Enough residents have signed a petition (10% of registered voters) to have a ballot initiative placed on the November ballot. This ballot measure would allow the voters to decide if the city should eliminate the staff position of City Attorney. For many reasons (which I will articulate briefly below and in more detail in future posts), I do not support this ballot initiative. However, I do believe that the city council must show that we hear all 567 people who signed the initiative, and we should place this item on the ballot in November. That is a democratic process, whether we like the content or not.
This process is complicated by the fact that the city council does not have any meetings scheduled before the August 12 deadline that the county has for placing items on the ballot. Like many other cities, Emeryville's City Council has one summer meeting canceled for our summer recess, and it happens to be the August 2, 2011 meeting. This was decided last December when we determined our meeting schedule for 2011. Our next scheduled meeting is on August 16, which is too late for the ballot measure to be considered for this fall. Our last meeting was on July 19, and the ballot measure had not yet been certified. The circulators of the petition knew that it was due to the city council by the July 19th meeting, and I do not know why they did not make that deadline.
My understanding from city staff is that in order to place this ballot initiative on the ballot, the city council must hold a special meeting first to then schedule a regular meeting, all of this before the August 12 deadline from the county. If 3 city council members request it, staff will schedule a special meeting. Alternatively, the mayor, Nora Davis, can call the special meeting. So far, only two council members have asked for a special meeting to consider this: Ken Bukowski and myself.
Why do I oppose this ballot initiative?
I simply do not think this is the best way to make a complex decision like this. The City Attorney answers to the City Council, and electing a City Council that you trust and that is effective is the best way to control all aspects of the city government, including the City Attorney position. I believe that good decisions depend on complete information.
Additional financial cost to the city?
Some claim that this "outsourcing" of legal work would save the city money, but there has been no evidence presented to me that this is true. On the contrary, the average of the hourly fees most municipal legal firms charge ($282/hour) is approximately twice what we are paying to our city attorney ($145/hour). Please read the staff report from our July 5th meeting for a more detailed discussion of the issue.
More to come...
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