On tonight’s City Council agenda is an item from Mayor Gleam Davis, to modify the City Council rules for choosing the Mayor.
Back in January, the Council voted to abandon its long-standing procedure of voting to choose the Mayor and Mayor Pro-Tem every two years, following the general election in which half of the City Council is elected to staggered, four-year terms. Often this resulted in a two-year term for both the Mayor and the Mayor Pro-Tem. On a few occasions, the Council would vote for two different people to each serve one-year Mayoral terms for Mayor, and sometimes also for Mayor Pro-Tem.
In place of this, the Council voted that Councilmembers would automatically serve one-year terms as Mayor on a rotating basis, based upon seniority serving on the Council. Davis’ item would not eliminate the rotation model per se, but would add the ability to suspend the Council rules regarding the rotation model by a super-majority vote.
But regardless of that proposed modification, the appearance of this item should remind us why it was a bad decision in the first place for the Council to adopt the rotation model and always restrict the Mayor to one-year terms — and why it should be repealed as soon as possible.
The primary role of the Mayor in Santa Monica is to chair the City Council meetings. While the meetings generally operate under Robert Rules of Order, there are often judgment calls that need to be made about how the meeting should be run. Selecting the Mayor by a majority vote of the Council is a clear affirmation that the Mayor is empowered to make those decisions on the Council’s behalf. The rotation model eliminates that mandate. A lack of buy-in for the decisions of the Chair can lead to an underlying tension in how meetings are run, less well-functioning meetings, and even formal opposition to the Mayor because Roberts Rules allow for overruling decisions of the Chair. This is an unnecessary and potentially destabilizing element to introduce.
Why then do it? One Councilmember argued this would 'de-politicize' the process, and somehow that was a good thing. Yet most policy decisions by the City Council involve political considerations, as do the Council’s appointments to City Boards and Commissions. This is because the people elect their public officials through a political process called elections and those officials represent various points of view.
Yet this democracy-based process is supposed to be abandoned in this single instance of who chairs the Council meeting? Apparently so, because according to that same Councilmember, the rotation model loosens the grip of “one group monopolizing the seat forever” and "it's not healthy to have one group in power for so long.” In other words, the result of elections should be respected except when that Councilmember disagrees with them. Apparently, the motivation for the rotation model is political after all, just anti-democratic.
But it doesn't stop there. The Mayor also represents the City publicly in a variety of ways. Previously the Council could vote on who could best represent the City publicly as Mayor, based upon the latest expression of the will of the people through the most recent election and the resultant make-up of the Council. The rotation model eliminates that connection to the voters as well. A third key role of the Mayor is to work with the City Manager on agenda scheduling. Should someone who doesn't even have the majority support of the Council be in that position?
It is true that with seven Councilmembers and having four-year Council terms, every Councilmember may not get to be Mayor during their time in office. Sometimes this leaves hurt feelings. But this isn’t a fourth-grade sport where every player gets some kind of medal for participating. Anyone who can’t get four votes for Mayor on a seven-member City Council means a super-majority of the other six Councilmembers doesn’t support them, and therefore shouldn't be in a position of leading them.
Under the previous model, a variety of factors went into choosing the Mayor - the relevant strengths and abilities of individual Councilmembers, seniority on the Council, who had already done it, who received what level of support in recent elections, and how the will of the voters is expressed in the overall makeup of the Council.
By contrast, the new rotation model is a counter-productive and unnecessary dumbing down of the City Council process, by taking away an incredibly important decision from the public officials whom we elect to make numerous difficult decisions on our behalf.
For all of the reasons stated above, the rotation model should be repealed as soon as possible.
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Michael Feinstein is a former Santa Monica Mayor (2000-2002) and City Councilmember (1996-2004). He can be reached via Twitter @mikefeinstein.
‘Inside/Outside‘ is a periodic column about civic affairs Feinstein writes for the Daily Press that takes advantage of his experience inside and outside of government.
