Oakland’s charter reform process: the questions it was built not to ask
Mayor Barbara Lee’s charter reform ‘working group’ was hand-picked to diagnose Oakland’s dysfunction. But the group was set up to rule out the reforms voters really want.
Oakland Agenda Watch provides short summaries of key items on upcoming public meeting agendas that catch our attention. In this installment, we take a closer look at today’s city council review of the mayor’s charter reform working group proposal – a question voters may be asked to decide in November.
The mayor picked the panel — and also picked the questions they were allowed to ask
City council meeting, June 2, 2026, agenda item #5.2.
The city council is set to review the most significant overhaul of Oakland’s political structure since 1998: a shift to a ‘strong-mayor’ system that would grant the mayor sweeping new executive powers, award potentially substantial pay raises to city council members, and dramatically reorganize authority across City Hall.1
The proposal grew out of the recommendations of the ‘mayor’s charter reform working group.’
There’s a simple test for any government advisory body: look at who picks the members, who writes the questions, and who gains from the answer.
On all three criteria, Mayor Barbara Lee’s working group was set up from the start to arrive at its unsurprising recommendation: that Oakland hand its mayor significant new powers.
This characterization is evident in the working group’s own documents. The working group was built in a way that kept its actual deliberations off the public record — no posted agendas, no open meetings, no sign-off from the City Council.
Also telling is what the working group never put on the table: the government reforms Oaklanders have actually asked and voted for.
The mayor hand-picked the ‘working group’ — and picked the questions they would (and wouldn’t) ask
Political charter reform was a focus of Mayor Barbara Lee’s campaign platform, and her office hand-selected a ‘working group’ to study it.2
The mayor’s office chose all the working group’s members — none of the other elected city council members were afforded the opportunity to also select members.3
The mayor selected two nominally nonpartisan groups — the League of Women Voters of Oakland and San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) — to run the working group meetings and the overall process.4
According to a letter from working group’s key representatives — many of whom have long-standing ties to the mayor — Mayor Lee set the working group’s goals and then ‘stepped back’ from direct engagement in the group’s work:
“Mayor Lee … convened the Working Group, set the initial goals, and then stepped back.”
— Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group, letter to the City Council5
Notably, ‘stepping back’ after hand-picking a working group composed mostly of supporters, then writing the questions they were to ask or avoid, isn’t the same as neutrality.
It stands to reason that the person who stands to gain most from a strong-mayor government is the person who defined what the panel was allowed to study — the mayor.
Critics noticed.
The Oakland Charter Reform Project, which opposed the ‘strong-mayor’ form of government in favor of the widely-used ‘council-manager’ system, called the result unsurprising from a panel exclusively chosen by the mayor.6
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Mayor Lee publicly reinforced the ‘strong-mayor’ conclusion months before the working group’s recommendations were presented to the city council.7
SPUR, one of the working group facilitators, had publicly favored a stronger Oakland executive for years.8
So did former Mayor Libby Schaaf, who publicly endorsed the strong-mayor approach as the working group process was underway.9
Built to deliberate in private
The mayor’s decision to appoint a ‘working group’ instead of an official city advisory body was a critical component of the overall process — one that almost inevitably would lead to a recommendation favored by and largely benefiting the mayor.
Most public bodies in California are required by law to conduct their business in the open. The state’s open-meetings government ‘sunshine’ law — the Ralph M. Brown Act — forces city councils, their committees, and advisory bodies to post agendas in advance, let the public watch them deliberate, post official minutes of proceedings, and keep no decisions hidden.10
But the law has a well-known gap. It generally does not cover a body that a single official creates on their own, as opposed to one a city council establishes by formal vote.11
The mayor’s political charter reform ‘working group’ exploited that gap. Mayor Lee convened it herself, as part of her 100-day plan; the city council never created it by resolution, and the council neither appointed nor confirmed a single member.12
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Because it was the mayor’s creation rather than the full elected council’s, it carried none of the Brown Act’s obligations.
No posted agendas. No public deliberations. No minutes of who argued what.
The mayor’s office hand-picked the members, handed them the questions, and let them deliberate privately to reach a conclusion — all without the transparency that a formal city advisory body would have been required to follow.
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It’s worth being precise about what was public. The Working Group held listening sessions and community meetings across the city, and that outreach was open to those who chose to attend.13
But there is a difference between public outreach — events where residents are invited to give input — and public deliberation, where you can watch the body weigh the evidence, review its deliberation and minutes in writing and on video, and evaluate how it reached its decision. Oaklanders got the first. They never got the second. The actual deliberations happened out of view, then arrived as a finished recommendation.
Ironically, the mayor’s working group was created to improve government ‘transparency and accountability’ — two of its three stated goals — yet it did its own work in a way that avoided the transparency laws typical advisory bodies are required to follow.
It did this during a time when Oakland’s leaders were already under fire for open-government lapses.
In September 2025, the City Attorney found that private meetings on the city’s encampment policy had violated the Brown Act.14
In April 2026, an Oakland resident filed a lawsuit against the city for failing to produce records through the California Public Records Act related to Oakland Measure E.15
The framing defined the finding
The working group’s scope, set by the mayor, defined its destiny. The group was given three goals: clarify who does what in the city government, strengthen financial management, and improve accountability.
Each sounds neutral. But together, they quietly assume the answer. Once you define Oakland’s problem as ‘unclear lines of authority,’ the fix narrows to ‘draw a clearer line’ — and the clearest line that also happens to be easiest to sell to voters is to have one boss at the top.
However, this sets aside the fact that the American system of government was designed specifically to have checks and balances so no one person or group can have exclusive or excessive power. The Founders of our system of government built this concept into virtually every aspect of our government’s structure.
“We have a magical unicorn hybrid system that isn’t replicated.”
— Corey Cook, working group member, on Oakland’s current charter16
Critics of Oakland’s odd governmental structure treat it as the root of Oakland’s troubles. But the city government’s structure is one branch of a much larger, more nuanced tree of dysfunction.
Four other causes of Oakland’s dysfunction were defined as off-limits from the panel’s scope from the start.
1. Voters overwhelmingly support term limits, and Oaklanders have voted to put them in place before.
Oakland’s council members face no enforced term limits — even though they are overwhelmingly popular, and Oakland voters have approved them before.
In November 2022, Measure X passed easily, limiting council service to no more than three terms. It then became tangled in a lawsuit focused on other aspects of the measure, and the status of term limits was left unresolved.17 18
Notably, SPUR, one of the working group facilitators, wrote the original case for those term limits, arguing they’d boost competition and curb the power of incumbency.19
A new political ‘reform’ process aimed at accountability might have included the accountability tool voters already chose — term limits. This process defined it out of consideration from the start.
2. Who actually runs the day-to-day operations of the city — and who’s that person’s boss.
In a ‘council-manager’ form of government, the city council hires and can fire the official who runs the city organization: the city manager, known in Oakland as the city administrator. Under a council-manager form of government, a poor-performing or corrupt administrator can be removed by a city council vote at any time.
Under a strong mayor system, the city administrator is accountable only to the mayor.
What if, for any number of reasons, the mayor prefers to keep a poor-performing or corrupt executive, accountable only to them? The only way out is the next election or a costly mayoral recall.20
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That’s the core trade-off, and it’s the lever that most increases day-to-day malefeasance.21
“A 2025 study using rigorous methods ‘finds robust evidence that the council-manager form reduces the risk of corruption.’”
— Afonso & Nelson, Public Administration Review22
Supporters of the mayor’s plan answer that clear authority makes wrongdoing easier to spot and pin down, and that their model still lets the council confirm the administrator and adds new oversight tools.23
That’s a fair point, but it’s a defense of a choice the panel made, not evidence that it studied the alternative fully — especially in light of Oakland’s very recent and concerning issues with mayoral corruption24 and city administrator performance.25
3. Oakland’s dysfunction is largely caused by ineffective city operations, poor service delivery, and failed leadership — not the political org chart
The operational failures Oakland residents see every day are much larger than a missing mayoral veto. They’re due in no small part to a famously dysfunctional city staff organization.
Despite an operating budget of over $2 billion per year, and some of the highest tax revenues per capita in the state among comparable cities, Oakland has run a structural deficit topping $100 million a year.26
The city’s latest budget cut more than 400 jobs, most already empty.27 As of late 2024, about one in four city jobs sat vacant.
“Staffing levels have not grown over the last 20 years.”
— SPUR, on Oakland’s workforce28
The city’s Human Resources department — the office that does the hiring — has itself run a vacancy rate near 45%, while workers leave faster than the city can replace them.29
This list of organizational issues goes on, far longer and deeper than the scope of this article.
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None of this dysfunction is caused by the shape of the city’s political org chart. It’s caused by endemic budgeting, hiring, and management issues throughout the Oakland city organization. And the working group’s own FAQ quietly admits the charter won’t fix it:
“Service improvements ‘require investment, capacity, and leadership beyond the charter.’”
— Charter reform working group FAQ
The working group that was given the goal to ‘strengthen financial management’ delivered a political power realignment focused on the mayor who appointed the group, then conceded that its recommended realignment won’t fix what residents complain about most.
4. A rarely-used election system that throws votes away
Oakland elects its mayor and council by ranked choice voting — a rare system that the vast majority of other cities, counties and states do not have, and which several have rejected outright.30
The ranked choice system drew criticism after 2022, when former mayor Sheng Thao — who trailed in the first voting round, was later recalled, and now faces a federal bribery trial on charges she denies31 — won after later automated voting rounds.
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Critics, led by 2022 candidate Loren Taylor, say the ranked choice voting system silences voters whose ballots get ‘exhausted’ and dropped before the final count.
“Ranked-choice voting ‘isn’t working,’ Taylor said, calling it a form of voter suppression.”
— Loren Taylor, as quoted in The Oaklandside, reporting Taylor’s 2022 concession32
Defenders counter that the ranked choice system lets voters who didn’t back a finalist still shape the result, and saves the cost of separate runoffs.
But most people appear to disagree. Only a handful of jurisdictions across the entire nation use ranked choice voting, though it has existed for decades.33
The gaps in the process
Look at the four things left out of the working group’s process: term limits, council control of the administrator, fiscal management, and ranked choice voting. Every one of these things would constrain incumbents or pull power away from a single office. Every one was placed outside the panel’s scope. The levers left inside all pointed the same direction.
Two more moves fit this pattern.
When a genuine middle-ground ‘third option’ surfaced, a hybrid of strong-mayor and council-manager, the working group and its backers characterized it as a confusing one-off — even though most speakers at a council rules committee meeting to review the proposal favored a professionally managed model, by the Oakland Charter Reform Project’s count.34
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The case for the working group strong-mayor recommendation leans on polling, including a survey run for SPUR, one of the working group’s facilitators.
Skeptical observers — ourselves included — would say that a process that uses opinion polls to confirm its recommendations isn’t empirically testing an idea. It’s building a campaign.
The case for the working group’s proposal
Honesty requires naming some of the strongest defenses of the working group’s recommendations.
The group did real work: dozens of interviews and more than 750 residents engaged across every council district. The process was run by two nominally nonpartisan groups, based on the mayor’s initial directions. Several independent polls show majority support for a strong mayor whose veto the council can override.35
Supporters also stress that their model isn’t a pure strong-mayor design — it keeps a council-confirmed administrator and adds subpoena power for the council and an independent budget analyst.
All true. But none of it answers the core objection: engaging 750 residents in a closed process, ungoverned by California’s and Oakland’s sunshine laws, doesn’t matter much if the questions allow only one narrow set of potential answers. The problem isn’t how hard the panel worked. It’s where the boundaries were drawn before the work began.
A leading question got a leading answer
The working group was hand-selected and convened by the Mayor, staffed by her office, working from goals she set, guided by facilitators who already favored a strong executive.
At the mayor’s initial direction, the group was then effectively guided away from fully considering term limits, council control of the administrator, fiscal mismanagement, and the voting system.
As a result, the working group wasn’t asked an open question to ‘reform’ Oakland’s government. It was asked a leading one. The working group answered in the way leading questions tend to do.
Oakland’s dysfunction is real, and the case for reform is strong. But voters deserve a process that asks what’s actually broken — not one designed to confirm the answer its sponsor appeared to want before the first meeting began.
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City of Oakland. “Proposed ballot measure to reform Oakland’s city charter.” Oakland city council meeting, June 2, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=8005387&GUID=F62A0029-E929-44D7-9A49-6E71BA7B98AB&Options=&Search=
Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group contributors. “Strengthening Oakland’s governance structure.” Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group, Jan. 29, 2026. https://www.mayorbarbaralee.com/_files/ugd/c00cba_4967c2d882694cfbaa17fe21388a74cb.pdf
Office of Mayor Barbara Lee. “Charter reform modernization: members of the working group.” Charter Reform Modernization website, accessed June 2, 2026. https://www.mayorbarbaralee.com/charter-reform
Lee, Barbara. “Staff report and draft resolution: proposed ballot measure to reform Oakland’s city charter." Report to Oakland City Council, May 7, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=8005387&GUID=F62A0029-E929-44D7-9A49-6E71BA7B98AB
Blackwell, Fred et al. “Referral of charter reform to the ballot.” Mayor’s charter reform working group letter to Oakland City Council, Apr. 9, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15447768&GUID=2B37BA2C-B394-4242-9FD1-E30FE2104DAE
Falk, Steven et al. "Oakland voters should reject the inadequate 'strong-mayor' proposal," Oakland Report, March 2, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260302-oakland-voters-should-reject-mayor-working-grou
Lee, Barbara. “Strengthening government accountability through charter reform.” Oakland Report, Feb. 21, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260221-mayor-charter-reform
SPUR contributors. “Oakland Measure X — Governance Reform.” SPUR website, accesswed Jun. 2, 2026. https://www.spur.org/voter-guide/2022-11/oak-measure-x-governance-reform
Schaaf, Libby. “Give Oaklanders what they want and need: a strong mayor.” Oakland Report, Jan. 22, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260122-give-oaklanders-what-they-want-and-need-strong-mayor
Lockyer, Bill. "The Brown Act: open meetings for local legislative bodies." Office of the California Attorney General, 2003. https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/the-brown-act.pdf
First Amendment Coalition contributors. "How does the Brown Act apply to 'ad hoc' versus 'standing' committees?" FAC, Apr. 14, 2022. https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/asked-and-answered/how-does-the-brown-act-apply-to-ad-hoc-versus-standing-committees/
Lee, Barbara. "Mayor Barbara Lee initiates efforts to reform Oakland's charter." Office of Mayor Barbara Lee, Jul. 23, 2025. https://www.mayorbarbaralee.com/release/mayor-barbara-lee-initiates-efforts-to-reform-oaklands-charter
Orenstein, Natalie. “Weigh in on changing Oakland’s government at sessions this fall.” The Oaklandside, Oct. 29, 2025. https://oaklandside.org/2025/10/29/oakland-charter-reform-working-group-meetings-lee/
Orenstein, Natalie. "Encampment policy meetings violated transparency law, city attorney says." The Oaklandside, Sept. 16, 2025. https://oaklandside.org/2025/09/16/brown-act-violation-oakland-attorney-encampment/
Petition for Writ of Mandate and Complaint for Injunctive and Declaratory Relief, Alameda County Taxpayers' Association and Marleen L. Sacks v. City of Oakland, Oakland City Council, et al., Alameda County Superior Court, filed April 30, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/api/v1/file/f6a52d2a-d3f8-4307-a35e-57d5068fd0c5.pdf
Rosenthal, Ara. "Should the mayor and council have more power?" Oakland North, Dec. 10, 2025. https://oaklandnorth.net/2025/12/10/should-the-mayor-and-council-have-more-power-oaklanders-can-weigh-in-on-charter-changes-two-sessions-remain/
Fermoso, Jose and Darwin Bondgraham. “All 10 Oakland ballot measures appear on track to pass,” The Oaklandside, Nov. 10, 2022. https://oaklandside.org/2022/11/10/election-2022-oakland-ballot-measures-passing-early-results
Parker, Barbara. “Recent legal highlights: Spring 2024.” Office of the Oakland City Attorney, May 23, 2024. https://www.oaklandcityattorney.org/recent-legal-highlights-spring-2024/
Ibid. SPUR, “Oakland Measure X — Governance Reform.”
Singh, Maanvi. “Oakland mayor and county’s district attorney ousted in historic recall.” The Guardian, Nov. 12, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/oakland-mayor-sheng-thao
National Civic League contributors. “Study shows less corruption in city manager systems.” NCL, Aug. 29, 2019. https://www.nationalcivicleague.org/study-shows-less-corruption-in-city-manager-systems/
Afonso, Whitney and Kimberly L. Nelson. "Hot town, corruption in the city: assessing the impact of form of government on corruption using propensity scores." Public Administration Review, Sept. 29, 2023. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/puar.13737
Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group contributors. “FAQ: understanding Oakland’s current charter.” Mayor’s Charter Reform Working Group, 2026. https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=8005387&GUID=F62A0029-E929-44D7-9A49-6E71BA7B98AB
United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. “Former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, Thao’s longtime partner, and two local businessmen charged with bribery offenses. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern California. Jan. 17, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-oakland-mayor-sheng-thao-thaos-longtime-partner-and-two-local-businessmen
Bay City News contributors. “Oakland city administrator resigns after ‘degrading’ text messages allegedly discovered, mayor says.” ABC 7 Eyewitness News, May 17, 2026. https://abc7news.com/post/oakland-city-administrator-jestin-johnson-resigns-degrading-text-messages-allegedly-discovered-mayor-barbara-lee-says/19121716/
City of Oakland. "Fiscal Year 2026–30 Five-Year Financial Forecast." https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7399425&GUID=59FCB8D8-076B-4ADD-83D4-C76B8B893563
Wolfe, Eli. “New Oakland budget would slash unfilled jobs to avoid public safety cuts.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2025. https://oaklandside.org/2025/05/05/oakland-budget-would-slash-jobs-avoid-public-safety-cuts-2025/
Neditch, Nicole. "What it will take to close Oakland's structural deficit, part 3." SPUR, Apr. 25, 2025. https://www.spur.org/news/2025-04-25/what-it-will-take-close-oaklands-structural-deficit-part-3-balancing-budget
Wolfe, Eli. “Oakland is struggling to hire city workers.” The Oaklandside, Mar. 25, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/25/oakland-is-struggling-to-hire-city-workers/
Vasilogambros, Matt. “Ranked choice voting faces cloudy future after election setbacks.” Stateline, Nov. 14, 2024. https://stateline.org/2024/11/14/ranked-choice-voting-faces-cloudy-future-after-election-setbacks/
Hall, Alex. “Judge sets 2026 trial date in bribery case of former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao,” KQED, Nov. 21, 2025. https://www.kqed.org/news/12064908/judge-sets-2026-trial-date-in-bribery-case-of-former-oakland-mayor-sheng-thao
Bondgraham, Darwin. "How well did ranked-choice voting work in the 2022 Oakland mayor's race?" The Oaklandside, Dec. 1, 2022. https://oaklandside.org/2022/12/01/how-well-did-ranked-choice-voting-work-in-the-2022-oakland-mayors-race/
Otis, Deb et al. “Ranked choice voting in 2025: a year in review.” Fairvote, Feb. 2, 2026. https://fairvote.org/report/ranked-choice-voting-in-2025-a-year-in-review/
Oakland Charter Reform Project contributors. “Has Oakland’s Charter Reform Effort Stalled Out? Maybe.” Oakland Charter Reform Project, May 3, 2026. https://oaklandcharterreformproject.substack.com/p/has-oaklands-charter-reform-effort
Orenstein, Natalie. "'Strong mayor' charter reform plan advancing in Oakland." The Oaklandside, May 7, 2026. https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/07/strong-mayor-oakland-election-2026-charter-reform/
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Viola -- Thank you for your comment. The article's point is that the working group's scope did not include key reforms that Oaklanders have asked and voted for -- reforms that reasonably can and should have been considered in the scope of the process -- and that the process was structured in such as way as to avoid the formal public scrutiny and participation required of other city advisory bodies. Thank you again for your comment; the discussion is appreciated.
Today’s article borders on the irresponsible.
Of course there had to be a scope of work to review the Oakland charter. Have you not seen the charter in its entirety? It’s like the Grand Canyon. Adopting these charter reforms only helps improve the structure by which everyone understands the rules of engagement. There is much work ahead unrelated to the charter. Thanks for your attention.