technological interface between City government and citizens. Among other things, I hope their recommendations will facilitate the implementation of CitiStat, a data collection, data use, and management method I campaigned on.

Non-Profits and Volunteers: We will not be able to provide all the services cities have traditionally provided. We will need to look to our community’s volunteers and non-profits to help us in many operations traditionally provided by City employees. Otherwise, we will not have those services at all. I will be going to the voters with an initiative to amend our City Charter’s “contracting out” prohibition so as to provide that nothing in the Charter will be deemed to prohibit the use of non-profits or volunteers.

Performance Based Budgeting: Oaklanders must know what services they are getting for their tax dollars, and that information must be presented in a quantitative, measurable manner. Accordingly, the budget I am presenting implements performance based budgeting and shows Oaklanders exactly what services they can expect from their city and the unit costs for those services.

Budgeting for Outcomes: Finally, we are starting a year-long process to implement the “Budgeting for Outcomes” model. Our goal is to have an outcomes-based budget in place in time for the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

This proposed budget is very tough, and eliminates many services we all feel strongly about. But it is the Mayor’s responsibility to propose tough decisions, and the City Council’s responsibility to make tough decisions. When, and only when, we have enacted an honest, easily understood balanced budget that prioritizes core services, we should go to the voters with a tax measure that allows the voters to decide if they want to provide more. We are all in this together, and I look forward to working with the City Council at the April 11 budget workshop and as many further workshops and meetings as are necessary to complete the difficult tasks ahead of us.

Respectfully,
Jean Quan
Mayor of Oakland

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan promised late last year that we’d see a proposed budget in March. And one day before the end of the month, we’ve gotten…well, not exactly a budget. She’s calling it a “budget framework,” which, based on a quick perusal, seems to be a nice way of saying “We’ll figure it out later.”

Information about the “framework” is available on the City’s website in the three documents. First, a memo from the Mayor (PDF) outlining the City’s budget problems. Second, a summary of potential cut options by department (PDF). Third, a list of the service impacts of previous budget cuts (PDF).

I am looking forward to reading the documents more thoroughly tonight (this is exactly what I needed to break out of my blogging coma!), and will post in more detail tomorrow. But there’s no reason you guys can’t get started now.

Here’s the overview from Quan’s memo:

The projected FY 2011/12 general purpose fund (GPF) decifict is $46 million, despite addressing over $170 million in shortfalls over the last several years. However, this deficit is likely to be much larger due to signs of 1) weakening revenues in the current fiscal year; 2) expected State and Federal budget actions; and 3) mounting health care, pension costs and increases in the cost of doing business. The projected shortfall grows each subsequent year as expenditures rise and revenues recede.

The current budgetary issues are widespread, touching virtually every government service Oakland provides. The policy and management decisions which must be made to stabilize the upcoming budgets will be among the most difficult ever faced by this City. Unlike any other time in our history, this process is going to necessitate nothing short of elected officials, City employees and Oakland’s residents working together to make the required tough choices and critical investments in the coming years. Furthermore the financial challenges are simply too great to be remedied by any one approach in one year and all budget balancing strategies must be on the table. The size of the projected deficit necessitates the following:

• Staff reductions;
• New revenues;
• Restructuring of City departments
• Prioritization of services and corresponding program eliminations;
• Additional employee concessions; and
• Creative collaboration between local, county, state, federal governments and the private sector.

She requests that the City Council provide her a list of their priorities in the budget by April 8th.

Describing her plan in ever so slightly more detail, she offers:

The Administration’s balanced framework for developing its Proposed Budget is as follows:

• $20-$25 million in departmental reductions (Attachment A) represents over $30 million in potential reductions);
• $11-$15 million in revenue increases, including approximately $11 million from an $80/parcel tax;
• $10-15 million in employee concessions; and
• $10-$15 million in various other balancing measures, such as land sales.
• Total = $51 million to $70 million

Some of the budget reduction options for FY2011/12 with significant public impacts currently under consideration are listed by department in Attachment A (PDF). In addition to the items included in the attachment, City Administration is also considering various reorganizations and consolidations of City services and programs that require additional analysis and costing. These items include, but not limited to the follow:

• Centralization of general government functions;
• Consolidation of payment centers;
• Civilianization of Police Internal Affairs and other functions;
• Partnerships with other cities and other agencies;
• Facilities consolidation (including libraries, recreation centers and senior centers);
• Elimination of all City vehicles other than OPD, OFD and heavy equipment;
• Merging of City departments
• Increasing certain fees for services;
• Transfer of Animal Shelter services to other outside agency;
• Installation of cameras on street sweeping vehicles;
• Moving City towards a “Cloud Computing” model (which would allow most city documents to be stored securely on the web, instead of desktops); and
• Partnerships with OUSD, County, and other outside agencies for program efficiencies

Of note, the attached options may not be the ones proposed by the City Administration, and additional options may also be proposed that are not included on the list above or the attached departmental pages. This list is merely provided for Council’s information to make you aware of the magnitude of the problem, and no decisions are necessary at this time on any particular reduction or new revenue.

Reactions?

So when they get to the consent calendar at the Council meeting, District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan is like “Okay. Let me see if I have this right. ”

• This lot is worth $100,00.
• We are giving the lot to the developer at no cost.
• We are also providing the developer as much as $375,000 to build the house.
• The total investment is therefore $475,000.
• Then the house will be sold to someone who qualifies for affordable housing assistance.
• Then the house will have affordability restrictions for 45 years.

Which is, well, a pretty good recap of the situation. Then she added that the idea of any house in that neighborhood selling for $475,000 seems unlikely, and that although the job training aspect of the proposal was appealing, the Council had not been given any quantifiable information about said training program, like how many people would be trained or how many hours they would work or anything like that.

So then District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel was like, “Well, I don’t know about the cost of the land, but I’ve been trying to make this happen for like five years. Sure, it’s possible that we won’t get all our money back, but if we’re going to take public property and put it in private hands, there has to be some public benefit, which is the reasoning behind the job training and affordable housing aspects to the plan.

So the first thing that popped into my mind when she was talking is that if it is taking you five years to figure out how to build one house on one City owned vacant lot, maybe that should be a sign that it isn’t meant to be. Right? Also, if we were to just sell the lot at a market price, it seems like there would be a public benefit to the transaction because we would get money from it that can be used to pay for services.

So then Pat Kernighan comes back and is like “Well, that’s all very admirable, but I’m concerned that we’re not going to be able to sell this house. Even if it wasn’t required to be affordable, $475,000 seems like a stretch. And why would anyone buy a house with affordability restrictions that limit their ability to benefit from appreciation when they can just get a normal house without all that for less money?”

Then she asked if staff was aware of any affordable housing anywhere in the city that had sold for $475,000, to which staff responded that there are non-affordable condos like half a mile away that have been listed for $400,000, and that since this house is going to be bigger than most of the other houses in the area, and because the neighborhood is so “centrally located” to downtown and various highways, that they expected to get a pretty good price for it.

And Pat Kernighan is all “Um…you do know that the way people normally figure out what property is worth is by looking at selling prices, not asking prices, right?” And staff was like “Oh, sorry. We don’t have any information about that.”

Nice.

So then, at-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan was like “Look, maybe you can sell this house for $475,000. Or you can sell it as affordable housing. But obviously not both. What is the price affordable to someone at 60% AMI anyway?”

And nobody knew!

I was pretty pleased with the conversation up to that point. But then District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks is like “What am I missing? We own this property and we’re not doing anything with it right now. This seems like a great idea, why are we even discussing this?” And Rebecca Kaplan is all “Oh, I’m fine with us doing it for the job training if we remove the affordability requirement.” Which seemed odd to me, since nobody seemed to have any information about this training program.

Then District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente is like “Look, this doesn’t make any sense. If we want affordable housing, then give the lot to someone who’s going to build some affordable units that will actually be affordable and stop pretending we’re going to get the money back. If we want job training, why don’t we just invest more in our existing job training programs like the Cypress Mandela training center or whatever.” I completely agree with that. I have never understand why Oakland seems to feel the need to constantly reinvent the wheel.

So then Mayor-elect Jean Quan is all “Well, there’s a lot of gentrification going on in West Oakland, so it’s important that this stay affordable. I walked West Oakland during my campaign and I’m really concerned about keeping some affordable housing there. Plus, this isn’t General Fund money anyway.”

And then Nancy Nadel is like “Oh, actually, there’s plenty of affordable housing there, so really what I want is the job training. The Cypress Mandela program is too long and lots of people can’t afford to do their 13 (actually, it’s 16 – V) week all day training program, so this is better because they can just come at night after they get off work and get trained.”

And you know what? Maybe that is the case. I have no idea. Because nowhere, in any of these discussions or reports (PDF), has anyone provided any kind of information about what this job training entails, how many people will be trained, and what the end outcomes for the trainees is supposed to be. And without that information, approving the project for job training purposes just seems totally insane to me. How can you evaluate whether a program is worth spending all this money on when you don’t even know what the program is? At the very least, you’d think the City should be providing some kind of tangible, measurable criteria for the program before doling out money.

So then Council President Jane Brunner is like “Well, I liked it when it was affordable housing and job training, but if it’s only training, then it seems silly, since we have all these other training programs already.” And then Rebecca Kaplan said she would support it if we removed the affordable housing component, although that seemed even more problematic to me, since most of the money they were proposing to use for the project was from affordable housing funds.

And then they decided that they’d go back and try to figure things out a little more and have it come back at a future meeting. And that was that.

You can watch a video of the discussion below.

I mean, I wrote about this last week, right? What more is there to say? It hurts when your candidate doesn’t win. But also, it isn’t the end of the world either. And I do think all volunteers should feel good about the work they did, no matter the outcome of the campaign.

I will try to update this post tomorrow with more of my thoughts on the election. Try is the key word there. No promises. This is one of the funny things about having a blog. Everyone expects you to have something to say about everything. But sometimes, you don’t know what to say. I mean, I really do wish her luck. I hope she will do a good job. But it’s not like I can pretend that I was all in favor of her all along or anything. The fact is that I disagree with a lot of the things she advocates for.

So…I will write about this. But I may need a little bit of time. And for now, well, congratulations to new Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. Winning elections is hard. And hey — running the City is even harder. So you’ve got a very tough road ahead of you. I wish you the very best of luck in the next four years.

One thing I can say right now is that I am very happy that we’re going to have someone in that office who is a very hard worker. Oakland needs someone who will put in a more than full work week, and I have no doubt in my mind that Jean Quan will do that.

Also, I am exceedingly happy that this is all finally over.

Now that the logistics are out of the way, let’s get started.

Deciding who I was going to support for Oakland Mayor was a very difficult decision for me, and one that took me a long time to reach. For those who are not already aware, I am supporting Don Perata for Mayor. I’m sure people have lots of questions about why, and I assure you that I am going to get to it. But I don’t feel like I can give a complete explanation of why I believe he is the best of the field without also talking about why I don’t think the other candidates are. So please just be patient. I’ll get there.

Out of Touch

From the beginning, I was never thrilled about the idea of Jean Quan being Mayor. I strongly disagree with her on many issues. In particular, I vehemently disagree with her position on inclusionary zoning, a policy I believe is bad for Oakland’s future development and growth, as well as counterproductive to the laudable goal of maximizing production of affordable housing. It bothers me that, although it is clearly time for Oakland to move on, Jean Quan has been so resolute and single-minded about this one tool in the large affordable housing toolbox that she refuses to even discuss other housing related policies. This childish attitude is detrimental to the City.

Additionally, I have been consistently frustrated over the years with Jean Quan’s dismissive attitude towards the legitimate concerns people have about issues like crime, high taxes, and the burdens placed on business in Oakland. Whether it’s running around bragging that crime is down when it’s actually up or responding to legitimate fears about rising violent crime rates with flip statements like “People get robbed everywhere, even in San Ramon,” or laughing off a proposed doubling of the fee to apply for a cabaret permit with a snide comment like “They can afford it. Cabarets make a lot of money,” Jean Quan just never seems to acknowledge that people have real reasons to be unhappy with they level of service they are getting from this City.

Quan has been a staunch advocate for things like youth programs and violence prevention programs and domestic violence awareness, and I commend her for that. Social justice is important to me, and I appreciate her work on these issues. What bothers me is that with Quan, it always seems to come at the expense of everyone else. The reality is that times are tough for everyone. And you don’t have to be completely destitute and living in the ghetto to have trouble making ends meet. Her relentless support of more taxes, and her totally dismissive “cup of coffee a day” or “just a tank of gas” attitude about imposing them on people all the time is, I think, really out of touch with how much of a burden all these taxes add up to on a lot of people just trying to get by in this city. Taking more money from residents is just not the direction I believe Oakland needs to go.

A hard worker

But then, as I was looking at the field all summer, I could not ignore the fact that Jean Quan appeared to be working for this way harder than anyone else. Although she wasn’t able to raise all that much campaign money, she seemed to be very smart about the way she used it, saving it all up for mail at the end of the campaign. So even though I don’t think she’s demonstrated much of a sense of fiscal responsibility on the City Council (more on that below), the way she was running her campaign seemed to indicate that she can be tight with a penny when she really wants to.

And you know what? I’m one of those people who works really hard at things. And so when I see someone else working really hard, I respect that. I think there’s a lot to be said for just really wanting something and being willing to just drive yourself into the ground to get it. And so I felt that just based on her determination, I owed it to her to give her another chance. So I tried to put all those nagging concerns that I talked about above out of my head and open my mind to the idea of Jean Quan being Mayor. At the very least, I figured, I could count on her to work hard in that office, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for our current Mayor. And in the end, I see the void of leadership in Oakland right now as a much bigger problem than the threat of inclusionary zoning.

Back to where I started

That lasted a couple of weeks. I crashed right back into realizing that there was no way could I support Jean Quan for Mayor at a Mayoral forum I attended in September. The first question was about what opportunities for job growth in Oakland and creating jobs for Oakland residents. Jean Quan spoke about the need for job training and preparation for young people in Oakland (which I agree is important), but with respect to how we’re going to make sure those jobs exist, she basically said we didn’t have to do anything!

Oakland is going to have jobs over the next decade. ABAG says that Oakland and San Jose and San Francisco will continue to grow in jobs. But the question is who is will get those jobs. There are three great possibilities of clusters of jobs that they’re going to be in Oakland. My colleagues will talk about the eight sectors the Chamber has looked at — transportation, communications, health care, the food industry, the tourism industry. Those jobs are going to be here.

And here we are, right back to that dismissive attitude that I talked about above. I don’t think there’s any guarantee that jobs are going to be in Oakland. Yes, all those industries have potential here. We are well poised for business attraction in a number of sectors. But you can’t just assume they’re going to come. You have to work to bring them. You have to create a supportive environment for the businesses that provide them. And Jean Quan just seems so completely unconcerned about how we’re going to do that. Listening to it just reminded me of all those reasons I was against her in the first place. It’s great to be an advocate for the downtrodden. But you can’t just assume that everything else is going to fall into place on its own.

Not there on the budget

In the end, though, all of these issues are secondary to the budget. I don’t know if people realize what a crisis the City is in. But it is really bad, folks.

And Jean Quan just is not good with the budget. Oakland’s budget is unsustainable. While Quan loves to blame the deficit on the economy in like, every single one of those absurdly long newsletters she sends out, the fact is that Oakland has had budget problems for years.

Quan is fond of talking about how she believes Oakland should have a five year budget. That sounds great and everything, but the fact is, we’re already supposed to have a two-year budget, and as well as know, that has been completely out the window for the past two years. The Council is constantly meeting to cut the budget and making a new cut to this program or that. It has been band-aid after band-aid non-stop for two years. At one point, we were basically operating on a two-week budget. And Jean Quan makes the budget! So I just cannot imagine why anyone would expect it to be any better with her as Mayor. We’ve seen how she handles the City’s finances. She does it by basically not dealing with them.

Quan appears to be operating under the delusion that eventually the economy will get better, and then we just won’t have anything to worry about anymore. But that’s not true. The City of Oakland has not been operating on a sustainable budget the entire time she has been on the Council. There are deficits basically every year. Even she says so!

When Oakland was in the middle of the biggest tax bonanza it is likely ever going to see, bringing in a storm of transfer tax revenue, not only, did the Council, with Quan leading the way, not put any money away for when times got worse, they managed to spend almost all of the reserve that already existed. And when Jean Quan was asked about how they could have possibly let that happen, did she acknowledge that spending like that was a mistake? No! Instead, she dismissed it, saying “It’s not like the money was stolen.“

The one time in the past eight years that the City did have a suprlus, did Quan advocate using it to pay down debt, which would be the fiscally responsible thing to do? Of course not! She spent it.

A history of fiscal irresponsibility

And this, of course, is not the first time this has happened on Jean Quan’s watch.

Who can forget January 2003, immediately after she joined the City Council after 12 years on the School Board, when OUSD suddenly discovered that they were in such deep financial crisis due to overspending that they were literally going to run out of money to pay people. You know what happens when a government body can’t pay its bills? Bankruptcy. The only reason OUSD was able to avoid bankruptcy was because Don Perata got the State to bail them out to the tune of one hundred million dollars.

It wasn’t news that the School District’s finances were badly managed. They knew. Or, at least, they should have. They were warned. In 2000, the Board received a comprehensive audit of the District by the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assessment Team (ironically, the Board only consented to the audit because of pressure from Don Perata, who also secured the funding for it), in which OUSD failed every single category, including finance, where it scored a whopping 4 on a scale of 10. The report even went out of its way to note that “the district [...] could face financial peril because it may have overstated student attendance records”. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

Did Quan make sure the School District followed up on the urgent recommendations of the audit? No. In fact, the School Board ignored most of them, and in some cases, did the opposite of what they were told.

And now, not only does Quan still refuse to acknowledge her role in OUSD’s crisis, she has the audacity to try to blame it on Don Perata! It’s truly incredible. I mean, people make mistakes, and if you have a long record of service, it is pretty much inevitable that you will have made some bad calls at some point. But a real leader is willing to admit when they’ve done something wrong, and learn from their mistakes.

Jean Quan has not done this. Instead, she seems determined to repeat the same mistakes all over again, this time with the City. And that’s the kind of leadership I can live without.

Block by Block

I said that yeah, the video kind of sucked, but it seemed clear to me that it was made by kids, although I think now that I may have been wrong about that. And then she posted a new version of it, which was clearly higher budget.

Anyway. I also said that I wasn’t more critical because I really do appreciate the fact that she’s experimenting with something different. I mean, everybody’s campaign materials are all the same, and it gets really boring after a while. I think it’s great that she’s trying to spice it up. And sometimes, when you try new things, they don’t work out. Big deal. At least you’ll know how to do it better next time.

Plus, the song was kind of catchy. I mean, not catchy in the sense that I had any desire to listen to it more than once. But it was at least mildly entertaining. I didn’t find myself desperately wishing it would be over already while I was watching it after like twenty seconds like I did with that that Luann music video they put out a couple of weeks ago.

So I gave “Block by Block” an A for effort.

DREAM A Better Oakland

Now Jean Quan has a new video up. Since, like I said, the first time is for learning, and she’s already had that, I don’t feel as obligated to be kind about this one.

The new video, called DREAM A Better Oakland, is a promotion for her “Envisioning East Oakland” townhall this Saturday in the Elmhurst neighborhood. The premise of the video is that she is giving some kids a ride to one of her house parties. So, right there, you’ve got a suspension of disbelief problem. Like, I don’t buy for a second that she would do that and therefore whole video is implausible to me. I can never get into it when I’m just too distracted from the very beginning by the premise.

But the bigger problem is that the whole thing is really half assed. Jean Quan does not make an even remotely credible case that she is enjoying this at all. Instead, she looks resentful about having all this noise in her car. At 2:03, she looks like she’s struggling to stay awake.

In fact, everyone in the car appears unhappy to be there. They all just seem really uncomfortable. Like, the “better Oakland” they are dreaming of is one where Jean Quan is not giving them rides.

The overall effect is just extremely grim. I mean, I get that it’s a depressing song. But you have to present at least some kind of positive feeling if you want people to think you’re going to improve the situation. The last song at least was positive, and was also about her.

Oh! And don’t even get me started on the inexplicable “Go Raiders” badge she has tacked on top of her logo at the end. Plus there are too many fonts.

Jean Quan’s second music video took several steps backward from her inoffensive first attempt. Therefore, I give DREAM A Better Oakland a C minus.

And then the Council was like, “Hmm, this seems like a lot of money. Let’s have this come back to Committee where you can explain more thoroughly the revenue implications of all this, and also please look into providing a transit pass option for employees instead.” So then it came back to Committee, but with very little supplemental information (PDF) and a really half-assed attempt to address the transit pass issue.

Pat Kernighan proposes no more free parking

So at the April 13th Committee meeting where this was discussed, District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan came out and said that she did not think we should be providing free parking to anyone because it was bad environmental policy to encourage people to drive to work and subsidize their driving. I agree.

And then the Committee was like, “Please bring this back with more answers and look into this bus pass thing more.” So then last Tuesday, the issue came back to the Committee (PDF) again. And at that meeting, Pat Kernighan started right off saying she had a different proposal than the one before them, and hers did not involve giving all these people free parking.

Instead, she suggested that we take the employees who would qualify for free parking under the proposal, and instead of giving them free parking, offer them discounted monthly rates for parking in the garage, and the cost to them would be based on how much money they make. So employees earning less than $55,000 a year would have the option to park for $40/month, those earning between $55,000 and $75,000 a year would be able to park for $60/month, and so on, up to a cost of $140/month for employees earning over $125,000/year.

So this elaborate pricing structure is like, way overly complicated and totally arbitrary and also just kind of misses the point of how we should not be subsidizing parking for anyone. But hey, at least she’s trying to address the problem in some way, which is more than anyone else on that Committee seems willing to do, so kudos to Kernighan for that.

Employee parking fees must wait for another day

So, anyway. Then this thing happened. I don’t even know what was going on here. So Pat Kernighan says she has this brand new proposal about employees paying for parking with this elaborate pay structure and everything, and the City Attorney is like “Um, hello! You guys cannot discuss this.” Because, you know, you totally can’t.

So the reasonable, and I would feel comfortable saying expected response to that being pointed out would be for the Chair of the Committee to be like “Oh, yeah. You’re so right. We totally cannot discuss that right now. Let’s schedule it for the next meeting!” And then they would, and it would take all of like two seconds. Right?

So. That is not what happened.

This is. Jean Quan was like, “Oh, whatever.” And the City Attorney was all “Um, no. I mean it.” And Jean Quan was like “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.” And the City Attorney was like “Um, no. Really.” And Jean Quan was like “Yeah, well we’re not going to pass it today no matter what, so it’s no biggie if we talk about it. Wev.” And the City Attorney was all “Um…yeah. It doesn’t really work like that.” And Jean Quan kept, like, arguing with her over whether or not they were going to discuss this proposal. And the City Attorney kept telling her that to do so would be a clear violation of the Brown Act, and seriously — we are not talking about some, like, obscure clause or something. The fact that whatever is going to be discussed at a public meeting has to be noticed to the public in advance of that meeting is like, the basic premise of the law.

And this went on for like, a minute and a half, and it only stopped because Pat Kernighan interrupted her and was like “Um, yeah. She’s right. Let’s just schedule it for later.”

And I realize this is an odd tangent and I’m sorry for spending so much space on it, but really, this was just, like, bizarre. I mean, how do you serve as an elected official for like twenty freaking years and not get the fundamentals of open meetings law? Like, what is that? I don’t understand how that happens. And transparent government is one of her campaign platform points!

I mean, I go to a lot of meetings. And a lot of times, you go watch these minor Boards or whatever and they totally do not follow the Brown Act and ignore their agendas and vote with secret ballots(!!!) and pull shit like that. And I get pretty irritated about that and really think their staff should stop them, but it’s not worth getting that worked up over because, you know, these Boards have no power and it just doesn’t matter that much. But when you’re on the City Council, that’s a whole different thing. Weird.

What about a transit pass?

Anyway. So then, the Committee was all like, “Okay, so now there’s this proposal to not give the employees free parking that we can’t discuss right now, so should we pass this plan for giving them free parking now? Oh, gee, I guess that wouldn’t really make sense then, would it? Yeah. Okay, well, so should we just pass part of this proposal now and then leave the rest for when we come back to discuss the rates? Oh, well since this is proposal is only about who we give free parking to and now we don’t actually want to give anyone free parking, I guess we can’t pass any of it. Okay. Geez. Hey! Didn’t we say something before about a bus pass?”

So. I would not hold my breath for City employees to be getting EasyPass anytime soon. At the last meeting where this was discussed, the Committee had said that they wanted to move forward with the EasyPass program with AC Transit, but that they didn’t want to pay anything for it. So the idea was that if we did it, employees could take the pass or not, but if they did, they would have to pay for it. Of course, EasyPass is a pretty incredible deal, even if you’re paying the whole price out of pocket, so it’s not hard to imagine people wanting to take advantage of it. (At the last meeting, Pat Kernighan was like “Oh yeah, I don’t even ride the bus. But I’d buy it!) And the City is broke, so I didn’t have any problem with making staff pay for the whole thing.

So what the Committee directed staff to do at the previous meeting, to see if we would be able to do EasyPass without it costing the City money, was to survey all the employees about if they would participate in an EasyPass program if they had to pay for it, So then at last week’s meeting, the Committee asked what kind of response they got from City employees about whether they would want the EasyPass if they had to pay for it, and staff was like “We asked the people who get free parking if they would rather have a bus pass and they all said no.” And the Committee was like “Yeah, obviously. We asked you to ask all the employees if they would do it. So when are you going to have those results for us?”

And staff was just like, “Oh, well we weren’t planning on asking people and coming back to you with that. We were just going to do it.” And the Committee was like “Huh?” And Assistant City Administrator Marianna Marysheva-Martinez was all “Well, since the employees will pay for it themselves, we’ll just tell people that if they want the pass at the discount rate AC Transit offers it to us at, they can buy it, and there’s no contractual obligation that you would have to approve.” And Pat Kernighan was like “Um, isn’t there a minimum number of participants?” And Marianna Marysheva-Martinez was like “Uh…yeah, we’ll get back to you.”

EasyPass Disconnect

So, um, as far as I understand it, that is not how EasyPass works. The employer enters into an agreement with AC Transit to do this program, and it’s not just like, “Okay, now you get near-free bus passes as much as you want. Just give us a call when you want another one!” You’re supposed to have a site coordinator and work with AC Transit to promote the program, and educate your employees about their transit options and also you pay for the whole program at once at the start of the year, based on a number of program participants you have agreed on.

The per participant price for EasyPass also varies widely based on the number of participants. Like, if you’re doing it for 1,000 people, the per pass price maxes out at $82/person, while the per-pass price for 100 people can run up to $115.

It seems to me that if Oakland were going to do an EasyPass program, which I totally think they should, there’s actually a lot the Council needs to talk about. Are employees expected to cover the whole cost of their pass? Okay, great. How are we going to make sure we make a deal for the right number of passes and don’t end up having to eat a fortune if we don’t end up selling that many? Who is going to be eligible for the pass? Full-time employees? Part-time employees? Temporary employees? Civilian employees? Sworn employees? Only employees who work at City Hall? Or everyone, throughout the City? If they do it for staff at all different locations, is that going to impact the pricing structure for the passes, since all these different locations must be in a variety of different level of service zones. Or is everyone’s pass, no matter where they work, going to be priced based on the level of service for City Hall? Right?

I mean, these are just a few of the questions that pop into my head about this. I’m sure that if I spent a little more time thinking about it, I would have lots more questions. The idea that staff thinks they can or that it would even be appropriate to enter into an EasyPass program agreement without talking to the Council about it is, frankly, terrifying.

But what’s even more disconcerting is that they just do not seem to be taking the direction to explore an EasyPass program seriously at all. Listening to staff talk about the EasyPass program, which they had been directed to investigate, at both last week’s meeting and the previous one, it sounded a lot to me like nobody at the City of Oakland had so much as bothered to pick up the phone and talk to anyone at AC Transit about it. And while it’s entirely possible I’m wrong about that, I would be very surprised to discover as much, because the information they are providing to the Committee seems like what you would get if you kind of glanced at the EasyPass website and didn’t even it read it very closely.

I mean, forgive my skepticism, but they couldn’t even get AC Transit’s name right in the most recent report (PDF), which, really. I mean, that’s just pathetic. And it isn’t like there isn’t precedent for staff being totally dismissive of transit options and not bothering to do any research about it whatever. I mean, back in January when the Committee asked staff about transit alternatives to free parking, staff replied with total confidence that the cost to giving a bus pass to employees was $90/month. Which is, of course, even more than it costs to buy the passes retail. And the premise in all their reports that out of like 5,000 people who work for the City, we should only expect 100 to use the program is just freaking preposterous. Anyway.

Don’t hold your breath for the paid parking either

And what about Pat Kernighan’s proposal to charge these employees different rates for parking based on how much money they make? Well, don’t be looking for that one on any agendas in the near future. Staff’s response to the proposal was that they will have to meet and confer with the unions before the Committee can talk about it any more.

You see, even though free parking isn’t spelled out as a benefit in the MOUs, since these employees have been getting free parking for so long anyway, it can be considered a benefit that’s being taken away anyhow, and so you can’t change it without talking to the union first. When the Committee asked how long it would take before the item could come back, the response they got was basically, “Don’t expect to see it anytime soon.”

You can watch the discussion below:

So I guess for now, we’ll just keep on giving an unspecified number of employees free parking that we could be renting out to the public and making money off of, and maybe someday we’ll do EasyPass, or maybe not. You know, whatever. Gotta love the City of Oakland!

Related Posts

• 04.09.2010: Oakland: Transit first only on paper
• 01.12.2010: Free parking for City employees. Why?

You may have read about this proposal yesterday on FutureOakland or maybe earlier in Jean Quan’s hysterical newsletter.

Campaign contribution and expenditure limits in Oakland

In short, the City Attorney has proposed that the existing Oakland campaign contribution and expenditure limits be doubled (PDF). The way it works right now is that you can either spend as much money as you want, but only take $100 donations, or you can agree to voluntarily spending limits and accept donations of up to $700 from individuals. Basically everyone takes the spending limits. Currently, the spending limit for the Mayoral race is $379,000.

Campaign contribution limits are by no means unique to Oakland. They exist at in State and Federal races, and many other cities have decided to impose contribution limits in their local races as well. An attachment to the report on this issue to the Ethics Commission lists the existing limits in other California cities (PDF), as does Jean Quan in her blog and newsletter. (Quan’s “comparative” list, BTW, conveniently only lists the cities that have lower limits than Oakland and omits those that have higher ones, like Santa Ana ($1,000), Anaheim ($1,700), Fresno ($3,600), and Sacramento ($3,000), Glendale ($1,000), as well as those that have no limits, like Bakersfield, Riverside, Stockton, Modesto, and San Bernadino.)

Why would we raise the limit?

Under our old election system, these limits applied separately in both the primary and general elections. That is, if you gave someone the maximum donation for their primary campaign, and the race happened to go into a runoff (as was the case with the 2008 At-large City Council election), you could give them the maximum donation again for their runoff campaign. This was because there were two elections, even though it was only for one office.

Now that we’re doing Ranked Choice Voting, we will no longer have two (or the potential for two) elections for municipal offices, only a single election in November. The City Attorney reasons (PDF) that since there will now only be one election where there used to be two, that single election should have the same total limits as used to exist for both elections combined. Additionally, the City Attorney argues that the extra money will allow candidates to educate voters about Ranked Choice Voting, which will be new to them in November.

Why wouldn’t we raise the limit?

Ethics Commission staff does not agree with this rationale (PDF), and notes that most local elections do not go to a runoff. The report further notes that it is the County, not individual candidates, that bears the responsibility of educating residents about the new voting system.

Another attachment to the staff report features 22 letters received about the proposal (PDF). One is in favor and 21 are against. Here is a sampling of what the letter writers have to say:

Is American turning into a country where only the rich can run for office and get elected? Are we turning into Great Britain before the American Revolution or France before the French Revolution? American was founded on the premise that anyone could run for office and become a representative of the people. With the rise of campaign donation limits it is obvious that only special interest will have great influence in who gets elected. This is a travesty of the American political system and it should be halted.

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I strongly oppose this. Lower limits help us stay more honest and make it more likely that the election is actually based on issues and qualifications. And the availability of extra funds to make higher donations to a campaign suggests to me that unethically high prices have been charged for services or products somewhere. Wouldn’t we all rather make our own decision about who (and what) to contribute our hard-earned money to than to have it made for us by Microsoft, or Sun, or Mechanics Bank, or an insurance company?

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These should be REDUCED NOT INCREASED. What are they thinking

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Being that I had a long term interest in Oakland, in a large part for its key value in keeping the wheels of commerce in the Bay Area running as best as possible for the benefit of the entire Bay Area as the key shipping port for Central and Northern California. Preamble: I beg your indulgence to describe two Campaign Finance options. Preamble: Presidential Candidate Obama once supported construction of a transcontinental high speed Freight-Only railway for common use of all rail lines. Given the absolute need to avoid, or duplicate, same-level road crossings (they kill over 300 a year), very costly tunnels and bridges, to keep the rails level and the new ability to optimize paths using the latest airplane and satellite GPS data and computer technology. It is my opinion that this project will be done, as soon as possible, possibly to put people back to work, all across the nation.

…

Option A. Make a new Finance Office of the Ethics Commission the recipient of all donation above some limit, for example, a Private Business could give X00s Dollars to one, or more Council Members up to the new allowed limit that you will set. And, the same donor may contribute YOOs Dollars to the new Ethics Commission Finance Office, without any limits, to be evenly divided among current Council Members running for re-election….

I guess the last one should get some credit for thinking outside of the box?

Basically, all the objections are premised on the idea that we need to keep money out of elections in order to preserve a level playing field and that low contribution limits accomplish that.

Why it doesn’t matter

So here’s the thing about money. There are always going to be people who have a lot of money. And here’s the thing about money and politics. Some of those people are always going to want to spend their piles of money to influence elections. And they are going to find a way to do it, no matter what you try to do to stop it. You just can’t. I’m sorry. But you can’t. And if you think that you’re going to keep money out of elections by imposing strict contribution limits, well, you’re delusional.

We have watched this play out on the State level, where individual contributions to a candidate are limited but independent expenditures on behalf of a candidate are not (so long as these expenditures are not coordinated with the campaign). We will soon watch it play out across the Country.

The result of contribution limits is not to reduce the amount of money spent on elections. Far from it. All that happens is a shift in where money gets spent. The candidate’s campaign becomes less important and the independent expenditures become more so. If you tell people who have lot of money to spend and want to spend it that they can’t give it to a candidate’s campaign, they will find another way to spend it to further their purposes. Sometimes these efforts may be inept and counterproductive, like those ridiculous and terrifying SAFE neighborhoods NOW signs that Oakland Jobs PAC plastered all over town to promote Kerry Hamill’s City Council campaign in 2008, or the “homocide” mailer, also promoting Kerry Hamill and also courtesy of Oakland Jobs PAC in 2008, or that horrifying chalk body outline mailer OakPAC sent out bashing Nancy Nadel the same year. But whether or not these expenditures effectively communicate their message is besides the point. It’s still money.

What you can do about it

So how do you combat the influence of people who have lots of money? Well, you give your own.

I don’t make a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. $700 is a huge amount to me, and I’m not the sort of person who can just whip out the checkbook and drop seven hundred, or hell, even a hundred dollars without feeling it. But I maxed out my contributions to one local campaign last election cycle and I can say without a moment of hesitation that I would have given more if I had been allowed to. And I intend to do so again in 2010. Knowing that elections were on the way, I have spent the last year and a half slowly putting some money from every single paycheck away into a little personal donation pool so that I will have the ability to help the candidates who I want to see win.

I completely realize I’m way more invested in these things than the average person, and I obviously don’t expect every struggling Oaklander to save up for eighteen months so they can make hefty contributions to local campaigns. My point is simply that if you really want to give, you can do it, even if your means are limited.

So that’s my advice. Whatever happens with the Ethics Commission tonight and perhaps ultimately the City Council with respect to contribution limits, there’s going to be a ton of money in the Mayoral race. You can’t stop that. I’m sorry, I wish that weren’t the case, but it just is. You don’t like it? Too bad, you can’t change it. You want to do something about it? Give.

I remember vividly a message I received from someone working on a local campaign a few years ago after I had made my second donation. I had previously given the candidate $50, and then like a month or so later, as the election was drawing closer, I starting feeling really bad about the long odds they were up against, so I coughed up (not without difficulty) another $50. Within minutes, I got the following e-mail:

on behalf of the [redacted] campaign, I wish you would stop contributing money. For gosh sakes, we have people in [super rich neighborhood] living in 3 million dollar homes who only contribute $25 or take a sign.

That was just so sad to me. People in Oakland complain and complain and complain all the time about how frustrated they are with their entrenched, dysfunctional government, yet they don’t seem to be willing to do what it takes to change it. You want new leadership? Newsflash: campaigns cost money. Mailers are expensive. Door hangers are expensive. Walk pieces are expensive. Office space is expensive. It takes money to run. It just does. You can hate it all you want. I hate it. But hating it doesn’t change anything and neither does whining.

I’m not saying everyone needs to run around giving everybody the max or even close to it. And I’m not going to tell you who you should give to. But if you care about these things (and I assume you do if you’re reading this blog), and you find a candidate you sincerely want to see be the Mayor or City Councilmember or on the School Board or BART Board or Peralta Board or whatever, write them a check. If you want to reduce the influence of other people’s money, the way to do it is to dilute the importance of their money.

And whatever your first inclination is for an amount to donate, pause for a second and think about whether or not you can afford to give more. How much does who is running your city matter to you? How much do you want this person to win? What can you sacrifice to allow yourself to give a little bit more? One dinner out? Two? Ten? Think about it. Figure out what you can afford. Yeah, writing that check, in whatever amount you settle on, is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts Daddy Warbucks or whoever. But that’s just life. Deal with it.

The Public Ethics Commission will meet to discuss the proposal (PDF) at 6:30 PM tonight in Oakland City Hall Hearing Room 1.

The League of Women Voters can attest that Oakland City government lacks the tools to ensure that its records are easy for City staff and citizens to access and use. The Public Ethics Commission fields numerous complaints that have to do with missing records or failure to produce records. Last year this pattern of complaints led the PEC to propose to the City Council revisions to the Sunshine Ordinance (PDF) designed to set uniform records standards for the city. Despite strong support by the City Attorney and City Auditor, the Council’s Finance and Management Committee deferred the issue pending more study.

The proposal is finally coming back (PDF) to the Finance and Management Committee on December 15 (12 noon, City Hall Hearing Room 1). The League will be there to urge the adoption of the PEC’s recommendations (PDF). Oakland needs a framework for city policies and procedures, a systematic process for dealing with records that will be used throughout city government.

Basic records management is required by the California Public Records Act (CPRA), which requires that all public agencies make all their records, with some very few exceptions, accessible to the public. In order for records to be accessible, the city staff needs to be able to find them. The citizens of Oakland have a right to expect that their city government can and will comply with the requirements of the CPRA.

While there may be costs for putting a comprehensive records management system in place, having records in an efficient, easily accessible order will save the city money in the long run. Staff will spend less time searching for records and responding to complaints, and more time serving the public.

We can also expect savings from timely collection of records necessary to defend the city against lawsuits which now result all too often in unnecessarily long proceedings and/or unfavorable judgments and settlements.

In order to enact strong records management the city needs a strong policy – the records management ordinance changes to the Sunshine Ordinance – from the City Council and a strong commitment from the administration that it will enforce the policy. The City Clerk has made her statement of commitment by hiring a professional records manager to oversee the program. However, the records manager does not operate in a vacuum. Without full cooperation from all city departments, the records manager will not be able to do his or her job. The City Administrator must make a strong statement that records management has his full backing, and make it a high priority for everyone who does work for the city.

The proposal before the Finance and Management Committee on December 15

• streamlines and clarifies the definition of a city record to be “ all recorded information, regardless of media format or physical characteristics, that are produced, received, owned or used” by the city in connection with its affairs or legal obligations;
• adds the City Attorney and City Auditor to the Records Management Committee;
• provides for a review of the records management program by the Public Ethics Commission, with a public hearing;
• clarifies the roles of the City Clerk (development and implementation of records management program for all city elected officials), agency and department heads, and the Public Ethics Commission (authorized to investigate and report on specific allegations of non-compliance with records management program);
• clarifies that all city records are to be transferred to the City Clerk’s office upon termination of a contract or of an elected official’s term of office.

We need to let the City Council and City Administrator know that we expect them to follow up on this sane piece of legislation. We’re hoping for a good showing at the Finance and Management Committee next Tuesday, but everyone can send an email to or call the members of the committee:

• Jean Quan, committee chair (jquan@oaklandnet.com, 238-7004)
• Ignacio De La Fuente (idelafuente@oaklandnet.com, 238-7005)
• Pat Kernighan (pkernighan@oaklandnet.com, 238-7002)
• Nancy Nadel (nnadel@oaklandnet.com, 238-7003)

Let the committee members — and the entire Council — know that you want Oakland to operate in a transparent, professional manner, and that the enactment of a strong records management ordinance is a crucial first step.