It could be harder for San Diego to pass controversial legislation on housing, climate change, taxes and other issues in the next several months or longer because the City Council will have eight members instead of the usual nine.
This week’s departure of Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe, who was elected last month to the county Board of Supervisors, creates the potential for frequent 4-4 deadlocks on contentious issues.
But current and former council members said last week that having an even number of council members, while certainly a challenge, might be a good thing that forces members to work harder at building consensus.
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Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, who is expected to keep that position for another year with a vote scheduled for Monday, said he is optimistic the council can operate effectively with only eight members.
“We will all have the responsibility to figure out how to get to five votes when there is a policy proposal in front of us and there is one less council member,” Elo-Rivera said.
“It becomes potentially more complicated, for sure,” he said. “If I am council president, it becomes even more important for me to be responsive to our committee chairs and what they are prioritizing and moving things along from their committees.”
Elo-Rivera also said Mayor Todd Gloria will have to be more thorough in building support for policies he brings to the council for approval, seeking input ahead of time instead of just feedback after a policy is written.
The council could be left with only eight members through June or July. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in a March 5 special election to replace Montgomery Steppe, there will have to be a runoff within 90 days.
Having only eight council members into the summer could stymie or slow down some upcoming city business — including efforts on housing incentives, climate change, trash fees for single-family homes and whether to ask city voters to increase the local sales tax.
In addition to raising the bar to get legislation approved, the shift to eight council members could make the mayor more powerful. It will be harder for the council to override a mayoral veto, which requires six votes.
But council members stressed that Gloria, a Democrat, has not used his veto power even once to block legislation approved by the all-Democratic council. Gloria declined to comment for this story.
Former Council President Tony Young served on the council when the city’s switch to a strong-mayor form of government in 2005 left the council with only eight votes for several years. He said Elo-Rivera has the right idea.
“Sean has to be aware of it and avoid docketing issues that don’t have enough support,” Young said. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it will force everyone to be more thoughtful and considerate.”
But Young also said the shift from nine members to eight opens up the opportunity for a relatively small group of council members to become obstructionist and prevent any meaningful legislation.
San Diego’s council seems particularly vulnerable to that scenario because of the council’s soft 5-4 split, which will become a 4-4 split when Montgomery Steppe resigns her seat Monday.
She has been in a soft alliance with Elo-Rivera, Vivian Moreno, Joe LaCava and Kent Lee on many issues. On the other side of the split are Marni von Wilpert, Raul Campillo, Stephen Whitburn and Jennifer Campbell.
Campbell, who served as council president before Elo-Rivera, said last week that she is optimistic the shift to eight votes won’t cause major problems. But she urged Elo-Rivera to focus more on collegiality.
“Consensus was always a priority when I was president,” she said. “We didn’t have these long meetings. We knew ahead of time what the issues were.”
Campbell’s comments come two weeks after the council deadlocked 4-4 on a package of housing incentives proposed by the mayor. The deadlock came after a contentious seven-hour public hearing that Campillo missed while on parental leave.
Elo-Rivera said despite the regrettable result, he thinks he had the right idea.
“We’re not going to shy away from the seven-hour hearing,” he said. “I think folks should be glad we were being thoughtful, we were being deliberative and we were willing to take the time to ensure the policies we pass are well thought out.”
Council President Sean Elo-Rivera asks San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit questions about a proposed amendment at a June hearing on San Diego’s homeless encampment ban. With only eight council members for the coming months, Elo-Rivera concedes he and others will have to try harder to build consensus.
(Adriana Heldiz/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
If Montgomery Steppe had resigned before Monday’s upcoming council president vote, the 4-4 council split that would then have resulted could have cost Elo-Rivera the job.
Elo-Rivera said it’s completely appropriate that Montgomery Steppe participate in the council president vote, contending residents in her district should have a say in who leads the council.
“She won’t be there, but District 4 will continue to exist and we believe District 4 deserves representation up until the last minute that she’s serving in office,” he said. “We don’t think we should do anything to shut District 4 out of the decisions that will impact it.”
The City Council didn’t used to be so partisan and contentious, said MaryAnne Pintar, who is chief of staff for Rep. Scott Peters and served the same role when he was council president during the era when the council had only eight members on a permanent basis.
She said having an even number of votes will likely be a greater challenge for the council during this more contentious era.
“There’s no doubt it’s harder to get things done, but we didn’t have a lot of 4-4 votes back then,” she said. “People worked together better. And Peters put things on the agenda that he knew would get passed.”
Still, even then, concerns about 4-4 impasses prompted city officials to ask voters in 2010 to approve creating a ninth council district to solve the problem.
Prior to the shift to strong mayor in 2005, the mayor was part of the council and routinely cast tie-breaking votes when the council had six members from 1931 to 1963 and when it rose to eight members after that.
“The ninth council district was first introduced as an option to address potential issues with tie votes on legislative issues on an eight-member council,” the city’s independent budget analyst said in an October report this year.
In a 2006 opinion, then-City Attorney Mike Aguirre said the lack of an odd number of council members was “increasing the likelihood of deadlock in votes on substantive city issues.”
While voters approved creating the ninth district in 2010, it didn’t actually take effect until the 2012 election because new districts had to be drawn based on the results of the 2010 U.S. Census.
Elo-Rivera said the council has gotten some recent practice with having only eight members because three members — Moreno, Campillo and himself — have taken parental leaves to take care of newborns since last year.
“We’ve gotten practice working as a body of eight in temporary circumstances,” he said.
Even if that practice doesn’t prove helpful, Elo-Rivera said he’s confident city business will continue to be handled efficiently.
“Legislation will continue to move, policies will continue to move and the council will continue to do the work we are supposed to do,” he said.
