It's an important LB check and balance for reasons we explain below and it's not specific to Mayor Garcia. It would be similarly inaccurate if it concerned LB's preceding citywide elected Mayors Kell, O'Neill or Foster.

Under the Long Beach City Charter (the city's governing constitution), LB's Mayor isn't the City's Chief Executive. The City Manager is the city's Chief Operating Officer.

The Mayor has no vote. He or she doesn't set City policies. The voting City Council sets city policies and spending priorities subject to a Mayoral veto that a 2/3 Council majority can override. The Mayor is the city's chief legislative officer and acts as chief administrative officer for City Hall's legislative department that both the Council and Mayor direct and control. The Mayor appoints (nominates) Commissioners subject to Council approval. The Mayor appears at ceremonial events and [City Charter text] "shall represent the City at large and utilize the office of Mayor to provide community leadership and as a focal point for the articulation of city-wide perspectives on municipal issues."

The bottom line: LB voters decided that citywide executive authority and policy setting power shouldn't be controlled by any one citywide elected official, period.

Advertisement

That's a substantive protective check and balance. Long Beach voters explicitly kept City policy-setting powers as close to the people as possible. Policy decisionmaking rests with a majority of district-elected (and more easily recallable) Councilmembers while the Mayor and City Manager carry out Council directed policies.

This is timely in connection with Mayor Garcia travel (publicized by his office) to DC to attend a meeting of the non-governmental "U.S. Conference of Mayors." It's a privately run group (with a number of large corporate sponsors) for which LB Mayors have annually made LB taxpayers pay their membership dues, conference registrations, hotel, meal and associated expenses. The group adopts policy resolutions, decided by its own rules and member Mayors, whose declarations may have some political influence but carry no legal weight and may or may not be consistent with City of LB policies. While in DC, Mayor Garcia will meet with other Mayors, members of Congress, federal officials and attend a White House photo op.

The City of Long Beach has spelled out which federal policies LB city officials are authorized to expend city taxpayer resources to advocate (support or oppose.) They're contained City Hall's "federal legislative agenda," a list of general policies adopted by the City Council (which the Council can amend "on any Tuesday.") Policies advocated by City Hall in DC may significantly impact LB residents and businesses. LBREPORT.com links to the City's 2015 federal legislative agenda. To view it yourself, click.here.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The City's 2015 federal legislative agenda was approved in early January by the Council's federal legislation committee although it hasn't come to a full Council vote for approval yet. The 2015 Committee version and 2014 Council version are in most cases parallel although the 2015 version has been reorganized. However as previously reported by LBREPORT.com, the 2015 version includes significant new text regarding federal legislation related to covering coal train cars; see LBREPORT.com coverage here.) [Note: Councilwoman Mungo, a member of the Council's federal legislation committee, indicated in committee that she wasn't comfortable with some of the other items; she or others may bring these up when the 2015 federal agenda reaches the full City Council if they're not resolved earlier.]

We look forward to Mayor Garcia reporting publicly on which policies on the City's federal legislative agenda he and his entourage advocated during his DC trip. Of course he can't advocate all of them, but the public has a right to know with whom he met, what commitments or responses he received, and what he proposes City Hall's next steps should be to accomplish its federal legislative goals. In order to receive reimbursement for the trip, state law requires public officials to report publicly on what they did to entitle them to public reimbursement for travel and associated expenses.

LB Councilmembers have a duty to exercise independent oversight, find out exactly what this trip accomplished for taxpayers, what remains to be done and then decide how to do it. LBREPORT.com will be reporting on the results of the Mayor's DC visit as we learn them.