{"id":220850,"date":"2010-01-24T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/opinion\/story\/2483396.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-01-24T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T18:04:00","slug":"did-judge-rule-correctly-in-strong-mayor-lawsuit-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/220850","title":{"rendered":"Did judge rule correctly in strong-mayor lawsuit? Yes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tBill Camp<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has been a lot of talk in recent days about the lawsuit we filed involving the strong-mayor initiative in Sacramento. Many have characterized it as an attack on the voters’ right to “reform” our city government, as well as an effort to stop any movement toward a strong-mayor form of government. While these characterizations may make for good sound bites, they miss the real purpose of our lawsuit: to ensure that all Sacramentans receive the benefits of the procedures the California Constitution requires for major changes to our charter.<\/p>\n

As the Sacramento Superior Court decision clearly points out, the so-called strong-mayor initiative proposes significant changes to the city charter that would completely overhaul the structure of city government. The court made it clear that a measure that makes such radical changes to a city charter cannot be legally placed on the ballot directly through the initiative process – as Mayor Kevin Johnson is attempting to do by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers and paid signature gatherers.<\/p>\n

The judge’s ruling outlines the two options – both with ample public participation – that the California Constitution provides for reforming a city charter: <\/p>\n

• First, the City Council may place a revision before the voters directly after public debate. <\/p>\n

• Alternatively, the voters may use the initiative process to place a measure on the ballot that asks for a vote on an initial question: Do you want to revise our city charter? <\/p>\n

• If a majority of the voters says yes, then the voters are asked to elect a charter reform commission that would hold public hearings and consider revisions to the charter based on the public’s input. All Sacramento voters would be eligible to serve on the commission – not just hand-picked political insiders. <\/p>\n

• The elected commission would place their recommended revised charter on the ballot. <\/p>\n

• At that point, voters get to cast a second vote for or against the revised charter proposed by the commission. <\/p>\n

We believe there is a good reason for this deliberative process. Fundamental changes in the city charter – which is the city’s constitution – should not be made casually or carelessly, as is often the case with policies crafted in the course of high-priced initiative campaigns. <\/p>\n

Overhauling a city’s charter is no small matter. It should be done with deliberation and thoughtful input from all segments of our community, in a public and inclusive process. <\/p>\n

This would have been the right way for the mayor to revise the city charter, but he failed to follow the law. Instead, he huddled with a small, hand-picked group of advisers in closed-door meetings and drafted a measure completely overhauling the way city government is organized. <\/p>\n

Fortunately for us, the court has stepped in to stop this violation of the process our state constitution requires. We believe most Sacramentans will be thankful for that.<\/p>\n

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Bill Camp There has been a lot of talk in recent days about the lawsuit we filed involving the strong-mayor initiative in Sacramento. Many have characterized it as an attack on the voters’ right to “reform” our city government, as well as an effort to stop any movement toward a strong-mayor form of government. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}