Bruce’s column appeared in today’s Argus Leader, read the whole column HERE.
The Home Rule Charter is our city constitution. In theory it is to protect us from abuse while giving local government more latitude to meet statutory needs such as fixing streets, utilities along with fire and police protection. I am a strong proponent of a balanced government structure, without authoritarians ruling the day or weak elected officials being pushed around. We need a balance.
1. The charter establishes a mayor to be elected by the people to lead the city government and its employees.
2. The charter created a city council to be a policy making body to set the rules for the mayor’s administration to follow.
3. To keep everyone on a straight and narrow path, the charter has a section called ethics to keep everyone in order.
The secrecy in SF city government is bad enough, but without a strong balance of ethics, we as citizens have NO recourse.
It occurred to me that repeated rolling ethics complaints could keep the mayor and council busy with hearings so they wouldn’t have time to approve budget for 25 million private projects. The 4 new councilors could be career alcoholics shoplifter perverts to prompt a steady stream of ethics hearings.