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Reader GL sends me this point:
Read your blog today. I was surprised you didn’t pull this into the bigger issue of redistricting and whether or not the tie vote is indicative of the need to have another council district so these types of pressures don’t occur in the future (I think you’ve written about that before).
Heck yeah it is. It’s just fundamentally absurd that the San Diego City Council has eight members and it’s the most glaring flaw of the 2004 push to implement the strong-mayor form of government. In order to get that massive restructuring of city government to the ballot in 2004, the boosters of that reform and former Mayor Dick Murphy had to smooth it over with the City Council. Members of the City Council didn’t want to dilute their own power so they didn’t consider adding another member to the body to replace the mayor who was the ninth vote.
Backers of the 2004 plan used to explain this away by saying “yeah, well, you still need five votes to get something through the City Council — just like before.” But you also had one less member of the council available to persuade.
GL goes on:
The way this whole thing played out is really amusing in the context of the budget compromise that happened the day before. As an avid student of public administration it seems like the even number of districts presented an interesting conflict in this meeting. I will be curious to see how that plays out when the budgeting gets tough in a few months.
As will I.