Blog note: This column by Dick Spotswood, a long-time supporter of the Marin County Grand Jury, calls attention to the value of the grand jury to solve local government problems.
Marin
has too many elected positions. The list of 285 posts starts with eight
countywide elected officers, including five members of the Board of
Supervisors, 59 city and town officials in 11 municipalities, 83 school trustees
and 135 special purpose district directors.
The
reality behind those 285 elected officials is a plethora of agencies
accompanied by duplicative administrators and front office staff.
For
most voters in these below-the-radar bailiwicks, it’s almost impossible to know
anything about the candidates or the incumbents’ performance when elections are
held.
Most
of those serving are public-spirited citizens, but it’s a mixed bag with a few
eager for the perks. This multiplicity of agencies is a wasteful, duplicative,
non-transparent anachronism that only made sense 100 years ago when Marin was a
cow county.
If
change was easy it would have been accomplished decades ago. Incumbents love
their posts, senior staffers enjoy a comfortable berth and voters rarely pay
attention to the nuances of local government.
Marin
needs a two-pronged approach to change: Identify the way forward and enable
voters to approve those changes. The goal is to determine a practical
reorganization that merges duplicative agencies and lowers costs while
providing better public services.
A
well-thought-out plan is an essential foundation to gain the public’s
confidence and to precisely learn the financial savings that results from
merging agencies.
An ideal forum is Marin’s highly-respected civil grand jury. Make
consolidation the prime topic for the 2022-23 jury once it’s empaneled next
summer. The grand jury should step out of its routine and schedule public
meetings for citizen input. Conduct a professional opinion survey to understand
the views of regular folks who don‘t attend meetings and to hear opinions other
than from those with an ax to grind or special interest to protect.
Here’s
an example of what could be done regarding Marin’s 16 school districts.
Option
one: Combine all school districts into one countywide district-elected board of
education. Counties with far larger populations have a single unified school
district. Option two: Outside of Novato and San Rafael, create school districts
each centered on one high school joined with their “feeder” grade schools.
The
next step toward change is to make Marin a charter county. “Home rule
authority” is provided in California’s Constitution Article 11 Section 3c. A
charter enables a county or city greater flexibility to organize its
governmental structure. Conceivably, it could create a county mayor with a
four-member Board of Supervisors or merge the office of, say, treasurer with
the existing office of finance.
Put
the charter concept on the ballot via an initiative or Board of Supervisors
resolution. Voters then decide if they should elect a board of freeholders to
serve for one year to craft a charter based on the grand jury’s report that’s
then submitted to voters. Thirteen California counties have charters, including
San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco.
Charters
are a first step toward providing operational flexibility for counties,
including Marin, now operating under rigid general state law. Legislation might
be needed to authorize Marin’s charter to consolidate state-created special
purpose and school districts, the most blatant examples of wasteful
duplication.
San
Rafael’s Bill Bagley, past Marin-Sonoma Republican assemblymember, started his
public service career in 1957 when elected to a once-in-a-generation Marin
Board of Freeholders. Promoted by the reform-minded League of Women Voters, a
revolutionary plan to streamline county government with a strong county manager
was submitted to Marin’s electorate.
The
15 elected freeholders were divided and the changes were opposed by the old
guard, the so-called Courthouse Crowd. The good government reform went down to
defeat 2-to-1 in a county which was then essentially rural and suspicious of
change.
After
65 years, it’s time to try again.
Marin
Independent
Dick Spotswood
November 27, 2021
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