Mickadeit: Weighing Costa Mesa city charter



Mickadeit: Weighing Costa Mesa city charter

The proposed Costa Mesa City Charter begins with familiar words.
The proposed Costa Mesa City Charter begins with familiar words.

It's a maxim of government law: "Cities are merely creatures of the state." But should they be?

Costa Mesa voters, of which I'm one, will get a chance to decide Nov. 6 whether we want to adopt our own city charter via Measure V. If so, will we be breaking the shackles of tyranny? Or will be find ourselves getting into one hot mess after another?

The U.S. Constitution says nothing about cities or their rights. In the early 19th century, cities were little different from private corporations, which the states clearly could regulate. City and private corporate law eventually split, but states never totally gave up their grip. An Iowa judge, John Forrest Dillon, in 1868 put into writing what everyone presumed: "Municipal corporations ... derive their powers and rights wholly from the (state) legislature." This became known as Dillon's Rule. The U.S. Supreme Court constitutionalized this view in 1907, when it said that if the state of Pennsylvania wanted to allow the city of Pittsburgh to swallow up the city of Alleghany, well, Alleghany residents had no right to stop it.

California, as do many states, benevolently grants its cities more authority over their own affairs – if a city wants to accept it. Cities follow a set of municipal laws set by the Legislature – so-called general-law cities, or they can write their own constitutions and become "charter cities." Of the 482 cities in California, 121 have opted for this latter, "home rule," government, including 10 of the 34 cities in Orange County. Those include large cities such as Anaheim, medium-sized cities such as Newport Beach and small cities such as Los Alamitos.

Costa Mesa voters should consider Measure V from two perspectives, one broad, one narrow. The first: Is state control and oversight good or bad in general? Second: the current intricacies of Costa Mesa politics.

The first is somewhat philosophical because the differences between charter city and general-law city powers are more varied and nuanced than almost any voter is going to spend time pondering. It's true, as charter opponents note, that charter cities like bankrupt San Bernardino and Stockton have gotten themselves into trouble. But so have general-law cities like Mammoth Lakes (bankrupt) and Jurupa Valley (on the verge of bankruptcy).

The important thing to know is that a charter does not result in "unlimited power concentrated in three council members," as the opponents misstate in their ballot argument. A charter city still has to follow a variety of state laws, like, for example, the open-meetings act.

The second consideration, however, is something you can sink your teeth into. The charter proposal (along with the city's council elections) is a referendum on a movement led by Councilman Jim Righeimer to rein in spending at the expense of some employee benefits. To couch it as anything different is to insult voters' intelligence.

There are three main areas in which the proposed charter does this. Under Section 401, the city would no longer have to pay prevailing wages in public-works contracts. Under Section 602, voters would have to approve any increase in city employee retirement benefits above a cost-of-living adjustment. Under Section 604, the unions wouldn't be allowed to take money directly out of city employee paychecks for political purposes.

The anti-charter side notes that Section 401 would exempt the city from many public-contracting regulations. They translate this to mean "The city council could divert millions of dollars to friends (and) we'd never know." But Section 402 also requires the city to set a dollar threshold at which contracts go out to bid – just like general-law cities do.

Could the council make the threshold so high that virtually no contracts have to go out to bid and then conspire to deal contracts worth "million of dollars" to friends? Well, yeah, just like it could do that now in violation of a host of other laws, and everybody would go to jail. If you support prevailing-wage law, by all means vote against the charter. But don't do it because you think its going to turn honest people into crooks.

Charter debate: I'll be among the media grilling Righeimer and Katrina Foley about the charter at the Feet to the Fire Forum at 7 p.m. Monday at the Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park Ave. It will also be streamed live at Feet2theFireForum.com.




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