Council Spars Over Absent Mayor’s Control of Meeting Docket

With Mayor Maureen O’Connor in Japan on the first of several foreign trips planned in coming months, several San Diego council members Tuesday suggested curtailing the mayor’s control of the council docket--perhaps by shifting some of that authority to the council itself.

While the plan’s supporters argue that it would expedite council consideration of some issues and smooth the weekly flow of business, its detractors characterized it as a “cheap shot” against an absent Mayor Maureen O’Connor and an attempted power grab by the council’s five-member majority.

“I’m sure they’d love to set the agenda, but that’s one of the mayor’s prerogatives,” said O’Connor press secretary Paul Downey. “They may not like it, but that’s kind of too bad, because she is the mayor.”

By day’s end, several council members had traded caustic ripostes over the proposed procedural change and O’Connor’s aides were seething over what they viewed as an attempted sneak attack on her powers--reinforcing the enmity that developed during this summer’s bitter redistricting dispute. Relations between the council’s so-called “Gang of Five” and its four minority members--a bloc that includes O’Connor--have deteriorated markedly in the aftermath of the protracted debate over the redrawing of council district boundaries.

“It’s the same old petty, little game they’re playing, and I’m just tired of it,” Councilwoman Judy McCarty said. “Let’s just go about our business and stop trying to hurt one another.”

Tuesday’s debate--which grew more acerbic and personal after the council session--was initiated by Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who, as deputy mayor, chaired the meeting in O’Connor’s absence.

With O’Connor leading a city trade mission to Japan, Tuesday’s council docket was unusually light--as it often is whenever the mayor is out of town.

Noting that O’Connor plans to visit Mexico City, New York City and France in the next several months, Wolfsheimer and several others suggested that the mayor’s absences could seriously impede council action by largely restricting its agenda during those trips to routine, non-controversial matters.

“When she’s gone, she purposely stops the normal routine of business,” City Councilman Bob Filner said. “That may have been OK when she was only gone once in a while, but now that she’s going to be gone every month, that’s a problem.”

Under the City Charter, the council’s weekly docket is prepared by the consultant to the council’s Rules Committee--a position filled by a mayoral appointee, according to Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick.

As a practical matter, those charter provisions--combined with the fact that few issues that come before the council must by law be addressed within a specified time--give the mayor’s office wide discretionary authority in developing the council’s agenda, which typically is prepared two weeks in advance.

Frustrated that Tuesday morning’s council session lasted only about a half hour, Wolfsheimer argued that such abbreviated meetings “place the city in gridlock” both by limiting the council’s action in the mayor’s absence and clogging future dockets with items held over until she returns.

“When the city faces many, many issues . . . we need to not spend 15 minutes at a time here,” Wolfsheimer complained. “Maybe it’s time to look at changing some of these docketing procedures.” Either the city clerk’s office or the council itself, she said, perhaps should have a more direct hand in preparing the agenda.

McCarty, however, emphasized that O’Connor is “not off in a snit fit,” but rather on city business, and Councilman Bruce Henderson said later that he was “unaware of any important city business being delayed or disrupted” by mayoral trips.

“The only trip I know of that has been disruptive was Mrs. Wolfsheimer’s,” Henderson said. “It always amazes me when the critic is the worst offender.”

In July and August, Wolfsheimer took a three-week European vacation that effectively left the council deadlocked, 4-4, in its efforts to resolve the redistricting dispute. During that impasse, Wolfsheimer’s trip drew occasional sniping from O’Connor and other council members, and a federal judge even suggested that she curtail her vacation to return to San Diego.

When she returned as scheduled, Wolfsheimer joined Filner and the other “Gang of Five” members in adopting a since-revised council redistricting plan.

“For Abbe Wolfsheimer to criticize anybody for being out of town--especially when the mayor’s away on city business--is the height of hypocrisy,” said mayoral spokesman Downey.

Such criticism came as no surprise to Wolfsheimer, who said she anticipated that O’Connor and her staff would interpret her suggestion as an encroachment on mayoral authority.

“The mayor’s an extremely sensitive human being,” Wolfsheimer said. “This is not intended to do anything to crimp the mayor. It’s intended to keep this council moving ahead regardless of whether the mayor’s present.”

Beyond any scheduling problems posed by the mayor’s absence, council members at odds with O’Connor also have often complained that those differences hamper their ability to docket items of interest to them. If a member is out of favor with O’Connor or if she opposes his issue, they contend, that item is unlikely to quickly appear on the agenda.

“It’s not like you’re asking for her support--just the chance to discuss something,” Filner said. “But if you’re not in her good graces, you can forget it. What we have is government by whim.”

As an example, Filner noted that he has been unable to proceed for more than four months with appointments to a San Ysidro revitalization board because of O’Connor’s refusal to docket the issue.

When the mayor declines to docket an item, several options are available to council members who wish to pursue their efforts to do so, city attorney Fitzpatrick explained. If four members request that an issue be placed on the docket, that must be done within 30 days. Five members may request a special meeting--as the majority did during the lengthy redistricting battle--and a six-vote, two-thirds majority enables the council to bring up “emergency” items that meet certain criteria without the mayor’s support.

During Tuesday’s debate, Wolfsheimer noted that, until several years ago, the council’s weekly Tuesday docket, which typically is devoted to land-use issues--as opposed to the Monday meetings’ broader agenda--was organized primarily by the city clerk’s office.

That policy was changed in early 1988, however, at the request of O’Connor’s aides, who argued that allowing the Rules Committee consultant to also oversee that docket, as he does that of the weekly Monday meetings, insured better coordination. Before the change, the mayor’s staff and some council members were displeased by what they regarded as insufficient notice of major land-use matters on the docket.

“It was not originally a power grab by the mayor’s office, but after we had the power, we certainly used it,” said Chris Crotty, the Rules Committee consultant at the time.

Rudy Cervantes, the current Rules consultant, said that in preparing the dockets, he routinely consults with the city manager’s office and the Planning Department, as well as reviews requests from individual council members. Estimates of how long each item might take for the council to dispense with it, he said, are a major factor in assembling the dockets.

“Ninety percent of the time, I make the decision myself about what goes on the docket,” Cervantes said. “On the rest, I might talk to others on the (mayor’s) staff with expertise to get their input.”

That description, O’Connor’s council critics argue, is simply a diplomatic way of admitting that the mayor can orchestrate the council’s schedule and shape its docket to her liking, both in her presence and absence.

O’Connor’s aides and her supporters concede the point, but hasten to add that she is simply taking advantage of the authority given to her by the charter and behaving as the chair of any organization would.

“One of the prerogative powers of the chair of any group is the power to create the agenda and determine when and in what order the various issues that come before it are addressed,” Henderson said. “When the chair’s in the minority, the majority naturally would like to take away some of that docketing authority. So I don’t see this as being as much of a shot at the mayor as it is a question of raw power, pure and simple.”

Although she was unable to gain sufficient votes for the council to discuss her idea Tuesday, Wolfsheimer said that she intends to circulate a memo among her colleagues asking that it be reviewed at a future meeting.

For that to happen, of course, it must be docketed.