August 10, 2006

In my opinion…

City Council moonlighting okay, but at what cost?

By Pat Dando, President/CEO
San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce

Until now, San Jose has enjoyed a steady stream of highly qualified candidates eager to give something back by devoting four to eight years of their lives to public service in city government. Let’s hope that the pot being stirred at City Hall doesn’t trigger the shut-off valve.

Council members know going in that the position comes with a huge commitment that takes valuable time away from careers and family. In some cases, it also means a cut in pay. In the past, they have been able to effectively continue their practices or operate their businesses on a lesser scale in an effort to offset their salary or more important, have a career to return to when their term is up.

When Mayor Gonzales issued a memo requesting a City Charter amendment prohibiting any outside employment while serving on the council, many who were entertaining the notion of running for office backed away, as it would mean sacrificing their careers for a term-limited position and a modest Silicon Valley salary. If passed, council member-elect Pete Constant would have been hit with a ninth-inning rule change that would force him to choose between his seat and the photography business his family spent 20 years building.

The mayor simply had a solution looking for a problem. Last week, the City Council approved it, but fortunately came to its senses Tuesday by rejecting his concept all together.

Council member Ken Yeager offered a compromise, calling the mayor’s proposal “ill-conceived'' and overly broad, which we applaud. However, his recommendation for mandatory monthly income disclosure reports for all “outside compensatory income” are redundant—especially as there are already strict disclosure reporting procedures already in place that list councilmember’s outside sources of income, include who the work was for, time spent to earn it and any conflicts of interest it might create. The reports are filed annually and are public record. We are still left looking for a problem, other than the one it might create by taking council members away from city business to fill out paperwork.

While we strongly agree with the need for more disclosure at City Hall, this has the potential to turn into just as much a deterrent for citizen politicians as an outright ban on outside employment.

A closer look into the root of the problems that have—and do exist in City Hall—shows no link between outside employment and the secret back-door deals of late. Perhaps this is just another way to shift the scales in favor of career politicians, instead of citizen politicians with real-world experience and the desire to run for office in order to fix what’s broken with the system.

If there is to be change at City Hall, voters should embrace citizen politicians who seek public office—those who have employment in the private sector and more important, first-hand knowledge of what is truly needed in city government. We need public servants who are willing to devote time to our best interests and then return to their careers after their service is complete. But if we are to continue expecting the same caliber of candidates, we shouldn’t want to bury them so deep in a new paper bureaucracy that it prevents them from seeking office at all or takes them away from the job we elected them to do. As with anything in life—and in politics, too much of a good thing can be bad.

Dando served as a City Council member from District 10 for eight years, two of them as Vice Mayor.