Council, in Victory for Mayor, Votes to Put Term Limit and Veto on Ballot

Taking a major step toward changing the face of city government, the San Diego City Council on Monday voted to place a two-term council limit on the ballot and to consider significantly strengthening the mayor’s powers.

In a unanimous 5-0 vote that represented a critical victory for Mayor Maureen O’Connor, the council, with little debate, decided to allow city voters to determine in June, 1992, whether council members should be limited to serving two consecutive four-year terms.

“You think I just wore ‘em down?” a jubilant O’Connor said after the meeting, noting that she has advocated a two-term limit since joining the council in 1971. “This one was a long, long time in coming.”

Though conclusive action was not taken on several other proposed charter amendments, the debate showed that some council members envision even more dramatic structural changes in the city’s existing council-city manager form of government.

Some of the most potentially sweeping changes would strengthen the mayor’s authority by, among other things, giving the mayor veto power and, perhaps, responsibility for developing the city’s annual budget, a duty now handled by the city manager’s office.

The council also indicated its willingness to at least seriously consider another O’Connor proposal by voting to have a council committee consider the creation of an ethics commission to oversee a wide range of council activities.

O’Connor first proposed such an ethics panel during her 1986 mayoral campaign and has pushed for increasing the mayor’s powers since voters approved district-only council races in 1988.

Before Monday, however, neither of those proposals nor the two-term limit had made serious progress during numerous hearings before the full council or its committees, both because of opposition from her colleagues and what seemed at times to be rather lackadaisical lobbying by O’Connor herself.

But, if O’Connor’s effectiveness in promoting her proposed reforms could be questioned before Monday, her perseverance could not. Despite being rebuffed at various turns--often, council meetings at which the mayor’s reforms were to be debated failed to even draw a quorum--O’Connor’s persistence in pressing for the proposals never flagged.

After the vote, O’Connor argued that the fact that 58% of San Diego voters supported a statewide ballot measure last fall establishing similar term limits for state legislators influenced some council members’ attitudes on the subject.

“They saw the handwriting on the wall,” O’Connor said. “I’ve known for a very long time that that’s what people wanted. But it took that vote . . . for some council members to recognize it.”

In addition to O’Connor, Council members Ron Roberts, John Hartley, Wes Pratt and Judy McCarty supported placing the term limit on the ballot. Councilman Bruce Henderson was absent Monday, and three other council members--Abbe Wolfsheimer, Linda Bernhardt and Bob Filner--left the meeting before the vote.

Some crucial details about the proposed two-term limit--notably, how the restriction, if approved, would apply to current council members--will not be resolved until the city attorney’s office returns to the council with proposed ballot language later this year.

O’Connor, who voluntarily adhered to a two-term limit as a council member and has pledged to do the same as mayor by not seeking reelection next year, said she favors retroactively applying the restriction to current members. That approach, if adopted, would mean that councilmen in their second term before June, 1992, could not seek reelection.

However, to make the proposal more politically palatable and to address legal concerns, it might be necessary to specify that some or all of the current members’ service before 1992 would not count against their eight-year limit, city officials said.

Opposition to the proposal is predictable, because even some council members who supported putting the two-term limit on the ballot indicated that they question or oppose the concept.

Pratt, for example, said he was “philosophically opposed, but . . . willing to let voters decide” the issue. He also noted that the limit, if passed, could have little practical effect on the council, given that the last member to serve more than two terms was Leon Williams, who left City Hall to become a county supervisor in the early 1980s.

But Roberts said he strongly supports the limit as a way of protecting against “local elected officials who hang on for years.”

“Eight years is more than enough time to move your agenda,” Roberts said. “City government would be benefited . . . by getting others involved.”

Under the council’s vote Monday, the other proposed government reforms will receive additional study before a final vote is taken.

The various proposals to strengthen the mayor’s powers will be reviewed by O’Connor, Pratt and City Manager Jack McGrory, who then will report back to the council’s Rules Committee.

During Monday’s brief debate, O’Connor repeated her argument that a mayoral veto, which could be overridden by a two-thirds vote by the council, is needed to remedy one of the “structural defects” created by district elections.

Before approval of the 1988 ballot measure, council candidates ran in district primaries followed by citywide runoffs. Now, council members run only in districts that include about one-eighth of the city’s population, yet their votes carry equal weight with that of the mayor, who is elected citywide.

A mayoral veto, O’Connor and other proponents argue, would enhance the mayor’s ability to act as a check upon the council, guided by a citywide perspective as opposed to the council members’ narrower, parochial interests of their respective districts.

Ironically, some council members favor strengthening the mayor’s office even beyond the level favored by O’Connor, suggesting that the mayor replace the city manager in preparing the city’s annual budget.

“The budget is the basic policy statement of the city,” Pratt said, adding that, as such, it should be prepared by the top elected official, not an appointed administrator.

Newly appointed City Manager McGrory, however, warned that removing control of the budget from his office would “fundamentally change” the city’s council-manager form of government. Concurring, O’Connor added that the proposal might heighten opposition to her more modest plans for increasing the mayor’s powers.

“We’ve got to walk before we can run,” O’Connor said. “Too radical of a change may not be supported.”

The proposed ethics committee, meanwhile, is a hybrid of O’Connor’s 1986 campaign plan. Patterned after a similar Orange County program, the proposal would increase disclosure of council members’ campaign contributions and bar members from voting on matters affecting companies or individuals from whom they recently received major donations.