☆ 2024 takeaway #3: Local gov't becoming less representative, increasingly out-of-touch with popular will
American painter Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech (1943), flipped upside-down.
Local gov't is supposed to be the closest to the people. You know, Norman Rockwell's Town Hall, and all that. But if the last year is any arbiter, Santa Clara County's governing bodies are increasingly acting like oligarchies, ignoring citizen input and popular will while they pass motions that appease their campaign funders and national advocacy parties. An Opp Now exclusive.
When you look at how the SJ City Council votes—often unanimously—it’s often hard to figure out exactly who they’re representing. How to square their endorsements of Prop 5, RM 4, Prop 16 with the fact that the city and county voters decisively rejected all these bills?
It's no secret that the "representative" part of "elected representatives" often gets short shrift in the day-to-day workings of local government. And Big predominates: Big Labor, Big Business, Big Parties, Big Nonprofits, Big special interests. Citizen opinions get a nice nod during public input sessions at 4th and E. Santa Clara, then conveniently ignored.
The dissing of public input falls into three categories, as our coverage during the year reveals:
Voting against popular will. Prop 5 gets top honors this year as the Council—with the notable exception of CMs Doan and Batra—followed the advice of the City's Intergovernmental Relations group to endorse the tax-raising initiative—with basically zero constituent input. Prop 5 went down in flames, nonetheless, making one wonder why the Council supports policy so clearly at odds with their constituents' will.
Gaslighting the public on the results of local gov't policy. Here's quiz #1: let's just say you spent millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars on a project that was supposed to alleviate homelessness. And homelessness got worse. Welcome to the Measure A spin machine, in which gov't officials claim success for a program that so abjectly failed to meet its objectives, despite massive taxpayer expenditure.
Refusing to accept negative feedback. OK, quiz #2: Let's say a huge state audit found that your department was misspending hundreds of millions of dollars, and your management structure was inadequate to the task of overseeing the spend. Most people would take the criticism to heart, and report back with thoughtful ideas re: how to fix the problems. Not the SJ Housing Dept and City Manager, who responded to a state audit blistering the city's Housing Dept by saying, essentially: “Sod off. We have this under control." Meanwhile, the homelessness crisis in SJ and Santa Clara County continues apace. Going forward, keep an eye out for city councils and county Boards of Supes to launch efforts to raise local taxes in opposition to citizens’ clearly stated preferences.
Here's an anthology of top Opp Now stories about unrepresentative local government over the past year:
Measure A Mythbuster—Did County spend Measure A monies the way it promised? (2/7): Former CM Johnny Khamis asserted that the County fudged on its promise to voters by building new property—instead of buying on the open market.
SJ's homeless study session excludes alternate views: SJ’s housing/homelessness panel privileged the consideration of failed nonprofit-run programs, while ignoring market-proven solutions.
Expert: San Jose City Manager deflects blame, misses point of critical state homeless audit: SJ’s defense of its homelessness programs (after a scathing CA audit) was evasive and flimsy, found Market Urbanist’s Scott Beyer.
"We speak for ourselves:" Community leaders call for SJ City to stand down from taking positions on ballot initiatives: Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility’s Pat Waite and Families and Homes SJ’s Sandra Delvin urged SJ Council to quit endorsing ballot initiatives.
Is Supe Ellenberg trying a bait-and-switch on San Joseans re: a jail diversion site in South San Jose?: SJ Mayor Mahan expressed wariness re: the County's mixed signals about an interim housing site.
CM David Cohen was opposed to letting locals vote on taxes—until he was for it: SJ CM Cohen didn’t believe locals should vote on tax thresholds, until he started campaigning for Prop 5.
County and statewide citizens rebuke Supe Ellenberg, pass Prop 36 by wide margins: Even though Supe Ellenberg (in a bizarre rant) opposed Prop 36, voters passed it with over 70% approval.
Election roundup (6/14): Local pols overlooked voters' actual wishes when falling for Prop 5: Silicon Valley elected officials were infatuated with Prop 5, but 55.5% of CA'ns weren’t interested on Election Day.
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