The US Supreme Court ruling that corporate bodies are entitled to free speech rights jeopardizes state and local regulations since the First Amendment applies to states. In Oakland, a judge ruled in 2006 that Political Action Committees could directly advocate for and against candidates, a ruling that was exploited by supporters of both Aimee Allison and Pat Kernighan during that year’s Council runoff. Between the likelihood of high independent expenditures and the consolidated elections in November, the Council may consider lifting donation and expenditure limits for local elections. There’s also talk of eliminating matching funds, for several reasons including the expense, that they’re not available for at-large elections, and a feeling that these funds mostly help incumbents who are more adept at exploiting campaign rules they wrote themselves. Lifting donation and expenditure limits would certainly be a boon for challengers, who compared to incumbents tend to have fewer but more passionate supporters, and who need to spend more to overcome an incumbent’s name recognition. One City Council seat up for election this November will have no incumbent, and so may be a test of a new campaign atmosphere in Oakland.

Having established herself as a serious mayoral contender, Councilmember Jean Quan cannot run for reelection, creating this rare open seat. The Montclair-Laurel District 4 seat has the highest voter turnout in the city, making it likely the most expensive of the three Council elections this November. Now that candidates are talking to potential supporters, many wonder who Ms. Quan will choose as her successor. According to several sources, Ms. Quan has introduced her husband, Alameda County Medical Center Trustree Dr. Floyd Huen, to some influential players as a Council candidate for District 4. With her husband perhaps running, Ms. Quan has motive to make things difficult for those seeking her seat. Other possible contenders include: Jill Broadhurst, an active volunteer in Montclair; Melanie Shelby, a former at-large Council candidate who recently returned to Oakland from Washington DC; Scott Jackson, an Assistant District Attorney who had considered running for Mayor; Libby Schaaf, a personal friend of mine who is a life-long civic leader native to D4; and Clinton Killian, the former at-large Council candidate and Paramount Boardmember. Though the filing period isn’t until August, Ms. Broadhurst has already announced she’s running and it’s likely others will announce by mid-Spring. Oakland may be in for a long, hot election.

Jean Quan is now Vice Mayor Quan, as of January 19th. Last year, when Jane Brunner upset Ignacio de la Fuente’s plans to remain Council President, Mr. de la Fuente was given the Vice Mayor position as a consolation prize. This wasn’t merely a title, though – at the time there was speculation that Dellums would resign as Mayor to take a position in DC or even as an ambassador, elevating Mr. de la Fuente to Mayor. Since Ms. Quan’s mayoral ambitions do not enjoy the support of Ms. Brunner or Mr. de la Fuente, her ascension to Vice Mayor is a clear signal that they do not expect Mayor Dellums to go anywhere. Recently joined by Green Party member and free-parking advocate Don Macleay, Vice Mayor Quan and former State Senator Don Perata are running active if low-key campaigns ten months in advance of election day. The campaign won’t get going in full force until Mayor Dellums formally announces he’s not running for reelection, freeing his loyalists and others who hold him in esteem to escape the sidelines. If the Mayor has any sympathy for overextended activists, he will wait until the summer.

Next Thursday (June 18), the Oakland City Council Rules Committee will hear a request from Councilmember Nancy Nadel to agendize a discussion of the proposed Oakland Airport Connector project. Ms. Nadel will request the connector be discussed at the Public Works Committee, which she chairs, and that the project then be forwarded to the full Council. The project is being sold to the region as a great investment in Oakland, yet Oakland’s elected officials have not had an opportunity to examine it in eight years, and the project has changed substantially since then. Nevertheless, transit advocates expect a fight over whether Oakland should even have a discussion.

A lot is at stake for Oakland. On one hand, project supporters claim that it will improve the Oakland Airport area, attracting more airline passengers and perhaps more businesses to Airport and surrounding area. For the reality-based community, however, there are enormous costs to the City of Oakland to moving ahead with the project. ACTIA funds that would otherwise go to East Oakland bike/ped/transit improvements, such as a mooted transit village at the Coliseum BART station, would be lost. The Port of Oakland will have to use funds that would otherwise go to airport renovation and expansion. Regional stimulus funds would go to this instead of to shoring up AC Transit and BART service. And the City of Oakland will lose the opportunity to improve transit service that would serve the workers and businesses in the Hegenberger Corridor, since the RFP for the Airport Connector does not include any intermediate stops. Many of these problems are a result of changes to the project, and many former supporters are now opponents.

A half-billion-dollar regional investment in Oakland should clearly merit some review by the Oakland City Council. However, transit advocates expect Councilmember Larry Reid, who represents the Airport and is on the Rules Committee, to resist allowing a public hearing on the project. He has claimed several times, most recently this morning at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee hearing, that six of the eight councilmembers support the project. If that’s true, why wouldn’t he welcome a public hearing and the opportunity for the Council as a body to weigh in? Supporters of the Oakland Airport Connector, mainly BART and MTC staff, have been resisting any review of alternatives to the project (today MTC Director Steve Heminger said it was “too late” to look at alternatives, even though they’ve been mooted for years). BART staff have repeatedly lied to decision-makers about the specifics of the project, for example telling the Port Commission about local hire and project labor agreements that are mysteriously missing from the RFP, or providing outdated ridership projections to the MTC. A well-placed City Hall source tells me that when Council staff contacted BART about having a public hearing on the project, BART said they would rather meet privately with each councilmember. Clearly Airport Connector supporters don’t think they have the truth on their side.

So, what do you think? If you agree that Oakland’s elected official should weigh in on the project, with public comment, please send an email to the members of the Rules Committee, especially Council President Jane Brunner (addresses below). If you think projects should be decided without the input of relevant elected officials, well, then you are probably quite thrilled with the direction of Bay Area transportation spending, and you don’t need to do anything. Without Oakland’s elected officials having a public hearing, the citizens of Oakland have no formal voice in the process. The Oakland City Council needs to step up to plate and make the decisions they were elected to, on behalf of the city. Please advocate for your chance to have a voice.

Rules Committee (meeting on Thursday, June 18)

Council President Jane Brunner, North Oakland: jbrunner at oaklandnet dot com

Jean Quan, Montclair-Laurel: jquan at oaklandnet dot com

Ignacio de la Fuente, Fruitvale-Glenview-Jingletown: idelafuente at oaklandnet dot com

If you’d like to learn more about the meeting and the Directors’ comments, please see my Twitter (@dto510), @MaxAllstadt, and @TheBlackHour. Even if you don’t have a twitter account you can subscribe to RSS feeds of my twitter to follow breaking news or my other updates. Living in the O and I will blog when there are further opportunities to advocate for a more cost-effective Airport Connector that better serves East Oakland.

Today, the attention of the blogoaksphere has turned to the open seat on the AC Transit Board. The largest bus-only transit agency in the United States will appoint a member to replace Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, and transit activists as well as other concerned leaders are weighing in. I am proud to report that East Bay transit advocates have conducted an endorsement process, and chosen Elizabeth Echols (PDF) as the best candidate to replace Ms. Kaplan.

Last year I asked a respected community leader to apply for this seat. After seriously considering it, he declined due to other commitments to important causes. Since I did not know any of the candidates personally or from their work as transit advocates, I felt it was important for transit activists to have a role in the process of choosing our new transit director. In January I invited several leaders of different transit advocacy groups to meet and discuss the open AC Transit seat. We decided that, instead of putting forth one of our own as a candidate, we would offer our joint endorsement.

We put together a detailed questionnaire and sent it to the candidates that we had heard about (including three of the four finalists). The questionnaire was created with input from leaders of every East Bay transit advocacy group: Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, Friends of BRT, the No on KK Committee, Alameda Transit Advocates, the City of Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley, Livable Berkeley, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, and TransForm. (I am on the Oakland BPAC and was on the No on KK campaign committee.)

We scheduled interviews with the respondents and talked to them about their qualifications, their vision and priorities for the agency, and followed-up on some of their answers to our questions. I attended all but one interview, and found them incredibly informative. The candidates explained different facets of the challenges facing AC Transit: one explained exactly how the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s totally ass-backwards financing priorities screw AC Transit (apparently they think bus stops are just as useful to the regional transportation infrastructure as new desks for administrators), another had a very in-depth understanding of the position of the drivers and mechanics (they are concerned about working conditions, and understand the agency’s financial pressures), and another related his experiences as a rider advocate and how the agency works with community groups (rather well, in his opinion, as long they know about a project).

Walking to our endorsement meeting in transit-proximate Old Oakland, I didn’t know who would be our consensus choice. There are many strong candidates. But one offered the combination of experience, new ideas, and appropriate priorities that appealed to everyone at the table: Alameda County Democratic Central Committeemember Elizabeth Echols. A former Google executive who served on the technology cluster of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, she has a fresh perspective on the agency, new ideas about improving service using technology and data, but also a solid grasp of the importance of service reliability to attracting and maintaining an expanded ridership base. Her energy and political connections will allow her to help the agency get approval for the best Bus Rapid Transit system in the next few months, and help her work with regional, state and federal officials to improve the agency’s long-term financial health. I am pleased to be one of many local transit advocates to endorse her candidacy, and I am confident she is able to help guide AC Transit through its troubling financial times without sacrificing the needs of both “choice riders” and the transit-dependent.

It is no secret that there are many qualified individuals applying for this seat. When the Board voted on its four finalists, a former Boardmember who had applied was not among them – that’s a clear signal that the agency is extremely pleased with the quality of those who want to join the Board. With the overwhelming electoral victories racked up by AC Transit last November (78% voted no on Berkeley’s anti-BRT measure KK, and 72% of the district’s voters backed a parcel tax to make up for last year’s state budget cuts), and the caliber of those vying to lead it through a recession, it is clear that AC Transit is on the right track. All transit advocates are pleased by these developments, and the phrase “embarrassment of riches” to describe the selection of a new Boardmember has been used by more than one observer. This is a far cry from six years ago, when Rebecca Kaplan was the only well-qualified applicant for this open seat. Though transit advocates will be satisfied with any of the four finalists to represent us on the East Bay’s largest and most important transportation agency, Elizabeth Echols is the best choice, and we hope that Board will agree.

For a list of all five blogs that today endorsed Ms. Echols, see A Better Oakland’s Elizabeth Echols for AC Transit

Thurs Jan 22 2009 HarriOak meeting

The HarriOak neighborhood, named for the two large streets created in the 1920s or 1930s (Harrison Street and Oakland Avenue), is bordered by downtown to the South, Adam’s point to the East, Piedmont to the North, and Broadway Auto Row / Pill Hill to the West. Once called Westlake, it’s a central neighborhood with big old houses and large apartment buildings, but its desirability is marred by the intensive car use of its eponymous streets, which connect a 580 freeway exit to the Lake Merritt office district. To atone for its sin of dumping enormous volumes of car traffic into their neighborhood, CalTrans has kindly offered a planning grant for the neighborhood to visualize ostensibly pedestrian-oriented streetscape improvements.

I hope the neighbors don’t just view it as a Traffic Plan, the name given to it by CalTrans, but a Transportation Plan, that can improve all forms of transportation, from traffic calming for pedestrians to road diets for bicyclists. Thursday’s workshop will present a challenging opportunity to its participants: how to best make use of the public right-of-way, the city’s most important asset. The crux is to balance the competing needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, buses and cars. Each individual use may have its own needs to balance: the Uptown/Broadway, Laurel District, and Fruitvale Avenue streetscape plans all clutter the sidewalk with street furniture and trees, restricting pedestrian mobility in the name of providing better transit stops and pedestrian amenities.

HarriOak is an unusual case because the neighborhood does not contain a commercial district, the focus of  most new transit-oriented development. Since the purpose of this CalTrans-funded planning workshop is to ameliorate the dangerous impacts of freeway access in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood, residents should ask CalTrans to explain if relocating the freeway exits is on the table. It’s up to participants to ensure that the workshop hears from all users: bus riders, walkers, local drivers, bike commuters, and stay-at-home parents. For once, the needs of car commuters speeding from 580 to Downtown come last.

This action was probably necessary before the Council meeting to avoid any confusion over who should sit at the dais - as of this morning, there were three possibilities.

UPDATE at 7:45 – I obtained a copy of Mayor Dellums’ letter. He politely notified the City Councilmembers of Ms. Edgerly’s dismissal, and wrote to Ms. Edgerly, “I have elected to terminate you, effective immediately.” She was asked to contact the mayor’s assistant about returning city property.

Dear Ms. Edgerly, 

Effective immediately, I am placing you on administrative leave with pay until July 31, 2008, the date on which you are retiring from your position as City Administrator. 

Sincerely, 

Ronald V. Dellums

The mayor also said that he has been trying to reach Ms. Edgerly without success since yesterday evening.

Mayor Dellums named CED chief Dan Lindheim interim administrator.

I plan to introduce legislation to prevent some of the recently alleged abuses of our hiring processes from ever happening again.

As many of you know, for the past fifteen years I have continuously worked to reform Oakland City Hall into a responsible and accountable government that is responsive to you. I have fought for good hiring practices that give us the best and most qualified employees. I have fought for technology such as GPS, management systems, and policies that ensure sure your tax dollars are used efficiently and quality services are provided. I have fought for this bureaucracy to recognize the incredible liabilities we’re creating for future generations through generous employee benefits. I will continue to fight these extremely challenging battles and I hope you will continue to fight alongside me.

Pat Kernighan wrote:

Moving forward, the City Council must act to ensure that there are mechanisms in place that help prevent abuses of power by City officials, and that promptly expose any abuses that do occur. To that end, I am proposing several immediate measures:–That the Council pass a Whistleblower Ordinance so that employees do not fear retribution for reporting misconduct and fraud. ( I co-sponsored this with Auditor Ruby yesterday.)

–That the Council fully fund the City Auditor’s Office so that the Auditor has adequate personnel to conduct prompt and thorough investigations.

–That City government’s hiring and discipline practices be audited to uncover any family favoritism or other abuses that may be occurring.

Meanwhile, Zennie Abraham at OaklandFocus reports a rumor that Ms. Edgerly has already been placed on leave. I am unable to confirm this.

My sources at City Hall confirm the Trib’s report that Deborah Edgerly is performing her normal duties. Mayor Dellums has informally rescinded his (allegedly charter-violating) memo and instructed the “cabinet” of city department heads to resume reporting to Ms. Edgerly.

Despite allegations of “interference” with a police gang investigation involving her now-arrested nephew (a city employee who handled public money), Oakland’s 5000 employees are apparently to attempt to go about their duties while receiving conflicting accounts of who is in charge. This episode is only providing further ammunition to Dellums critics who call him indecisive and ineffective. With important public hearings on the docket today, City Councilmembers will have to issue instructions to staff without knowing who will carry them out.