City Council: throw the bum system out
All together now, are we excited about Seattle's election choices this year? No? Blame the way we organize city government.
Wikipedia
Observers of this year’s City Council races — apart from maybe the candidates and consultants — are nearly uniform in their view that this election has been rather boring. With the tunnel off the table and council candidates avoiding running either for or against the mayor, the campaign has a dilatory air about it, with candidates mouthing what they think are the right words in the right places. What would help make Council elections more meaningful, especially when it comes to growth and land use, is a dose of charter reform.
Generally, I am skeptical of election reform or reorganizing how Councils are organized. Usually people want to reform the election process when they lose elections, and their particular agenda hasn’t broken through. A recent local example of this sort of big change happened with the union that represents jail workers passed a change at the ballot that reduced the County Council from 13 members to 9.
Other efforts to change Council, like the CHECC (Choose an Effective City Council) effort of more than 40 years ago, have been slates. That reformist slate ended up electing three new Councilmembers, including a Republican, something unheard of in today’s Seattle. But recent efforts to construct a sustainability slate through Friends of Seattle came up empty, failing to persuade any candidates to jump into the fray.
This year should be a watershed year for the City Council, with five of nine seats up for re-election. That could be an opportunity to field a slate in opposition or for incumbents to band together behind a big issue, like land use reform. Land use is how the city can accommodate growth and even boost the economy. Instead, only two credible new candidates have emerged, Bobby Forch and Brad Meacham, who are running against Jean Godden and Bruce Harrell, respectively. Both candidates would make fine new council members (and full disclosure, I have endorsed Meacham), but their campaigns have tended toward being referendums on the job performance of the current council member rather than a referendum on issues like transit oriented development.
Several years ago I served on a panel to review the idea of district elections. The panel was created by the City Council and included advocates of district voting, proportional voting, undecided people, and, interestingly, Randy Revelle, who was part of the CHECC effort and later King County Executive.
The panel concluded that changing the system was rigging it to try and produce results that the electorate wasn’t delivering at the ballot box, and recommended keeping at large elections. I felt confident then, while helping write the recommendations, that if people wanted change they'd just vote for it.
But my mind has changed over the years, and I think we need to reset the way we elect the Council and the mayor, and how we organize their powers. The strong mayor system should produce greater results than it has over the years. While it’s true that Mayor Greg Nickels ran a very tight ship, even he struggled to reform the city’s stubborn tendency for excessive process when it comes to land use. Combining mayor and council could yield better results for land use planning.
And there is precedent for this in our region. In British Columbia, the Vancouver City Council has 11 members, out of which the mayor is chosen, and Portland has a similar system, but has only five members, including the mayor, on the council. Portland and Vancouver are often hailed as being far more progressive than Seattle on issues related to land use and sustainability. I think that’s less because of the make-up of their voters, and more about their system.
Why not start a review of the Seattle City Charter and consider several different models of electing council members? The City Charter can be amended by council after a vote of the people of the city. Also, voters can file a petition to amend the Charter, which would also go to a vote. But Council could launch an abbreviated version of a process like King County's Charter reviews and solicit ideas for changes from the public.
One idea: We could elect lots more council members, say around 50, in very small districts. The council could be more like the school board, not a professional body, and all the members would be elected at once to serve for a five-year period. The mayor’s job would be primarily to call the Council into session, sign or veto legislation, and dissolve the body for new elections.
This mostly volunteer parliamentary style system might yield more reform faster, because it would force debates between neighborhoods about growth and about the city’s future in a way that our current system can’t. Today, members are elected at large, which means their platforms can tend to be pablum. A council member from Roosevelt, for example, would be able to advocate for that neighborhood but would have to persuade other council members from other areas that Roosevelt is “taking enough growth” with proposed upzones for light rail.
Such a system would mean fewer elections with higher stakes and more debate. Our current system tends to reward candidates who run toward broad and inchoate issue areas like transportation rather than specific and real issues like road diets. It would be more better to have the road diet concept — reducing lanes for safety and effective travel for cars, bikes, and buses — debated thoroughly and a conclusion reached for the whole city. Road diets today are debated neighborhood by neighborhood, a grinding process for transportation planners and advocates.
You would think that today's large, citywide elections for council members should produce, every couple years, substantive debate on critical issues. Instead, we get lots of nice people who try to say the right things and raise lots of money. Ironically, to get bigger issues decided for the whole city, it might be better to give more voice to smaller parts of the city and longer spaces between elections. The tunnel referendum proved that Seattle could move beyond process and reach clear decisions when the stakes are high enough.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 2:28 a.m. Inappropriate
News Flash! Land Use, land use, land use all the time is a far cry from "sustainability," whatever that is.
For particulars see dhal9000:
http://crosscut.com/2011/10/18/elections/21434/A-doomsday-scenario-in-2012/#comments
When "we" ALL get the task ahead straight, organizing to accomplish "reform," is (relatively speaking) the easy part. I'd suggest more focus on the hard part.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 7:44 a.m. Inappropriate
The idea of reducing the size of the council is intriguing as is the idea of having the mayor elected by the council. For decades Portland has had a more functional, less process obsessed city government than Seattle, and the King County Council seems to be more focused and less caught up in political posturing after being downsized from 13 to 9 members.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:20 a.m. Inappropriate
Districts and publicly-funded campaigns. 5 Councilmembers elected by districts, four elected at large. Commission sets the districts. Councilmembers work out amongst themselves who will be Distrcted and who will remain at large, backstopped by the Commission if the Councilmembers can't come to an agreement. Existing Councilmembers placed into a district are allowed to retain their current homes and stand for election in that district without living there, but otherwise you have to live in the district to run in a district.
The reason we have so much process is the Councilmembers represent too many people at one time. If we had a District system, the message from voters tends to be clearer. Retaining the four at-large members ensures an overall vision for the city comes through into the Council deliberations.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:45 a.m. Inappropriate
One idea: We could elect lots more council members, say around 50, in very small districts. The council could be more like the school board, not a professional body, and all the members would be elected at once to serve for a five-year period. The mayor’s job would be primarily to call the Council into session, sign or veto legislation, and dissolve the body for new elections.
This sounds like giving the members of neighborhood associations, boards, and councils actual legislative powers. Is that what you are envisioning?
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:49 a.m. Inappropriate
Is Seattle having an election? I didn't know...
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 10:01 a.m. Inappropriate
ddmiller proposed: "5 Councilmembers elected by districts, four elected at large."
I like that proposal. When voters were asked a few years ago to approve a system that would have had ALL Council members elected by district, I voted "No" because I thought it would give the mayor, who is elected citywide, too much power vis-a-vis the Council. I think a mixture of citywide- and district-elected Council members helps maintain a better balance between the varius branches of government.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 10:08 a.m. Inappropriate
The entire council should be elected by districts. It's the first step in getting broader representation for the entire city, rather than just a few special interests and affluent neighborhoods. If not then we should reduce the number of council members to 3 or 4. They are the highest paid city council in the US second only to Los Angeles where they are elected by district. Currently our "at large" council pretty much votes in lock step so how many do we really need?
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 10:18 a.m. Inappropriate
I agree with those who say we should elect our City Council members by district. It would be easier to hold them accountable. Having them elected at large means they represent everyone, and actually no one.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 10:42 a.m. Inappropriate
FWIW, reducing pay for Councilmembers turns them into part-timers. That's not working out so well for the School Board, is it?
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 10:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Some of us have been burned by the 3 attempts to change the Seattle Charter in 1995, 2003, and 2009. The first 2 lost at the ballot box after getting the approx. 36,000 valid signatures. The 2009 effort only got 10,000 signatures. I suggest a revision similar to the Seattle School District. 7 districts have primaries and then everyone runs city-wide in the general election. A reduction of 2 seats and nebulus committees would be a plus.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 12:03 p.m. Inappropriate
If Mr. Valdez thinks moving away from at-large elections will benefit his pro-developer density uber alles agenda, he's got another think coming.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 2:19 p.m. Inappropriate
I recently moved to Nashville, TN, where we have a 40 member council, behind only New York and Chicago in size. Of those 40, 35 are elected by district and 5 are at large. The 5 at-larges tend to be the more plain vanilla types we have in Seattle, while the 35 district councilmembers are ideologically, demographically, and temperamentally very diverse.
I've come to appreciate the merits of this system. It insures that every constituency in the city is represented, and the ideological diversity generally produces better policy. As someone who does a lot of lobbying on a volunteer basis, I have an ease of access to the council that I never had while in Seattle. This is no fault to the current Seattle councilmembers; it is just the reality of them being fewer in number.
There are drawbacks, though. The Nashville council is essentially a volunteer job, and so the councilmembers are often unable to do their homework. Because of the district system, it is easy for the mayor to kick around those councilmembers who cross his path (as he has in fact done repeatedly) and hard for the council to band together and oppose the mayor.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 3:33 p.m. Inappropriate
The deal in Portland is, the mayor (elected by the voters) and members of the city council (elected at large) are all *commissioners*, each overseeing a portfolio of city agencies. The Police Bureau is usually in the Mayor's portfolio, though current mayor Sam Adams gave that one up for a time. It seems to work rather well... Portland usually can do things in much less time than it takes Seattle to talk about them.
But Mr. Valdez, are you SERIOUS? A city council with FIFTY members? NOTHING AT ALL would happen.
I say elect ALL city council members by district. The current city charter gives the council more power than the mayor, and the last time it was seriously discussed, the only reason against it was the council would get into "disagreements." No kidding. That what legislators do... they deliberate.
Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:05 p.m. Inappropriate
In Valdez's piece I can't quite figure out what's broken, except that he thinks elections ought to be exciting with lots of drama, angst, and fighting. It does make work for pundits, but I'm not convinced that's the right criterion for structural decisions about governance. In the last paragraph he suggests that the Council isn't engaging the big issues, but Councils are policy bodies not the Big Issue Forum--that job is handled out in the political culture (Occupy Seattle, Crosscut, think tanks, blogs, etc.). When a substantial agreement has been reached by a sizable number, they push a candidate to advocate that position who, they hope, will turn it into policy. Sometimes that works (most of the Council) and sometimes it doesn't (O'Brien), but it's all fairly mild. In a city like Seattle with such a high degree of political consensus (liberal), I'm not convinced that the structure of the Council will make all that much difference. Maybe in Chicago, or New York, or Nashville, but not Seattle.
Posted Fri, Oct 21, 9:14 a.m. Inappropriate
Electing council members by district in Seattle would probably lead to a Balkanized gridlock which would make the current fetish for process look like some kind of fast-track operation. Many years ago, Seattle used to have council members elected by district, but that system was so corrupt that the city charter was changed to the present system. Tweaks to the process don't change the basic fact that too many voters are looking for an easy solution to our problems, but are unwilling to participate in the process in anything other than the most casual fashion. Until the public realizes that they must be both engaged and informed, nothing will change, no matter how much we fiddle with the structure.
Posted Fri, Oct 21, 12:40 p.m. Inappropriate
I don't know about "many years ago" but right now our council is one rubber stamp with nine handles on it. There are plenty of engaged and informed citizens in Seattle who are frustrated at having no access to the back rooms where the "process" is conducted. Special interests subordinating government is the biggest problem we have in the country today. Isn't this kind of what these recent protests are about?
Let's take another look at that charter, eh?
Posted Fri, Oct 21, 5:40 p.m. Inappropriate
Ah we have King County members elected by district and an executive who is elected "at large" Seems to work most of the time. Bellevue has a mayor selected from the council, that's not working nearly so well. Just look at the planning process for Sound Transit's LINK. It's taken the council forever to do anything.
The other problem with district elections is that we end up with "tit" for "tat" deals, ie, You get the street car, I get LINK stations, he gets a rapid ride bus. It's not the best way to do city wide planning where sometimes the greater good has to sacrifice the needs of a single neighborhood.
On the otherhand, we did get a tunnel which doesn't actually have enough money in the state coffers to fully fund it.
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