Two proposals to reform county government for now could remove the requirement for supervisors to live in the districts they serve – if state law changes.
The previously under-the-radar residency change drives home the complexity of the competing reform proposals that are moving quickly toward the November ballot. County supervisors have until August to place a measure on the ballot.
Supervisor Joel Anderson, who is pushing one of those proposals, is pledging to remove the residency tweak from his pitch. He didn’t recognize the issue until supervisors this week got a breakdown comparing the county’s current charter with proposed changes. The document explained that the county could move to at-large elections if state law changed.
The review was prepared ahead of a required second vote next Tuesday on whether to send Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer’s proposed governance reform measure to the November ballot or to pursue a competing pitch from Anderson.
Lawson-Remer said through a spokesperson that what Anderson is decrying is simply clean-up language meant to ensure the county charter matches state law.
Here’s the key excerpt that for now appears in both reform proposals:
County spokesperson Tammy Glenn clarified that the governance reform measures wouldn’t change residency rules unless state law changes too.
“Removing the words ‘from their district’ from Section 401 of the charter would allow for district elections without a residency requirement if state law were to change,” Glenn wrote in a statement. “Currently, Government Code section 25041 requires a supervisor to reside in their district during their term of office.”
Lawson-Remer’s office said county lawyers proposed striking out “from their district”.
An earlier version of Lawson-Remer’s proposed measure also included language allowing supervisors to live outside the districts they represent under circumstances tied to child care, caregiving or other issues.
The Union-Tribune previously reported that Lawson-Remer later removed the language, telling the newspaper she had “tried unsuccessfully to draft residency rules that aligned more closely with state law.”
Lawson-Remer’s spokesperson said the board chair “strongly supports district elections” and described the district election language that remains as clean-up language meant to match state law.
“During the long process of reforming the county’s charter there are a number of edits to reduce redundancies and modernize terms in alignment with state law,” spokesperson Beth Willon wrote in an email.
Willon wrote that district-based elections remain mandatory in the charter and central to county governance.
“There would need to be another different charter reform measure to move away from district elections,” Willon wrote.
It’s unclear when there could be support for such changes – whether in the county or in the state legislature.
Anderson’s rival governance reform measure is based on Lawson-Remer’s – and thus for now includes the proposed residency edit – but changes many of the controversial aspects of the chair’s proposal, including nixing an additional term for sitting supervisors.
Anderson spokesperson Matthew Phy said the supervisor decided to propose another amendment at next week’s meeting after learning of the residency change.
In a statement, Anderson pounced on the previously overlooked residency language, which he said showed the chair and the board were rushing complex reform proposals.
“I don’t believe they intended on allowing people living in Tijuana or Orange County to represent us on the Board of Supervisors,” Anderson said. “I believe their rush to move this along created drafting errors. There were multiple errata done before the vote. There’s no reason to rush this process with sloppy work – we have until August.”
Jack McGrory, a former San Diego city manager who is part of the coalition backing Lawson-Remer’s reform proposal, acknowledged Wednesday he was caught off guard by the district election change. He wasn’t sure what it meant.
Kyra Greene of the Center on Policy Initiatives, who is slated to co-chair an implementation task force with McGrory if the charter measure passes, said she believed the edit was proposed by county counsel “to simplify or clarify language without modification of intent or implications of the charter.”
She read the edited charter section and the one after it to mean that supervisors must fulfill both residency and elector requirements established by general law, a term used throughout the charter.
“As far as I am aware, general law in California requires that elected officials are ‘domiciled’ within the same district as the voters who vote for them unless the district boundaries change during their term,” Greene wrote in an email.