mithriltabby | Hold your nose and vote on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 (Reply)

As usual, I’ve written up my research notes for the coming election so you can all crib from my work. I’ve given my conclusions, and invite everyone to come to their own. Even if we disagree on everything, I'm still happy if this collection of links saved you a headache.

Sunnyvale School District. Governing Board Member. SmartVoter. Coverage in the San Jose Mercury.
- Nancy Newkirk. Incumbent. SmartVoter.
- Reid Myers. Democrat. SmartVoter. Endorsed by the Santa Clara County Democratic Party. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club and spoke knowledgeably about the issues she would confront in the job.
- John Mumy. SmartVoter. He’s also the husband of Heather Mumy, president of the Sunnyvale Education Association, the teachers’ union, so there may be a problem there with conflict of interest. He declined to be covered in the San Jose Mercury article.
Sunnyvale City Council. Coverage in the San Jose Mercury, meeting the candidates, second-to-last forum. Sunnyvale has video of the candidate statements and forums. There’s an electronic candidate forum.
- Member, City Council Seat 4. SmartVoter.
  - David Whittum. Incumbent. Public filings.
- Member, City Council Seat 5. SmartVoter.
  - Bo Chang. Democrat. SmartVoter. Public filings. Endorsed by the San Jose Mercury, Santa Clara County Democratic Party, Sunnyvale Democratic Club, Planned Parenthood. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club. Shows good long-term thinking, though I would be more impressed if he had more nuanced policy positions.
  - Pat Meyering. SmartVoter. Public filings. He declined to be interviewed by the San Jose Mercury editors. Meyering lost my vote in 2009 when he said he could pay for more than a million dollars worth of jobs with less than a hundred thousand dollars in cuts, and he hasn’t done anything to get it back. At the League of Women Voters forum, he was going on again about the Council voting themselves lifetime medical benefits and a 48% raise; he hasn’t sourced this on his web site, so I think it’s the same deceptive blather he was touting in 2009.
- Member, City Council Seat 6. SmartVoter.
  - Steve Hoffman. Public filings. He declined to be interviewed by the San Jose Mercury editors. Hoffman talks a good line about corruption on the city council caused by candidates being too cozy with their big donors, and asks to be voted in to avoid this problem, but never talks about what he would do if elected. (He does actually have responses in the electronic candidate forum, but that just makes me more perplexed about why he spent his entire League of Women Voters forum appearance avoiding talking about policy ideas and ringing the bells on my “this person is being evasive” detector.)
  - Jack Walker. Public filings. Democrat. Former mayor. Endorsed by the San Jose Mercury, Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club. He had the most thorough policy answers of the candidates for this seat.
  - Jim Davis. Public filings. Republican. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club. Pro-choice. His response to the electronic candidate forum was late, leading to his exclusion. He spends too much time talking about the awards he’s received and not enough talking about his policy positions, but I could easily vote for him if Walker weren’t in the race.
- Member, City Council Seat 7. SmartVoter.
  - Fred Fowler. Public filings. Democrat. Former mayor. SmartVoter. Endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Wore an aloha shirt when he came to talk to the Democratic Club of Sunnyvale, which predisposed me toward him, but I hear he has some “does not play well with others” problems.
  - Tara Martin-Milius. Public filings. Republican. SmartVoter. Endorsed by the San Jose Mercury, Santa Clara County League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter. Leans pro-choice. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club.
  - Maria Pan. Public filings. Took the time to come out and talk to us at a meeting of the Sunnyvale Democratic Club. Her responses at the candidate forum show that she hasn’t been paying enough attention to the city and its issues; she declined to participate in the electronic candidate forum. Bottom line is she didn’t do her homework.

Measures submitted to the voters. Coverage in the San Jose Mercury.

Measure A: Directly elected mayor. SmartVoter.

This gets a little complicated.

The first thing to note here is that “mayor” is not an executive job in Sunnyvale. Sunnyvale is structured more like a corporation, with the City Council functioning as a board of directors who elect a chairman— the Mayor— for a two-year term, and the executive role served by the City Manager, who is hired by the Council. Jim Griffith describes some of the City Manager’s work:

For virtually any major Sunnyvale endeavor you’ve seen in the past several years, it’s been driven by the City Manager from the beginning (sometimes the Economic Developer, but always with the CM in the room). He was responsible for Nokia moving into the downtown, and Rambus, Google, Microsoft, and HP moving into Moffett Park. He was responsible for Foothill-DeAnza coming in to Onizuka. He did Sunnyvale Works!. And so on. And in all of these cases, the City Council wasn’t even read in on the specifics until it was almost a done deal. We’re the last to know, we’re not the driving force, and that’s why we pay the City Manager more money than the seven of us combined. That’s just the way it works in cities where a Council is a bunch of part-time people trained in other jobs.

The job of Mayor is mostly ceremonial, but it still keeps them quite busy; Melinda Hamilton says it’s pretty much a full-time job. (While the City Council only meets one night per week, the other duties make Councilmember at least a half-time job.) Councilcritters have day jobs, and usually burn through most of their PTO just meeting their duties. Mayor Hamilton (who is looking forward to relaxing after her term is up) thinks a four-year mayor job would likely attract a different kind of candidate: a retiree who can afford the time commitment, or a career politician using it as a stepping stone to higher office.

Sunnyvale deals with neighboring cities and large-scale organizations, such as the County Board of Supervisors, the Valley Transportation Authority board, the League of California Cities, and the National League of Cities. Representing us with them is usually apportioned amongst the various councilcritters, who can maintain relationships throughout their term, no matter how the Mayor hat moves around. A stronger Mayor could serve as an advocate in these venues. While all councilcritters are elected by the entire city, a Mayor who is directly elected could be seen as a stronger proxy for the city, and with a four-year term would have more opportunities to develop ties with neighboring cities. Since Measure A doesn’t make Mayor a full-time job, though, it would be challenging to find the time for the advocacy work.

All councilcritters in Sunnyvale need the core skill set of being able to cooperate with each other; if the Mayor takes on this advocacy role, they will need an additional skill set for advocating in a potentially adversarial environment, and will need particular skill to avoid interfering with the City Manager’s work if both of them are in the room on a particular issue. Citizens are not normally asked to consider both skill sets when voting for City Council, so under Measure A that would be a new criterion for voters to judge.

Note that the Charter only specifies that the Mayor is the presiding officer of the Council; all other duties and powers are up to the Council, and, under Measure A, the first time we get a Mayor that sufficiently offends enough councilcritters, they’re likely to reduce the Mayor’s job to presiding and ribbon-cutting, which would persist thereafter until someone thought they could get elected as Mayor and persuade the rest of the Council to restore the job. This is much less likely under the current system, since the Mayor needs majority support just to take the job in the first place.

From 1991–2007, the title simply rotated amongst the councilcritters in a predictable way, so everybody got to list “mayor” on their résumé. In 2007, Measure H made it a two-year term, with the Mayor chosen by the Council, just as board members in a corporation often choose the chairman.

Measure A will make the position of Mayor directly elected by the voters, and under a separate term limit, so someone could serve 8 years on the Council and then 8 years as Mayor, potentially serving sixteen consecutive years in a twenty year period. (Currently, they would need to serve 8 years on the Council, then take 4 years off, then serve another 8 years if they wanted to rack up 16 years out of 20.) This means that a competent civil servant could spend more time providing the city with the benefit of their experience, and a bought one could spend more time clinging to power.

Since the Mayor is a councilcritter, Measure A makes Seat 1 into the Mayor’s seat. If someone currently serving in Seat 4–7 makes a run for Mayor and wins, that means they abandon their seat halfway through their term and take up Seat 1, instantly triggering a special election to fill their seat, at a cost of roughly $400,000. Since the only way for that to happen is for someone with the political savvy to become a councilmember to willingly expose themselves to accusations of wasting that much money, we would only likely see it if someone unqualified were running for Mayor and a sitting Councilmember decided to run against them— a distinct possibility, but not a major boondoggle.

I had an interesting conversation with Councilmember (and former Vice Mayor) Chris Moylan, who told me about an impressive amount of behind-the-scenes leverage exerted when the Council vote for Mayor was approaching, leading to some votes being calculated for longer-term political advantage rather than selecting the person who would be the most effective mayor. Measure A would mean that attempts to sway the election would be in the form of special interest money going after the electorate, rather than whatever could be exerted on four councilcritters who have already made it through the gauntlet of a recent Council election. Wherever there’s an election, you’ll get politics, but Measure A can choose where the politicking will occur.

Supported by	Opposed by
Choose Your Mayor (public filings) San Jose Mercury Chris Moylan, City Councilmember (and former Vice Mayor)	No on A (public filings) Melinda Hamilton, Mayor Jim Griffith, Vice Mayor

No position from the Santa Clara County Democratic Party.

Reasons to vote for Measure A, if you believe them:

Sunnyvale will benefit from having a Mayor explicitly chosen by the people to serve as an advocate in venues outside the city.
The job of Mayor requires a distinct skillset from that of Councilmember, and voters should know which they’re voting for.
It’s worthwhile for good public servants to be able to serve up to sixteen consecutive years so we can benefit from their experience.
It’s important to keep special interests from controlling the Mayor, and it’s harder to persuade the voters of Sunnyvale by propaganda-bombing the local media than it is to get leverage on four councilcritters.

Reasons to vote against Measure A, if you believe them:

We haven’t had the current form of mayor long enough; we should gather more data before we tinker with it.
Measure A is an incomplete solution; a directly-elected four-year mayor is a fundamentally different job and its role needs to be reconsidered.
Making the Mayor more powerful will eventually hamstring the position once the citizens elect a Mayor with significant opposition on Council.
Councilcritters should be put in “time out” after eight years so people with fresh ideas and perspectives can serve.
It’s important to keep special interests from controlling the Mayor, and it’s harder to get leverage on four councilcritters (at least three of whom have just been elected) than it is to propaganda-bomb local media during an election.

This is a difficult decision, since people I respect are on both sides of it. I’m not convinced either way about whether a directly elected mayor would be a good idea. I’m voting no because this feels to my software-engineering sensibilities like code that hasn’t been through a design review; I don’t think Measure A is a solid implementation of a directly elected mayor, and I would rather that the legal code be debugged before we put it into production. I would welcome a more thorough study that re-examines the role of the Mayor were we to switch to direct election.

I’d like to thank Mayor Melinda Hamilton, Vice Mayor Jim Griffith, and Councilmember Chris Moylan for taking the time to give me their perspectives on the issue.

Measure B: Limit Council raises to Consumer Price Index. This means that the automatic raises for city councilmembers are indexed to the Consumer Price Index instead of being a flat 5% per year. SmartVoter.

Supported by Opposed by

Jim Griffith, Vice Mayor
Santa Clara County Democratic Party

The salaries for serving on the Council are pretty low for what amounts to a half time job (according to every councilmember I’ve ever asked about it), but that problem should be addressed by voters deciding that they understand “you get what you pay for”, not an accidental de facto raise that will eventually make serving on the Council make sense for someone who lacks the luxury of spare time. Yes.