Time to Gut the Council President's Job Description

By Scott Lewis

E-MAIL STORY

Monday, Oct. 27, 2008 | Right now, if you care about San Diego city politics, you are focused on four major races that are heading into their last lap: The anti-climatic contest for city attorney; the "I'm-more-liberal-than-you" battle in District 3; and the classic two-party fights in District 7 and District 1.

But you probably hadn't been focusing on a derivative conflict taking place at the same time. It's a secret battle. Specifically, it's the struggle to be the City Council president.

Scott Lewis

It's getting kind of ugly. But today we have a chance to diffuse it, and at the same time open up the City Council in a way that might foster leadership and accountability.

I know, that sounds radical.

City Councilwoman Donna Frye and City "I-Can't-Wait-to-Be" Councilman Carl DeMaio are releasing a draft set of new rules for the City Council on Monday that, if adopted, would force its members to do their jobs (revolutionary, really). You can read the 18 draft reforms here.

Among the reforms is one that would make groups like the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. show up at City Council to answer tough questions as needed. Another would make the City Council hold meetings when people could actually attend them. Others would clarify some serious ambiguities about procedure.

But most importantly, DeMaio and Frye have drafted a plan that would neuter the council president.

Don't worry, Scott Peters, that was a figure of speech. Perhaps to quell worries, and be more gender neutral, we should use a different term. But however you describe it, DeMaio and Frye's plan would take away all of what makes being the council president so great.

So be it.

Frye and DeMaio's proposals have the potential to change the way the City Council does business. All of them are interesting to people like me for various reasons. But the one that will grab the most has to do with the, um, declawing, of the position of council president before the new one has a chance to scratch anyone.

First, what exactly is so cool about being the president of the City Council? And what are they proposing to take away? After all, a council president is still just another member of the City Council. Fireworks don't go off when he votes. His vote carries no more weight than others.

Well, what's great about being City Council president is that you get to do a few great things: You get to run the regular meetings. That's kind of boring and obnoxious, really. You get to speak for the council. That cuts both ways. You get to decide who of your colleagues leads what committee. That's getting better. And you decide what will be discussed in those meetings. Bingo.

That's what it's all about.

We may all be riveted about what the City Council is discussing at any particular moment. But the most powerful person in any debate is the one who gets to decide what it is, exactly, that we're debating.

The council president gets to decide this for the city. He or she has the power to decide what issues go on the council's agenda, or docket. This gives the president enormous power. How? Say you work your butt off to become a City Council member -- you walk for miles, beg for money, absorb insults and attacks -- and you do all this just because you want to help out and bring reform to the city. Say you have a great idea. It's the best idea ever. All you want to do is to get the chance to persuade your new colleagues to support the proposal you've crafted.

Right now, if you want to get them even to discuss your idea, you have to pay tribute to the council president. You have to play whatever game the president wants you to play. Why? What did this person do to become so powerful? Absolutely nothing except make deals with your colleagues. The citizens didn't vote to make this person so great. No, their only qualification for this post is that they know how to make four of their colleagues happy.

Admirable, yes. But there's a better way. And DeMaio and Frye have identified it.

The fact is that City Council members of all stripes occasionally have good ideas that they should be able to bring up. The ideas should live or die on their merits and their ability to persuade the Council.

Frye and DeMaio have proposed that if a member of the City Council has a good idea, he or she can take it right to the city clerk, who will refer it to the appropriate council committee. If the committee passes on it, the politician will have to get one colleague on board with the idea. If they both take it to the full council, it will just have to be heard.

This not only takes artificial power away from the council president but also gives that power to the people. If residents or even lobbyists have an idea or a problem and they take it to one City Council member and they're able to persuade that person to champion it, the issue deserves a hearing no matter what one particular member of the council thinks of it.

Under Frye and DeMaio's plan, those hearings might be better attended as well. They propose that Monday City Council meetings be held in the evening. I haven't been to a full City Council meeting for quite some time. But speaking for journalists, I think I could say we're fully against this proposal as I can't imagine making a writer stay there any later than some of ours have had to.

On the other hand, this is probably better for the public.

They also propose a long list of additional reforms -- some more impactful than others.

There's really no way that all of them will go through, but they all deserve discussion. And redefining the role of the council president should be first on the docket.

There's a problem though. How do we get the City Council to debate this? Ahh, interesting, no? After all, under the current rules, the council president gets to decide whether we even discuss it.

It's the ultimate irony. These are all meaningful ideas that DeMaio and Frye have worked hard to produce. Yet they are about to be confronted with the exact type of dilemma their main proposal is meant to address: Two City Council members have a set of good ideas. But the ideas could be blocked by a single lame duck before they're even discussed.

The City Council is trying to decide right now what to do about the new council president. Scott Peters is gone in a couple of months. There are powerful people and interest groups who want City Councilman Ben Hueso, a Democrat, to be council president.

And even though four of them are lame ducks about to be sent to sea, Peters and his colleagues are thinking about naming Hueso to the post now, before the new City Council members take their posts.

If they do that, Hueso certainly won't be interested in neutering himself -- and this idea could die before it even lived.

Knowing this is the situation, one could look at DeMaio and Frye in a more cynical light and wonder whether they both have come to terms with the fact that neither of them has a chance to be council president. And figuring this out, they decided that if they couldn't have that power, no one should.

As a big fan of cynicism, I'll admit I wondered that.

But the fact is, Ben Hueso has done nothing to deserve the honor of deciding what ideas this City Council should be debating. This isn't necessarily a condemnation of him, it's just the truth. What has he done to deserve so much power?

None of the council members, in fact, deserve that power right now. Frye is the only one of the presidential contenders to have a proven track record of considering the city's problems as a whole beyond her own district. But she hasn't shown the ability to build a coalition to get major projects done.

Under the new system, they each would be allowed an equal chance to have their ideas heard and show leadership for the city as a whole.

There is nothing bad about this unless you've somehow invested in Hueso or someone else. Unless you know he's going to be squash the things you don't like and promote the debates you want to have, you have no reason to want him to have that kind of power.

Yet there's a chance to make sure you get it instead.

Please contact Scott Lewis (scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org) directly with your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips. Or send a letter to the editor.

Editor´s Choice
The reader comments you won't want to miss. (Editor's Choice selection do not represent the views of the editors. They are comments that seem to add to the discussion as opposed to less productive insults or arguments.)

This sounds like the Carl Demaio Gadfly Act of 2008. As an accountant, I'm interested to know, do the docket requests get handled in a First In, First Out matter? What if there was an urgent need for a declaration of emergency by the Council? Would that have to wait until we heard every irrelevant idea? Maybe there is a way to bump up those pressing needs. Or maybe we are placing new important legislative powers with the clerk? Does Liz Maland (a great City Clerk, by the way) become the de facto Council President? Look, I feel for Donna Frye, as I think the Mayor's office and others should be more responsive to her ideas and requests, but this is too far. Someone needs to be in charge and make the call. When did Peters ever play games with the docket? He was a pretty fair council president.

Posted by Jeff Welch | reply to this comment
October 26, 2008 9:18 pm

Scott, this is a terrible idea. Weaken the council president, and you empower the mayor. What you'll see is council members looking out for their own bailiwick, focusing on things that matter only to their district (and thus their re-election), while the mayor makes major policies for the whole city. Agenda control is a powerful tool used in each and every legislature in the world, to various degrees. Less agenda control leads to more chaos, and far worse public policy.

Posted by Vlad | reply to this comment
October 26, 2008 10:06 pm

A strong council president means a strong city council. Who else has the power to stand up and hold the mayor accountable? A strong council president can force the mayor to discuss issues he/she would rather not-water reuse, big box ban, RV ordinance, beach alcohol ban. Each of those (save for her last minute, politically movtivated change of heart on big box) are issues that Ms. Frye cares deeply about. They would never have made it to council without the advocacy and behind-the-scenes work of the council president. Ms. Frye's willingness to take her ball and go home when she does not get her way does a disservice to the council and the people and makes her stated concerns about a "strong council" nothing more than lip service.

Posted by HP | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 7:47 am

The reforms proposed by Frye ad DeMio are a giant step in the right direction. It looks to me like the first few posts were made by the same folks who have been benefiting for quite some time by the stacked deck the council president wields. Ben Hueso as council president is the ultimate joke. Regarding the comment about Peters being fair with the docket-how do you know? You have no idea what items he rejected. Let's hope this council somehow finds the guts to do the right thing. They should vote in favor of these reforms that give a stronger voice to those of us who elected them. The status quo has got to go!

Posted by Linda J. Wilson | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 3:14 pm

20 Comments so far on this story...

Finally some real leadership on the City Council! And some bipartisan cooperation! I applaud Frye and DeMaio for working together. We need more of that. The rules they propose are very similar to the County Board of Supervisors. I'm not surprised at some of the posts on this board. Are you Council staffers? Seems to me that the only people who may have a problem with these reforms are the power brokers who currently benefit from the closed system. Time to change it!

Posted by Tristan | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 4:39 am

Bad idea, you need a level headed Council President to keep whack jobs like Frye and DeMaio from wasting the Council's time.

Posted by Mr. Joyboy | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 6:33 am

Excuse me, but why is VOSD letting posts like this in? What happened to the rule that "posts with overly personal attacks or unsubstantiated allegations may be edited or deleted?" This comment does nothing to further the conversation here.

Posted by CLB | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 7:33 am

Only the Strong Mayor and Council President can bring an issue up for a vote. It will be easier to resolve a situation like the Children’s’ Pool in La Jolla. Currently Scott Peters refuses to solve the City-wide problem. Instead of Peters and the Court, Taxpayers should make the choice is the seals stay or go. Since the City does not have the money to uphold the 1931_Trust between the State and City, a proposition can be put on the next General Election ballot to rescind the Trust and return the land to its real owner, the State of California. Multi-millions of taxpayer dollars will be saved because Environmental Studies would not be needed for a new EIR. Four of the existing City Council persons thought the placement of a rope barrier was a humane gesture to help the seal rookery in our beautiful front_yard. There is hope for_the_seals yet.

Posted by La Playa Heritage | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 6:46 am

I'm not surprised by the vicious attacks on DeMaio (and for years Frye). The establishment cannot argue with their ideas so they go on negative personal attacks and call them names. DeMaio won in a landslide in his district for a reason. And Ms Frye enjoys popular support across the city (admittedly not as a mayor, bu the public clearly likes her as a legislator.) The establishment should get over it and stop with the personal attacks. if you have better ideas for reforming city hall, put them on the table guys!

Posted by Citizen Activist | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 8:04 am

I agree! Why the politics of personal destruction??? If you don't have positive, constructive ideas to improve our city, go be negative somewhere else. We need solutions now in this city, not vitriol and cynicism. If you have to, attack the message, not the messenger. Jeez, enough already with some of you...

Posted by Robert E. Lee | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 11:14 am

I quickly looked through the Fry-DeMaio proposal...it looks a lot like putting power in the hands of the people. I like it. The strong mayor/council president structure was pushed through half-baked by the downtown power brokers. It has concentrated too much power in the hands of those who haven't used it for the public good. It has further deteriorated our city. Other than scrapping it all and starting over, the best we can do is refine and reform. So even if this proposal is not perfect, it is a good starting point to have deliberate, informed discussion.

Posted by Dukestir Wilkes | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 8:19 am

Excellent idea, again, by both Frye & DeMaio- we need to make sure that ideas of 'city-wide' impact, are pushed up to agenda instead of relying on the 'power brokering' of one council member, usually associated with the 'City-bankrupting developer's power' in the Mayor's spot. FYI, Hueso's most infamous 'connection' is also closely tied to development, his family's involvement in slum-lording with Inzunza's..our past-convicted council person of other dubious distinctions. To have him as 'president' would show the world how 'greedy' the development industry really is in Scam Diego!

Posted by Eyes Open? | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 8:24 am

DeMaio and Frye working together has been great so far. I am think every rep deciding what will be discussed in different meetings will great effect the people of that district and get more things done with in the communities. Sounds great to me.

Posted by LoveOB | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 9:06 am

Scott, you've been duped by the Frye and DeMaio gruesome twosome. Someone has to control the legislative agenda, otherwise there will be no priorities. This reform will permit them to grandstand to their hearts content, and accomplish NOTHING. Meanwhile the Mayor will control the city. This just shows why District 3 is so important. "Who is more liberal?" isn't the question, its "Who is experienced and knowledgeable enough to turn things around." The last thing we need is to add Whitburn as the Gruesome Twosome lapdog. We need a councilmember to provide an effective counterweight to the mayor, and actually accomplish something on crime, infrastructure, and transit. Todd Gloria is our only hope.

Posted by District 3 Resident | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 9:58 am

Which developer wrote this ? I don't blame you for not giving your name.,calling yourself "district 3 resident."Then we'd know your motives.

Posted by mel shapiro | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 1:50 pm

Mel, Frye, and Scott Lewis are too blind to see that allowing two councilmembers to place items on the agenda will create a legislative traffic jam, and prevent the council from acting strategically. The current council president structure mirrors that of Congress and most state legislators where the the majority party leader (council president) sets the agenda. This allows congress/state legislature/city council to act strategically to balance the power of the president/governor/s mayor and avoid congestion. Without the ability to set the agenda, the executive branch will always win. While Frye and DeMaio will be able to place items on the agenda, the mayor will also be able to do so with the cooperation of only two councilmembers. This "reform" means a Sanders dictatorship. We need more legislative leadership not less. Vote Gloria!

Posted by District 3 Resident | reply to this comment
October 28, 2008 7:14 am

Mr. District 3 Resident. Are you aware that Jerry Sanders endorsed Todd Gloria. Who also has the support of many of Doug Manchesters surrogates. It seems to me that the best way to prevent a "Sanders Dictatorship" and the same old same old business as usual on the council would be to vote for Steve Whitburn.

Posted by Jack O'Neil | reply to this comment
October 29, 2008 11:45 am

I especially like proposed Reform 1.3: Improve Time Management of the Docket. Too often important items are trailed and too often is one council meeting congested with multiple controversial items. The council officers seem to use this tactic to achieve their political ends. I also like Reform 1.4: Improve Use of City TV. Furthermore, City TV should cut to the dais occasionally during public testimony. The viewing public is unaware that many of the City Council members don’t even pretend to listen to the public speakers.

Posted by Brian T. Peterson, DVM | reply to this comment
October 27, 2008 2:23 pm

Maybe it is just me but I don't think any of the current or upcoming council members are qualified to be President of the City Council. It is disheartening to see election after election that the people elected to the city council really don't have the public's best interest at heart. I do know Frye and DeMaio had good intentions but I do have to wonder if they are doing this because they know they can't muster the votes to become president themselves. I wish Frye put forth this proposal a long time ago. This should have been brought up a month after the new strong-mayor system was put in place. Not two months before the next council president is elected. However I do hope that this reform is put into place and that it will somehow change our council members to become receptive to the public.

Posted by Pepe Cervantes | reply to this comment
October 28, 2008 10:11 pm

Those who laud Scott Peters and his power brokering obviously are unaware of his ongoing defeating of the public intrests in favor of the mayorial and special interests. The Torrey Pines Bridge, the Rose Canyon Bridge, the NTC give-aways, and Quarry Falls are just a few examples of either his outright advocacy or support of projects against the wishes of the general public. His minipulating of the consent agenda to try and slip things past thepublic is notrious. No, it is time to put a stop to this and support DeMaio and Frye's proposals which will properly serve to check and balance the strong mayorial form of government..

Posted by Jarvis Ross | reply to this comment
October 29, 2008 10:14 am

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