Don Perata for Oakland Mayor?

How funny, I was just talking about this last night. I’m not particularly interested in speculating on who’s going to be Mayor two years from now - I’d rather focus on what’s happening in the City right now. But I’m sure that Chip Johnson’s column today about Don Perata, barring indictment, running for Mayor of Oakland in 2010 will get some of my readers fired up, so rather than having the issue clutter up the comments section of an unrelated post, I’ll give you guys a space to duke it out. Read more

Banner summer for Oakland

So, to recap.

The general political climate in Oakland at the beginning of the summer was best summed up by the Trib in their Council race endorsements, which they introduced by saying “If there were ever a city crying out for leadership, it’s Oakland,” then proceeded to endorse the re-election of every single incumbent. Oakland voters followed suit at the polls in early June, and sent Nancy Nadel, Jane Brunner, Ignacio De La Fuente, and Larry Reid back for four more years.

Mid-June news of a large-scale gang bust by the Oakland Police Department was almost immediately eclipsed by allegations that Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly had interfered with the 2-month investigation by tipping off her nephew, a member of the Acorn gang and City of Oakland employee, that his phone was tapped.

Faced with widespread citizen outrage, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums took the opportunity to demonstrate his unique ability to find the absolute worst possible way to handle a municipal crisis, first giving her until Monday, June 23rd to either resign or be fired, then pre-empting his own deadline by sending out an e-mail on Friday, June 20th directing all department heads to report directly to him. Nevertheless, Edgerly remained at the helm at the beginning of the following week.

Then on Tuesday, June 24th, Dellums held a press conference announcing that Edgerly would retire from her post, at the end of July (although she would continue to work for the city for as long as six months while selecting her own replacement) but claimed that the announcement was unrelated to the brewing scandal, saying her retirement plans had been in place since January. When pressed for details on the search for Edgerly’s replacement by Chip Johnson on KQED Forum, Dellums Chief of Staff David Chai remained insistent that the plan had been in place since January, but refused (or was unable) to answer follow-up questions about when the search for a replacement had begun.

By Friday, June 27th, Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Pat Kernighan were calling publicly for her to be placed on administrative leave until her retirement date, and Dellums finally did so that night, naming his interim CEDA director Dan Lindheim acting City Administrator. Edgerly fired back the next Monday, claiming that Dellums didn’t have the authority to appoint her replacement, in response to which, the Mayor finally fired her on July 1st, then told reporters the following day that claims he had behaved indecisively were “absurd.” Ultimate fallout of the Edgerly scandal is yet to be determined, awaiting the results of an FBI investigation, for which subpoenas were issued in late August.

Reaction to the Edgerly mess from the rest of City Hall varied widely. Oakland City Attorney John Russo, Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente stepped in with government reform packages, offering proposals ranging from a new anti-nepotism law to an audit of hiring practices to records reform, while District 3 City Councilmember Nancy Nadel called such actions “opportunistic power grabbing (PDF)” and warned that we should wait for all the facts before “rushing to judgement.” Calls to eliminate waste in Oakland’s government were met with derision by District 4 Councilmember and wanna-be Mayor Jean Quan, who announced in a newsletter that she believes the worst case scenario is that the City has less than a million dollars in waste that could be cut.

The administrative crisis was compounded by a financial one. The Council passed a mid-cycle budget with $15 million in cuts in June, but got two bits of unpleasant news the next month. First, in response to findings of vote counting irregularities with LLAD from activist David Mix and ORPN founder Charles Pine, the Council admitted defeat and agreed not to collect the tax, putting them another $12 million in the hole. Then Dellums acknowledged that the revenue estimates he had presented in his (late) budget proposal were inaccurate by millions of dollars and announced he was bringing in former City Manager Robert Bobb to sort out the mess and find a replacement for Edgerly. Bobb announced two weeks ago that the actual deficit was somewhere between forty and sixty million dollars. Matier and Ross later reported that Oakland’s fund reserve dropped from over $60 million last year to $22 million currently. Although the City is unable to account for where the money went, Finance and Management Committee Chair Jean Quan tried to put a rest to concerns, saying “It’s not like the money was stolen.”

Things just got worse in August, when the City experienced a spree of local business robberies that appeared to have no rhyme or reason, with targets ranging from a pizzeria on Skyline to a nail salon in Temescal to a monument to mediocre cuisine in Rockridge. Dellums responded by blaming the economy, informing the citizens that the apparent crime rise is perception, not reality, and calling in the volunteer Guardian Angels to patrol our streets. The spate of high profile crime wasn’t limited to restaurant robberies - Oakland residents also got to deal with arsons in West Oakland, a four year old boy getting hit by a stray bullet, and this weekend, the second murder this year of a pregnant teenager. A Labor Day shooting in East Oakland brought the year’s homicide tally to 95, up from 88 this time last year.

In response to rising concerns about crime, the Council agreed to place a parcel tax on the November ballot that would hire 105 additional police officers and 75 additional police service technicians over the next three years, at a cost of $275/year for Oakland homeowners. Dellums named former County Health Department director Arnold Perkins as his temporary Public Safety Director. Although the public will have to wait until September 11th to see the Mayor’s full public safety program, residents got a preview of Perkins’s answers for the Oakland crime problem in a Trib editorial this weekend, where Perkins suggests to Martin Reynolds that citizens combat the crime problem on their own by bringing fried chicken to the groups of young men loitering on their streetcorners.

You know, following this stuff day to day, you’re always angry, of course, but as with anything, after a while you just sort of get used to it. There’s outrage, sure, but somehow it just gets dulled over time. I had a wake-up call this weekend, watching the way people not from Oakland reacted to my telling them, in this kind of jaded, matter-of-fact way, about the restaurant robberies and the statements in response from Dellums and Tucker. Their response, which was just complete disbelief that anyone would tolerate living in such a place, made me realize just how totally, totally fucked-up the situation is in this town. (I am sorry for the language. Although I may have a few sailor-like tendencies in person, I do try to restrain myself on the blog, but sometimes there are no other words.) The people of Oakland deserve better, and there is absolutely no reason we should tolerate the status quo even a day longer. Immediate action is needed from City Hall. As for what that action should be, well, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow on my thoughts there. Today is just about reveling in completely justifiable outrage.

Records, ROAR!

So, I’m assuming everyone’s already read all about the package of administrative reforms (PDF!) proposed by City Attorney John Russo and City Auditor Courtney Ruby in the newspaper, so I don’t really need to get into it that much.

Their reform package, like De La Fuente’s, might be seen by some, as Nancy Nadel suggested in her inane statement (PDF!) on the Edgerly matter, as “opportunistic power grabbing.” I wouldn’t characterize it that way - I mean, both packages are certainly opportunistic. But when you, like De La Fuente and Russo, have been trying for years to get anyone to listen to you and nobody will, then you’d be a fool not to seize a scandal like this as maybe your one and only chance to get people to take reform seriously. As Russo said last week: Read more

Oakland Focus interview with John Russo

Zennie Abraham has a really interesting interview up with City Attorney John Russo over at Oakland Focus. It’s long (35 minutes), but definitely worth watching.

Some of the highlights:

On the recent elections and the entrance of candidates like Sean Sullivan onto the Oakland political scene, who do not easily fall into either of the traditional political camps we’re used to seeing:

You’re starting to see ferment and chaos and breakdown of what has been about 25 years of this two sided equation. And I don’t know where it goes, I don’t know where it ends up, but it’s going to be very exciting for the city, because I think it’s going to mean more choices for the public, and more open and healthy discourse about issues that have been ideologically polarizing.

And on the lack of young blood in local politics:

Baby Boom politicians have done a uniquely bad job of bringing along new talent. And there are a lot of theories around that. Is it because the Baby Boom generation, having grown up self-identified as the youth generation, cannot conceive outside of itself being the youthfulness, and therefore, doesn’t think of itself in a role as sort of wiser, older, mentoring younger people along and prefers to point the finger at younger people?

I couldn’t help but laugh at the part with all the distracting sirens in the background. Part of my job involves conducting interviews and creating podcasts from them, which I do from my computer here in my very noisy apartment. I can’t tell you how frustrated I get on the frequent occasions when I get sirens blazing in the background, ruining my interview, while I’m trying to talk. I love Oakland.

City Attorney responds to Mario Juarez’s accusations

So in case you’re like, living in a cave or something and haven’t noticed, the District 5 race has turned all sorts of nasty. Mario Juarez had his office windows broken last weekend (his windows had been broken repeatedly in the past, well before he was ever running for office, prompting Ignacio to install a security camera on the office). Anyway, despite this, and despite the fact that Ignacio De La Fuente’s campaign office also had windows broken earlier in the campaign, Juarez all but straight up accused Ignacio’s campaign of doing it, and the local media totally bought his sob story. De La Fuente sent out a classy response, and Juarez responded by claiming that the lawsuit (PDF!) he settled with the City for breach of contract and fraud was political intimidation.

Juarez sent a message to a District 5 listserv denying the charges on the Oakland City Crook website and included this statement about his settlement with the City:

My attorney had no doubt that I would prevail in a lawsuit, but the fight was projected to cost $300,000 in legal fees to me. Spending that kind of money would have bankrupted us - forcing closure of our business and putting more than 60 people out of work.

So, I made a business decision to settle with the City, essentially paying back the amount we had been paid for the contract.

And that was just too much, so the City Attorney’s office sent this response to Juarez, and it’s just so awesome that even though I know I’m going to regret posting about this because of the irritating comments it will generate, I just have to share the entire thing: Read more

More on the Oak to Ninth Referendum

So JDAT has his own take on the Oak to Ninth Referendum committee’s decision drop their suit. Unsurprisingly, he’s much more sympathetic to their whining than I am: Read more

Oak to Ninth lawsuit dropped!

The Oakland City Council approved the 3100 unit Oak to Ninth development in July of last year. A month later, a coalition made up of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, and several other groups submitted 25,000 signatures to bring the project to a vote before the entire city. On September 7th, 2006, Oakland City Attorney John Russo directed the City Clerk to invalidate their petition because the group had failed to comply with state laws governing referendums. The future of referendum has been tied up in court for the last year. Russo announced today that the referendum committee has agreed to drop their suit over his decision to invalidate the petition. Read more

Fighting foreclosures at City Hall

Tomorrow morning there will be a 10 AM press conference at City Hall, announcing a new coalition aimed at helping Oakland residents with our growing foreclosure problem and new initiatives from the City to help protect residents against foreclosure. Sadly, I have to be at work, so I won’t be able to go. Read more

Seat belts? Seriously?

Does OPD seriously have nothing better to do than conduct “special enforcement sting[s]” about seat belts?