u/lenraphael

It ain't nothing compared to what this is going cost.

There is an active effort in the California Legislature—centered on Assembly Bill 1383—to roll back key parts of the 2013 PEPRA pension reforms for public‑safety employees, including police and firefighters, and that bill has already passed the Assembly and is now in the Senate.

What the bill does

- Assembly Bill 1383 is a 2025–2026 session bill that would allow public agencies to adopt more generous pension formulas and lower retirement ages for public‑safety employees hired on or after January 1, 2026.

Why do some people online automatically dismiss "obviously" or self-labeled AI-generated post content as "AI slop," when they would be much less critical if they knew it was 100% human slop?

To me, slop is slop. Doesn't matter how it was created.

As a Stanford prof buddy was telling me the other day how he and all the other profs are going nuts because the only way to detect AI-written homework is to require every student to handwrite their papers in class in a bluebook.

I haven't tried it, but I would think one could instruct a bot to imitate your style, complete with misspellings and grammatical errors.

In local government policy areas such as finance, there are intricacies that few of us have the expertise or time to devote to. Unfortunately for us, the local journalists don't have that either.

I don't see anything sloppy about prompting a bot that's been trained not to guess, estimate, or extrapolate, not to use social media, to first search for primary sources before going to public media, etc

And in the case of budgets and such, perform calculations and prepare tables and charts.

I'm not suggesting using AI to answer qnswer questions like "should voters support Mayor Lee's strong mayor measure," but to do things like parsing the ballot measure wording.

That doesn't play into LLM weaknesses but LLM strengths

Using any chatbot has got to be better than a plain old Google search: the person in a Reddit group a few months ago who responded to one of my posts about the dire fiscal condition of OUSD, by telling me that all I had to do was Google the topic to find out OUSD was in great financial shape. Even the new, improved Google search would be more dangerous for sloppy humans than most any of the top three chatbots.

Because verbatim AI prompts are verboten in this subred, I'll just say that I didn't have several spare hours to compare Mayor Lee's proposal to those of the other US cities with strong mayors.

Instead of going in circles debating the pros and cons of city managers vs strong mayors, let's focus on the operational details of the veto and appointment powers the ballot measure would give Oakland mayors.

If I were a council member, I would absolutely hate giving any mayor those kinds of veto powers. It would force council members to cooperate to override threatened vetoes.

Maybe you do but since I didn't have a spare several hours to compare the proposed charter amendment to provisions of several other cities with strong mayors, and the media reports were supercial at best, I used Claude AI

So voter beware.

Len: do you have access to the charter amendment strengthening the mayors powers that the oakland ca council approved for the november ballot? what kind of veto powers would the mayor have. Try to pull the actual document to get details on the veto powers and which posts mayor would gain approval over

Claude:

Found the primary source. Let me pull the actual charter amendment text (Attachment 1) to get the operative veto language.I pulled the actual measure — Attachment 1 to Resolution 26-0692, the operative charter text the City Attorney approved as to form. Two caveats before the details: it's labeled a draft ("approved as to form and legality"), and the underline/strike-through markup that distinguishes new language from deletions doesn't survive text extraction, so I'm reading the veto and confirmation sections as the operative additions they clearly are, but I wouldn't lean on this copy for provisions where add-vs-delete is ambiguous.

There are two distinct vetoes, not one.

**General veto over ordinances and resolutions (new Section 210(2)).** The Mayor would have veto power over all resolutions and ordinances passed by Council, including resolutions establishing the City's official position on pending state or federal legislation. The mechanics: the Mayor must act within seven days of the Council's adoption — either sign and return it, or veto and return it with written objections — and failure to return it within the seven-day period counts as approval.

The general veto carves out several categories. It does not extend to matters exclusively within the Council's purview (selecting the Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst, confirming certain department heads, choosing a Council President, or setting the Council's own rules), quasi-judicial actions involving individual due-process rights, ministerial duties, emergency ordinances, the annual budget (handled through the line-item process instead), and the levy of property tax.

**Line-item budget veto (new Section 801(2)).** This is the stronger and more contested piece. The Mayor would have line-item veto power over the next fiscal year's budget, and could veto, restore, or otherwise change any item to the amount originally proposed by the Mayor or to any amount between the Mayor's proposed figure and the Council's adopted figure. The Mayor could not change a description or limitation the Council attached to an item, except to veto that change or restore the item to the Mayor's originally proposed condition. This is essentially the same line-item mechanism Los Angeles uses on its budget.

**Override threshold.** Both vetoes are overridable by the same number. For legislation, if at least six members of the Council vote in favor on reconsideration, it becomes effective despite the veto; if it isn't overridden within 30 days, it's deemed disapproved. For the budget, the Council has seven days to override, and any vetoed item not readopted by six members remains as the Mayor modified it. One nuance the press rounded off: the council would have eight members, so the hard floor is six votes — that's 75%, slightly above a literal two-thirds. The text also provides that if the Charter or other law requires a higher vote threshold to pass a measure in the first place, that same higher threshold applies to override the veto.

On the appointment question — worth flipping the framing, because the measure runs the other direction from how it's sometimes described. The mayor becomes chief executive and the appointing authority for department heads; it's the **Council** that gains confirmation power over a subset of the mayor's nominees, as a check. Council confirmation by resolution would be required for the permanent appointment of the Director of Human Resources, the Director of Finance, and the head of any department primarily responsible for the design, construction, or maintenance of City infrastructure — streets, sidewalks, sewers, traffic safety systems, and public rights-of-way. The ballot-resolution title names those infrastructure posts as the Directors of Public Works and Transportation, which is where the "four key posts" figure comes from. The Council must confirm or refuse within 30 days or the nominee is confirmed automatically, and an appointing authority can name an interim head without confirmation, except that Council approval is needed for any single interim appointment to exceed 120 days. Separately, the Mayor appoints the City Administrator subject to Council confirmation.

So the split is: mayor nominates/appoints; council confirms those four department heads plus the City Administrator. If you want, I can lay the Oakland veto scheme side by side with the NYC/Chicago/LA/SF/Seattle mechanics from earlier, since the budget line-item piece in particular tracks LA closely."

just mentioning to my friend about reports of Alexa sassing off and she said yeah it happened to her the other day she was talking to her Chihuahua and Alexa piped up and said you’re using inappropriate gender designations. My friend said I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to my dog. Alexa replied sorry I thought I made a friend.

“The county has finally weighed in and stated that OUSD can’t afford the new contract with OEA because of the $30M budget deficit for 2026-27. They warn that unless the school board approves a plan to address the deficit that the county will not approve OUSD’s 2026-27 budget. Will the school board approve OEA’s contract at Wednesday’s board meeting? Will the board adopt a budget without addressing the deficit on Wednesday? Will the county finally intervene?

“As the Board has not yet identified how or when it will make the necessary adjustments to
balance the budget and maintain required reserves, the County Superintendent is required by law to notify district leaders and the community that the agreement endangers the district’s fiscal stability. To address these concerns, we strongly encourage the District to provide a list of tradeoffs at the same meeting in which it plans to approve this multi-year salary agreement. The district will be required to show its path to affordability before ACOE can approve the 26-27 budget.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G8UHsZ4SRUhzpfOOFe2Mm6ZJ3-c9wC6h/view?fbclid=IwdGRjcASjIR9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeKbGvDuWnhyd4GIChSy9LXW\_DoSYz6ZV9Q2AhdQAzTh5-LHXWoGaHZcOiPL0\_aem\_eTPwI4M7YHQGfTt3zAV3Gw

I sure wish she had not included the provision requiring council members to work full-time.

Even if the 2022 3 term limit was repealed in the future, Mayor Lees charter measure prohibition of outside work = limiting council members to retired people, trust funders, and people with high income spouses, and people planning to become career politicians (or get taken care of like Ms Kaplan) Normal people can't afford to take four or more years off from their careers and then re-enter normal workforce

With the Mayor doing more of the work and more staff assigned to the council, there's no reason to make the council position full-time.

Gotta amend that part of the ballot measure.

Pants on Fire dept: Oakland’s "unanticipated financial event" annual declaration by the council that allows them to legally ignore dedicated parcel and other tax provisions, divert funds collected from them to pay for operating costs etc.

I was able to find these official Oakland Five-Year Financial projections online.

• FY 2013-14 to FY 2017-18 — 2012 Five-Year Financial Plan

• FY 2017-18 to FY 2021-22 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2019-20 to FY 2023-24 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2021-22 to FY 2025-26 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2023-24 to FY 2027-28 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2025-26 to FY 2029-30 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

The projections are adjusted each time. So the general fund deficits change. But they were always large deficits.

Nothing unanticipated about them.

These are the General Purpose Fund shortfalls:

FY 2013-14: ($14.54M)

FY 2014-15: ($23.84M)

FY 2015-16: ($40.47M)

FY 2016-17: ($37.97M)

FY 2017-18: ($47.81M)

2017–22

FY 2017-18: ($30.63M)

FY 2018-19: ($36.75M)

FY 2019-20: ($46.77M)

FY 2020-21: ($65.34M)

FY 2021-22: ($70.49M)

2019–24

FY 2019-20: ($17.38M)

FY 2020-21: ($10.47M)

FY 2021-22: ($13.03M)

FY 2022-23: ($18.73M)

FY 2023-24: ($24.74M)

2022–26

FY 2021-22: ($96.80M)

FY 2022-23: ($76.94M)

FY 2023-24: ($64.43M)

FY 2024-25: ($49.01M)

FY 2025-26: ($38.11M)

2024–28

FY 2023-24: ($195.54M)

FY 2024-25: ($166.08M)

FY 2025-26: ($148.91M)

FY 2026-27: ($128.50M)

FY 2027-28: ($118.69M)

2026–30

FY 2025-26: ($129.98M)

FY 2026-27: ($115.77M)

FY 2027-28: ($121.96M)

FY 2028-29: ($129.88M)

FY 2029-30: ($126.00M)

Summary:

Oakland’s own long-range General Purpose Fund projections have repeatedly shown budget gaps.

Most of these can be found

https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Finance-Budget/Financial-Reporting/Five-Year-Financial-Forecasts

that triggers a clause in most of our parcel tax measures that allows the Council to legally ignore dedicated parcel tax and some other tax provisions, divert funds collected from them to pay for operating costs, etc.

These official Oakland Five-Year Financial projections were presented to our mayors and council every year.

Would you call our current fiscal situation "unanticipated"?

• FY 2013-14 to FY 2017-18 — 2012 Five-Year Financial Plan

• FY 2017-18 to FY 2021-22 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2019-20 to FY 2023-24 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2021-22 to FY 2025-26 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2023-24 to FY 2027-28 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

• FY 2025-26 to FY 2029-30 — Five-Year Financial Forecast

The projections are adjusted each time. So the general fund deficits change. But they were always large deficits.

Nothing unanticipated about them.

These are the General Purpose Fund shortfalls:

FY 2013-14: ($14.54M)

FY 2014-15: ($23.84M)

FY 2015-16: ($40.47M)

FY 2016-17: ($37.97M)

FY 2017-18: ($47.81M)

2017–22

FY 2017-18: ($30.63M)

FY 2018-19: ($36.75M)

FY 2019-20: ($46.77M)

FY 2020-21: ($65.34M)

FY 2021-22: ($70.49M)

2019–24

FY 2019-20: ($17.38M)

FY 2020-21: ($10.47M)

FY 2021-22: ($13.03M)

FY 2022-23: ($18.73M)

FY 2023-24: ($24.74M)

2022–26

FY 2021-22: ($96.80M)

FY 2022-23: ($76.94M)

FY 2023-24: ($64.43M)

FY 2024-25: ($49.01M)

FY 2025-26: ($38.11M)

2024–28

FY 2023-24: ($195.54M)

FY 2024-25: ($166.08M)

FY 2025-26: ($148.91M)

FY 2026-27: ($128.50M)

FY 2027-28: ($118.69M)

2026–30

FY 2025-26: ($129.98M)

FY 2026-27: ($115.77M)

FY 2027-28: ($121.96M)

FY 2028-29: ($129.88M)

FY 2029-30: ($126.00M)

Summary:

Oakland’s own long-range General Purpose Fund projections have repeatedly shown budget gaps.

Most of these can be found

https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Finance-Budget/Financial-Reporting/Five-Year-Financial-Forecasts

https://politicaldata.vote/alameda/contest/measure-e-city-of-oakland

https://politicaldata.vote/alameda

https://politicaldata.vote/alameda/contest/measure-e-city-of-oakland

https://politicaldata.vote/alameda

Presumedly because the pro Measure E signature collecting fees and advertising by unions, and Kaiser was front loaded months ago, we've heard those numbers. The media has made vague references to large amounts spent/contributions by Realtors Assn and Empower Oakland.

https://www.opendisclosure.io/search/ would normally be the place to look for contributions /expenditures but I didn't see the June 2nd election there yet.

Anyone feel like downloading and summarizing the data from https://netfile.com/public/COAK/campaign

In 2022 Seneca Scott, bête noire for Oakland progressives, ran for Oakland mayor on a platform that included a charter amendment to create a stronger mayoral system very similar to what Mayor Lee has gotten a Council majority to place on the ballot. While placing on the ballot is not the same as supporting a measure, it's a first cousin.

There will be a final Council vote later in June.

Who'd have thought CM Fife (who voted to place on the ballot) would have agreed with Scott on anything?

Here's how the Oakland City Council voted on the strong-mayor charter amendment at the Tuesday, June 2, 2026 meeting:

to advance the measure toward the November ballot

Voted YES (5)

- Charlene Wang

- Kevin Jenkins

- Ken Houston

- Rowena Brown

- Carroll Fife

Voted NO (3)

- Zac Unger

- Janani Ramachandran

- Noel Gallo

Mayor Barbara Lee personally presented the legislation, which would make the mayor Oakland's chief executive with authority over daily operations and veto power over the budget and council legislation. Several "no" members argued it would weaken the council's ability to respond to constituents.

15 years ago they did.

In the last 12 years its the SEIU and FIRE that call the shots. Campaign money and endorsements from OPOA are the kiss of death to any Oakland candidate.

There are a lot of really smart people in Oakland who have a lot of expertise in financial analysis, budgeting, that kind of stuff, much more experience and expertise than I have, but they’re just not encouraged to help city personnel. As it is, the city staff who have some of that expertise are ignored by the Council and Mayors.

Brad Johnson, who was our budget director for several years, was quite good. Every year he would present his projections before the full council, along with his warnings about how we had to rein in expenditures or increase revenue or both. Each year they thanked him and proceeded to ignore what he what he had told him.

This year, after he was promoted to finance director, he was not as candid.

There is a citizens budget advisory commission whose members are appointed by local council members. Even assuming the local council member wants you on that commission, once you get on there, your recommendations are generally ignored. Go back and watch some of the city council meetings of a couple years ago where Nikki Baas tried to sarcastically cut down the chairperson of citizens budget advisory committee, putting down his credentials and saying how he wasn’t qualified. The guy said well I have an MBA from Columbia. I was a former Apple executive in charge of green power. and I was a naval Academy grad in charge of you some massive projectst’s. It would have been funny if it wasn't my city.

There's also a problem with getting the data to analyze. Oakland elected officials love to talk transparency but in practice people outside of City Hall have to file public info requests a bunch. Several years ago I asked a long term member of the Budget Advisory Commission how he got certain specific data. He laughed and said he called up his friend who worked in the Budget Dept to run a report for him because it wasn't publicly available.