Charter plan looks like another power grab by SLO County’s conservative supervisors

Here’s your chance, Board of Supervisors.

If you really want to give power to the people — and that’s the whole idea behind this county charter proposal, right? — then let voters decide if they want an independent commission to handle the thorny issue of county redistricting, rather than the Board of Supervisors.

That’s what Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Dawn Ortiz-Legg advocated for at a special meeting Tuesday night, held to discuss and take public input on the charter proposal, with an eye toward putting it on the November ballot. (In a nutshell, charters give counties and cities the ability to set their own rules for certain matters, rather than following the state’s one-size-fits-all regulations.)

The board’s conservative majority wants a charter for one purpose and one purpose only: To give voters the opportunity to fill vacancies through special elections, rather than having them filled by appointment.

Under the current system, the governor appoints when there is a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors, as was the recent case with the appointment of Ortiz-Legg.

The Board of Supervisors appoints when a countywide office, such as sheriff or district attorney, becomes vacant.

Predictably, the board majority was unilaterally opposed to the idea of including an independent redistricting commission in the charter.

“Throughout the history of this county, it’s been the job of the Board of Supervisors to tackle the redistricting situation,” said Supervisor Debbie Arnold. “I’m totally against passing that job off ... to people who haven’t been elected by the constituency.”

Let voters choose

But how can the board be so sure the majority of voters wants to maintain the status quo, especially in light of the blowup over the map adopted last year that resulted in a legal challenge?

To our knowledge, there has never been a formal public opinion survey taken.

So here’s an idea: If the three supervisors are truly committed to protecting the rights of voters, why not give the electorate the opportunity to decide whether they want an independent redistricting commission?

Put two alternative charters on the November ballot.

There could be two questions, sort of like with recall elections.

The first question would ask whether voters want a charter.

If that fails, then that’s the end of it.

The second question would ask voters to choose a charter.

One alternative would be limited to setting out the rules for filling vacancies. It would be silent on the issue of redistricting.

The other would address vacancies and would require that redistricting be carried out by an independent commission.

That’s the fairest way to decide this, and it’s an opportunity for supervisors to prove they really do respect the will of the voters.

A hijacked process?

That matters, because based on how this process has gone so far, it appears the board majority is trying to hijack this whole charter movement to benefit conservatives.

Here’s how things are shaping up, based on the discussion at Tuesday’s meeting:

First off, the board tentatively agreed that a special election would be held to fill a vacancy only if the next regularly scheduled election is more than a year away. In the case of countywide offices, chief deputies would step up to serve as interim heads. That makes sense, although that’s an awfully long time for a non-elected official to be in power.

But think about what that would mean should a county supervisor’s seat become vacant.

Residents of that district could conceivably be without a supervisor for an entire year? In that case, there’s no second-in-command to take over.

Who would these orphaned constituents turn to with questions and concerns about what’s happening in their neighborhoods? If they live in a city, they could call on their mayor or council.

But what about residents of the unincorporated areas who rely on their supervisor to be their voice for everything from traffic concerns to water shortages to proposed developments?

Is the conservative majority really so set against allowing a Democratic governor to make these rare appointments that it would leave citizens of San Luis Obispo County unrepresented for an entire year?

Concerns were raised on Tuesday about the amount of time it would take to stage a special election, but surely it can’t take more than six months to hold such an election in a single district. Make it a mail-in-only election if necessary, but don’t open the door to leaving county residents without a supervisor for an entire year.

Make it harder to amend

Also, conservatives on the board want a charter — but they want to make it extremely difficult for any future board to revise it.

They asked the County Counsel’s Office to look into the possibility of requiring a “super-majority” — a four-fifths vote of the board — to put a charter amendment on the ballot.

They also wondered if they could require that a super-majority of voters — generally considered to be two-thirds of voters — be required to pass that amendment.

The County Counsel’s Office expressed doubts about the legality of that but will research it nonetheless.

With all due respect, the fact that this would even be suggested is a stunning example of hypocrisy.

This board majority is perfectly fine with putting a charter in place with just simple majority votes. But they want to make it much more difficult for any future boards to mess with “their” charter? They have so much hubris that they believe their will should prevail far into the future?

Ostensibly, the request was a response to a handful of speakers who worried that the charter process could somehow be abused down the road, possibly by taking power away from elected officials and putting it in the hands of bureaucrats.

That the board majority would pay attention to these far-fetched concerns from some constituents and ignore other residents seeking a redistricting commission speaks to how broken our county has become.

It appears this board is not content to wield power in the here and now. It wants to leave a permanent stamp on San Luis Obispo County, regardless of how demographics change.

We saw that with the adoption of a radically redrawn redistricting map.

And we’re seeing it again with this effort to bully future supervisors and voters into not messing with a county charter.

We would love for the board majority to prove us wrong by putting two charter proposals on the ballot, but we fear that won’t happen.

If that’s the case, voters who care about the future of San Luis Obispo County will have no choice but to take matters into their own hands by collecting enough signatures to force an election on whether to take redistricting out of the hands of supervisors — who have a built-in conflict of interest — and assign it to an independent commission.

This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:30 AM.