Board considers election reform in San Mateo County

The San Mateo County Charter Review Committee wrapped up six-months of meetings and debates on June 23rd and will provide recommendations on five possible County Charter changes to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors at the tomorrow, June 29th, board meeting.

The Charter Review Committee is the ad hoc board, empanelled every eight years, charged with reviewing and making recommendations for revising and updating the County’s Charter—a document akin to a local constitution that governs San Mateo County’s governmental structure and a variety of major policies.

The Charter Review Commission will send the Supervisors recommendations on the process for filling vacancies on the County Board of Supervisors; rules and restrictions on appointees to the Board; changing the at-large elections for county supervisors district elections for; the process for drawing supervisorial district boundaries; combining/splitting elective offices and/or departments; election or appointment of county officers not required by State Constitution to be elected or appointed including the positions of County Treasurer and Controller; charter-based qualifications for elected/appointed officers such as Treasurer and Controller; campaign financing restrictions and reform including instant runoff election for county offices; and finally potential periodic supervisory review of Boards and Commissions.

The report submitted to the Supervisors will be lengthy, and if the recommendations are adopted by the Board and placed on the ballot in November 2010 and passed by the voters, this could have far ranging impacts on the political landscape of the county.

Of particular interest has been the potential for changing the way in which Supervisors in San Mateo County are elected from an at-large or countywide system to a district based system.

The issue of reforming the at-large system was touched off in late 2008 following the appointment of former San Mateo City Councilmember Carole Groom to the supervisorial seat left vacant by former Supervisor Jerry Hill, who had been elected to the State Assembly that November. Groom’s appointment to the board was roundly criticized in local newspaper editorials and formally opposed by organizations such as the San Mateo County Democratic Party, the county’s Republican Party, the Sierra Club, and even the League of Women Voters. Despite the firestorm of opposition, Groom was appointed by the Supervisors with only Supervisor Rich Gordon calling for a special election instead.

In the months following Groom’s appointment, the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury took up the issue for review. Last summer, the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury issued an advisory letter to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors directing the five-member board to change the system under which supervisors are elected from an at-large system to a district based system.

According to the Civil Grand Jury’s report, San Mateo County is the only county in the State of California that elects supervisors at-large—or countywide. Tehama County in the Sierra Mountains also maintained such a system until voters overwhelmingly approved a county charter amendment to impose a district-based system in November of 2008.

The Grand Jury also warned the county that it may be edging close to a violation of the Voting Rights Act and referenced the Madera ruling as only two minorities have ever been elected to the County Board of Supervisors.

The Civil Grand Jury added that the task of running for the board in a county with a population topping 700,000 is daunting at best. The cost to run such an election without major support from entrenched political interests is all but impossible. Running in such an election would even dwarf the size of an U.S. Congressional district.

Until this year, it had been 13 years since there was a hotly contested supervisorial race when Supervisor Gordon actually had to earn his seat in a special election without an incumbent. 2010 saw a competitive Primary Election for Gordon’s seat as he was ineligible to run again and that race will now continue to a November runoff. But such an event has happened only a few times in decades.

In March of this year, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a San Francisco-based civil rights legal foundation, issued a letter to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors alerting the county that the organization was considering filing a lawsuit to change the county’s at-large system. The Lawyers' Committee has sued other jurisdictions over similar grounds under provisions of the Voting Rights Act as at-large systems are viewed as discriminatory and potentially inhibit the representation of minority populations in local offices.

Most famously, the Lawyers’ Committee successfully sued the Madera Unified School District in 2008. In that ruling, Madera County Superior Court Judge James E. Oakley invalidated, in advance, the results of the November 2008 school board election based on the fact that the at-large voting system, in which all voters in the district cast ballots for all board members rather than for a candidate representing their section of town, violated the Voting Rights Act.

Since that ruling, according to a Los Angeles Times article, many California school districts and cities have abandoned at-large voting systems and have adopted district based systems.

The issue of district elections for San Mateo County Supervisors has surfaced a few times in the past four decades but has never gained the traction necessary to change the County’s election system. The issue went to the ballot twice, once in 1978 and once in 1980, but both efforts failed. Since then, the issue has slowly simmered under the surface.

In addition to the district elections question, the Charter Review Committee also wrestled with limiting the ability of the Supervisors to appoint replacements if a vacancy occurs. The Charter Review Committee will recommend a ballot measure that could limit the ability of supervisors to make appointments as they did with Groom and instead require that voters get the chance to elect their representatives unless a vacancy occurs very late in a four-year supervisorial term. The devil is always in the details.

For six months the Charter Review Commission has debated many issues but the district versus at-large question will likely spark the most interest and the greatest potential for change. Some of the recommendations may threaten to broaden and open the county’s otherwise monolithic and closed political culture and that may give pause to those in power now. But if the supervisors fail to adopt the recommendations, change may still come anyway as the old way of doing business has attracted new attention.

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