Two meetings on Monday and Thursday this coming week will start a front-loaded year of critical political processes for the City of Oakland. A strikingly different Council will be seated on Monday as current interim Mayor Nikki Fortunato Bas resigns her term at the City and takes up her seat at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors [ALCO BOS]. Bas, as former Council President, became the Interim Mayor for the past several weeks when the Council declared the ALCO Registrar of Voters election results the night of December 17, 2024—the Council was required to do so by the state's election laws before the City seated winners, implemented new laws and officially called the Mayoral vacancy and the process to fill it.
D1 CM Dan Kalb, D7 CM Treva Reid, and at-Large CM Rebecca Kaplan will be replaced by Zac Unger, Ken Houston and Rowena Brown at the meeting. The new council of 7 with D2 vacant will immediately set about electing a new Council President and President Pro Tempore. The new Pro Tempore will essentially become the Council President, as by Oakland charter mandate, the President will assume the Mayor’s role until a new Mayor is elected in April.
D2 Vacancy Filling, Other Actions Not a Sure Bet
Other actions agendized for Monday are less solidified. The President is responsible for appointing CMs to committee assignments Monday, but it's unclear how that process will work in conjunction with the President being appointed as interim Mayor.
The standing Council at the start of Monday’s inaugural meeting will have 7 CMs [w/D4 CM Janani Ramachandran returning from leave] with the D2 seat vacant. Bas in one of her last acts as Council President scheduled a vacancy-filling motion, and in her comments after assuming the Mayoral role on December 17, recommended that the new Council choose Rebecca Kaplan for the D2 interim role. Kaplan is a D2 resident who lives in Jack London Square, fits the charter qualifications for the role and, by Monday's meeting, will no longer be a standing Council member. But there is no established process for filling a Council vacancy and no recent precedent for doing so. The process is by motion, which means its completed with a simple majority of attending CMs. The recommendation by Bas is likely to weigh heavily in the process—but the new Council is under no obligation to fill the vacancy at that meeting, and could instead move toward creating a process for filling the vacancy instead of appointing someone at that meeting. If that happens, with one CM moving on to Mayoral interim, and D2 vacant, there will only be 6 council members in the weeks to come.
Council President Vote Will Occur with New Math for Council Votes, Council Dynamics May be Unpredictable for Foreseeable Future
With Bas gone, the new Council will see some different math as it approaches its vote for Council President, and, ultimately, interim mayor. Kaplan, Bas, Fife and Kalb often operated as a functional voting block [with notable exceptions] over the past years. Jenkins has often lent a vote to create a majority on crucial issues like the 2023 mid-cycle budget, creating a wobbly and unreliable “progressive” majority.
Though actual voting pattern for the new CMs are yet to be seen, the new council members may reflect the old profiles in significant ways. Unger and Brown will likely fall on the same side as their predecessors on budgeting, development, tenant protections, OPD, OFD and social and cultural funding if their campaign rhetoric is any guide. Houston may vary little from the voting profile of Treva Reid in D7—Reid during her four year tenure tended towards the same kinds of votes as her predecessor and father, Larry Reid, opposing tenant protections and police oversight and cost-controls, for example. Houston is a long-time Reid family associate.
Least Polarizing CM Will Have Advantage for President/Interim Mayor Consideration
The choice of Council President has both current and downstream implications. The President will serve as the Mayor until April, but according to current rules, will return to the Council President role in May just in time to hit the ground running on the 2025-2027 biennial budget. That process will be one of Oakland’s most fraught in years and the Council President will be in a unique position to influence both sides of the budgetary process, the Mayor's budget, and the Council President's amendments to it.
The President appointment is by resolution, which means it requires 5 affirmative votes of the Council, with absences, vacancies and abstentions counting as no votes. With D2 vacant for the time being, there will be no effective voting blocks going into the vote for President. Monday’s Council will consist of only three likely “progressives”. There’s no clear voting pattern as yet for Ramachandran, Jenkins, Gallo and Houston in relationship to the new roster, making the question of who prevails in the President vote an unknown quantity.
Gallo, who should be the logical choice for Council President as the now-longest serving CM starting his 4th term, has become known in the past years as being disengaged from Council processes. Gallo has offered no budget legislation in recent memory and has appeared disengaged from the public line by line budget discussions. This makes it less likely any CM will propose Gallo for the President role. It seems equally unlikely a newly elected CM will either want the job or earn support for it on their first day at work. The decision is likely to orbit around Ramachandran, Fife and Jenkins. Both Fife and Ramachandran have now had some budget experience—Ramachandran with her counter proposals on the mid-cycle budget, and Fife as a veteran of Bas’ budget working group. But Jenkins, who is also the current Chair of the Finance Committee where many budgetary reports were first heard in the past two years, is the least polarizing of the three due to his legacy of alternately landing on either wing of Council votes.
The current composition also raises questions about whether Bas’ advocacy for the D2 vacancy filling will be followed. In the best case scenario, with the new Council President assuming the Mayor’s office and D2 vacancy filled by Kaplan, Council will have 7 active members until April. But if Council fails to appoint an interim Monday for whatever reason, that will stand at 6 until someone is appointed.
Unpredictable Voting Outcome for Sales Tax Ballot Measure
Regardless, an unpredictable voting equation will continue for the foreseeable future during Oakland’s period of instability and as it weighs actions to modify OFD brownouts, academy scheduling and potential layoffs. On Thursday, the new Council, which could consist of either 7 or 6 CMs, will take up the second vote that would put a ballot measure to raise the local sales tax by 5%. Ordinances require two votes spaced apart and most often the second vote has the same outcome as the first; but the new Council and vacancies throws that into doubt. Likewise, any changes to the City Administrator’s deeper level of budget-balancing cuts that would begin in February would also require a Council cohesion that is so far only a matter of speculation. On Monday, two fire stations will close for at least six months, but before Spring that number would increase to 6 unless Council finds a way to keep them open.
On Thursday as well, the new Council delegates to the Coliseum JPA will be appointed.
The new council members will have a series of orientations that are noticed as public meetings that will go through the whole week and into Monday, January 13th. Then next Tuesday, the new committees will meet for the first time, mostly taking up already agendized legislation.
Supervisor Bas Will Step into Two Contentious County Processes Immediately
Bas’s first meeting for the BOS D5 seat will be Tuesday, January 7 and she will also hit the ground running with the new DA selection process beginning—candidates have until January 6 to submit applications. Bas first meetings will be involved in discussing and evaluating the process, her second meeting will be joining the other Supervisors in publicly interviewing the candidates during open session. On Tuesday, the County Administrator will update the supervisors on the process so far. The final candidate will be chosen sometime in late January or early February. Bas will likely also be involved in the process of approving a development agreement transfer for African American Sports necessary to close the sale of the Coliseum site.
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