Three of Garcia's five proposals are visibly anti-reform measures, disadvantaging challengers and strengthening the grip of incumbents deaf to overdue reforms.

[Scroll down for further]

• Anti-reform weakening of LB's term limits law: Garcia's text is a direct assault on LB's voter-enacted two-term limit law. It's similar to what LB voters explicitly rejected in May 2007 by a 68% margin. Garcia's proposal would give himself and all term-limited Council incumbents a third term run without needing a third-term write-in bypass. In an Orwellian misuse of language, Garcia portrays his weakening of term limits as "strengthening" term limits by closing a "loophole" to prevent fourth term write-ins. But no LB Mayor or Council incumbent has ever attempted a fourth-term bypass since LB voters enacted terms limits; the "loophole" is like worrying about an asteroid hitting your house when arsonists carrying gasoline have surrounded your property. At least two term-limited incumbents, Austin and Richardson, have already signaled their lust for the three term measure with more expected to follow.

• Anti-reform "redistricting" letting LB Councilmembers continue political gerrymandering. Garcia's text would let himself hand-pick, with Council approval, a suitably servile "advisory" commission while the Council retains real election-impacting line-drawing power. When a speaker exposed this sham at the June 12 Council meeting, Garcia claimed to prefer CA's statewide system with a real independent decision-making body...after he'd just proposed the opposite.

• Anti-reform Mayor/Council chosen "ethics" commission chosen by Mayor/Council: Garcia's text would let himself, with Council approval, hand pick a suitably servile commission likely to offer excuses for outcomes benefiting those who chose them. Letting foxes guard the henhouse isn't reform.

To market his anti-reform measures, Garcia is using City Auditor Laura Doud, whose independence in our opinion taxpayers must now question. There's precedent for this.

In 2006, voters replaced the previous City Auditor who gave LB's then-Mayor and then-Council political cover for (among other things) the devastating 2002 pension spike that continues to damage Long Beach taxpayers to this day. A dozen years later, recently re-elected Auditor Doud is giving LB's current Mayor and Council political cover for three anti-reform measures whose content isn't fiscal but political: term limits, drawing election district lines and officeholder/candidate ethics. These political matters go well beyond her elected duties to review accounts collected/received and sums spent for services performed.

Sorry, but in our opinion Auditor Laura Doud has no business using her six-figure-club position to provide de facto political cover for the Mayor regarding his visibly anti-reform Charter Amendments.

We can't help but notice that Doud has shrugged a taxpayer cost item that an independent Auditor should care about: the whopping $470,000-$650,000 estimated taxpayer cost for a needless special citywide November 2018 election if the Council puts all five measures on the ballot. (One of them is an Auditor-related measure (taxpayer cost = $45,000) that Ms. Doud has herself acknowledged may not be legally necessary.)

At this point, no one knows what changes Garcia may make to his anti-reform measures before bringing them back to the Council in July. He apparently plans to make some kind of changes to them in non-transparent meetings that the public can't attend, with discussions the public can't hear, among persons and interest groups whose names and interests we may not learn until the deal is done.

We might know the latter if Mayor Garcia had put his office calendar online that he boasted of doing in 2014 while seeking votes for Mayor...but he isn't doing now that he is Mayor. Don't bother calling a Mayor-chosen advisory-only "ethics commission" for that. Any Council incumbent(s) or this Mayor could propose and ultimately enact "on any Tuesday" a Municipal Code measure requiring the Mayor and Councilmemebrs to put their office calendars online.

Opinions expressed by LBREPORT.com, our contributors and/or our readers are not necessarily those of our advertisers. We welcome our readers' comments/opinions 24/7 via Disqus, Facebook and moderate length letters and longer-form op-ed pieces submitted to us at mail@LBReport.com.

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor