You may remember the odd situation in Santa Clara I wrote about last week. When last we left it, the City Council was pushing urgently for a charter amendment to be placed on the ballot next June that would mandate district elections for members now elected citywide.
Some folks saw that measure as a plot to oust one or more critics of the San Francisco 49ers, including Councilwomen Debi Davis, Lisa Gillmor and Teresa O’Neill. Through the magic of a gerrymander, a district could be drawn to include all three. Only one would survive past 2016.
Now we can say with some certainty that the three women — persistent thorns in the side of the team — are likely to remain on the council for another four years if they run for re-election next year. District elections will not occur before 2018.
That news reveals a miscalculation that does not reflect well on the City Attorney’s Office or the council’s commitment to open government. After much hooting and hollering, the rush to reform the charter will now be slowed to a more deliberative process the city should have had all along.
At the heart of this battle is the question of how the city should deal with the 49ers. The three female council members have pushed for more regulations on the team, including consideration of cutting off lucrative alcohol sales at halftime rather than at the start of the fourth quarter.
Not surprisingly, the 49ers have failed to embrace this idea. And many people in Santa Clara think the team was behind a poll recently that probed voters on whether they wanted stronger term limits and district elections that would discourage political “dynasties.”
In part, that seemed aimed at Gillmor, a 49ers critic whose father also served on the council. The 49ers declined to comment.
Charter change
Here’s where the thorny legal stuff enters into it. Initially, the talk had been of readying a charter proposal for June, which would allow district elections in September. That could have ushered out one or two of the team’s harshest critics, who live not far apart on the city’s southwest side.
But in a memo last week, City Attorney Richard Nosky Jr. told the council that the city’s charter could only be amended at the same time as a statewide general election, meaning November 2016.
Among those alerting the city to that requirement was Brian Doyle, a Santa Clara resident who formerly worked in the San Jose City Attorney’s Office. San Jose faces the same issue with amending its Measure B pension reform.
“Because all this happened in quite a rush, it wasn’t clear to me that we were going to go forward with a charter review process,” Nosky told me. “As long as we stay on that track, it’s pretty clear that amendments brought forward can only be placed on the ballot in November.”
(In a related matter, it’s also clear that the council’s rationale for discussing district elections in private last month was weak. The city faced no imminent threat of a lawsuit, though other cities have moved to district elections when faced with potential litigation.)
The upshot? The team’s three female critics will probably survive next year. If district elections are approved for 2018, the first incumbent in a smaller district is likely to be Councilman Dominic Caserta, a close ally of the 49ers.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Twitter.com/scottherhold.
