Sounding Off:

Although I admire Richard Lara’s scholarly approach to whether we should have an elected mayor in Huntington Beach (“Elected mayor is best for city,” Sounding Off, Dec. 31), I cannot agree with either his premises or his conclusions.

Lara may know about the U.S. Constitution, but he evinces little understanding of the realities of local politics in our city.

There are several problems with switching from the present rotational system to a directly elected mayoral office that must be addressed if the process is to remain fair and representative.

The first has to do with term limits. When a similar switch was made in Anaheim in the 1990s, the irrepressible Tom Daly was able to run for mayor and serve two full four-year terms on top of his two previous years as mayor and four years as a City Council member. This resulted in a total of 14 years on the City Council with 10 of them as mayor. That is too long. Sitting City Council members who have been reelected to a second council term should be restricted to running for one four-year term as mayor with no provision for running for a consecutive City Council term following it. They would be termed out.

Of course, a non-council member could run for mayor and serve two full terms, but do we want a novice to local government serving as the spokesperson of our city without any “seasoning”? The current system provides at least a couple of years on the City Council for each mayor pro tempore to “learn the ropes” while waiting to serve as mayor the following year. Direct election of the mayor would preclude this valuable period of preparation.

It could mean the winner of a popularity contest with no civic qualifications could wield enormous power and influence without being subjected to prior public scrutiny in office. I am definitely uncomfortable with that prospect.

The second problem area has to do with mayoral powers. Each year, the mayor of Huntington Beach sets his or her own style in running the City Council meetings and putting his or her own stamp on the face of our representation to the outside world. However, the mayor has the power to make Council Committee appointments that can significantly impact our local government decision-making. Some of these appointments even carry financial perks and clout on countywide governmental bodies.

The mayor should not have four years of these and other appointments and potentially establish cronyism for friends and political allies at the expense of the most qualified or best representative for the job.

This is at the expense of the citizens’ best interests. A directly elected mayor should be somewhat constrained in what he or she can do in exercising actual authority on the City Council.

The third problem area has to do with naked partisanship. In Anaheim, Daly was nominally a Democrat but drew his power from a nonpartisan establishment that was primarily concerned with perpetuating the successful status quo.

Although Republican registration exceeded Democrat registration by the 1998 mayoral election, the openly Republican challenger failed to win on a straight party-line approach. Unfortunately, our city has been in a partisan grip for the last several years with little chance of a nonpartisan mayor (let alone a Democrat) being elected.

That is a great disservice to more than a third of the electorate who would bitterly resent a partisan political agenda being foisted upon our citizenry for four long years.

The fourth problem area has to do with campaign financing. The successful charge led by Councilman Don Hansen to gut campaign financing protections and meaningful donation limits in our city has opened the door to partisan and outside special-interest meddling in our local elections that will intensify if the mayor’s position is directly elected. Whatever benefits directly electing the mayor may appear enticing on paper would be more than offset by the office being hijacked by free-spending outside special interests. Community-based candidates for mayor would be at a tremendous disadvantage.

The fifth problem area has to do with incumbency. Lara is dead wrong when he claims that “the people” would run off a political stooge, a partisan hack or a “yes man” to special interests after their first term. It is unfortunate that incumbents enjoy an almost ironclad certainty of being reelected in Huntington Beach, no matter how incompetent or bumbling they happen to be.

Our citizens would likely be stuck with a “mistake” mayor for eight long years.

Nothing in Lara’s more than 800 word op-ed piece addressed these pressing concerns directly. Until they are, the direct election of mayor should be put on hold. It is not necessarily best for our city.

TIM GEDDES is a Huntington Beach resident.