Dysfunction and Function

Government is how we implement dysfunction at scale

I will be writing a series of articles in the coming weeks on my thoughts and observations of governance. Here, I focus on the local level. In the future, I’ll talk about the government of California, especially where state and local governance collide.

After 9 years of attending nearly every City Council meeting, being involved in several significant issues, some through lawsuits, where I’ve focused on the legal and policy matters handled by our local City Council, and learning from experience where the local process collides with general state policy, laws, and politics.

The Current Dysfunctional Process

Long-Term Drift, Sudden Action

Significant issues, such as road closures in Bidwell Park, the response to the homeless issues and law suits, land use policy and decisions, budget priorities, and the general “character” of local government, no mater which political ideology is in control at any given time, may circulate in government for years or decades, often raised and dropped depending on the ideological composition of elected bodies.

Eventually, a like-minded coalition gains power in reaction to unpopular programs like syringe distributions or homeless policies, combined with how party politics and tribalism have dominated candidate selection.

Once candidates are “selected,” often dependent on party endorsement and a willingness or desire to run, low voter turnout, strategic campaigning, apathy, and party loyalty, we elect people of little experience, unknown character, and via negative campaigning designed to prove the other candidate is worse, not that your candidate is better.

According to human nature and the laws of factionalism, a party machine that has a coherent, integrated narrative, (not to be confused with true), more characteristic of the left, independent, critical thinking skills that tends to debate differences than unify on points of agreement are not foremost in winning our votes. We rarely know much about the way individuals will behave once in office, regardless of which side of the aisle they identify with. Surprises are colored both red and blue.

We have seen this pattern over and over again; a person is elected on superficial distinctions, e.g., one’s party affiliation (supposed to be irrelevant in non-partisan local races), by voters in engineered districts that attempt to balance party numerical advantages.

We are shocked to discover later in their terms that what they do has little correlation with their campaign slogans. Voting for a Democrat or Republican might inform you what party they claim to be loyal to, and we may infer from this that general issues like climate or homeless advocacy might differ along party lines. We learn very little, however, about how they will likely vote on specific issues that arise over their term of office, especially when these issues were never features of their campaigns.

Some will decide based on narrow ideological orthodoxy favored by their base. Some will decide based on personal, narcissistic orientations, and some will try to gain maximum deal-making leverage in deals made across the aisle. If their conduct is sufficiently offensive, they might eventually be thrown out of office. Too often, their replacements follow the same patterns.

No matter what motivates them or why, when they seize the power of office, they may take the opportunity to push through ideologically-driven changes that may have never undergone genuine public deliberation, justified by a superficial claim of “progress,” “justice,” or “equity”. This is true regardless of what side of the aisle we presume they come from. As the saying goes, “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” Nowhere is this more obvious than on the local level.

Performative Public Input

By the time a proposal reaches the City Council agenda, the process is functionally closed. While it is true that the public may be aware of an agenda item for nearly a week before the meeting, options for providing input are limited to sending in a letter or using the podium at the meeting for a non-interactive, time-limited speech.

This is in contrast to other public processes that are considered important, e.g., land use decisions resulting in permanent changes. Those require formal public hearings long before final decisions are made.

Of course, not all issues on the agenda carry the same importance, but public City Council meetings are nothing like a public workshop.

If you send a letter, you have no idea if it is read, and rarely does one expect to get a response from a council member, even the one from your district. Public speaking at the meeting carries strict time limits (1–3 minutes) for citizen input. You don’t know in advance how long you will have (since it depends on the number of speakers), and there is rarely any interaction between councilmembers and the speaker.

Meetings are scheduled at dinner time on a school night. That tends to limit working-class or family participation. Too often, the council responds to the pro/con count at the meetings, and anyone who follows meetings knows the same people in the same proportions show up meeting after meeting.

The idea that this is equivalent to a meaningful concept of public participation is nonsense, especially when the issue is complex or ventures into novel policy areas. No serious effort is made to collect broad-based public sentiment, not with surveys, workshops, or facilitated community forums.

This is not appropriate for every issue, but things that will have a lasting effect on the lives of residents deserve some amount of special attention. The process of public meetings does not lend itself to any meaningful gathering of representative public opinion, analysis, or criticisms. This creates powerful air cover for a council that wants to go its own way.

Ideologically-Motivated Outcomes

Even with large public opposition or lobbying efforts at council meetings, some of the most important decisions are made with bare majority 4/3 votes that often don’t follow presumed party or ideological lines. This results in decisions that radically reshape public spaces or institutions, yet have never been reasonably vetted by public opinion or limited by clearly articulated principles that the public can understand and gauge against.

As a consequence, important decisions often reflect the priorities of vocal, organized factions or the personal desires of ideologically motivated officials, rather than reflecting the values and priorities of the broader community.

The vote often becomes final and practically irreversible, as significant expenditures or public works cannot be easily undone. Despite an action only passing by a narrow margin, no path for redress remains, other than future elections or lawsuits.

Public Frustration and Alienation

The net result is that citizens increasingly feel disenfranchised and unheard. Recourse is limited to writing letters, protesting, or electing new leaders. But elections are framed in tribal left-right terms and bypass the fundamental issues surrounding the subject at hand.

Over time, the result is civic burnout, especially for the demographic that works, runs a business, or is raising a family, and can’t arrange things to engage meaningfully on every issue that affects them. The result is disengagement, apathy, and increasing distrust of local institutions. This is one way to describe our situation today.

An Alternative: Deliberative Governance for the Public Good

What if the mission of local government were to institutionalize open, balanced, and accountable decision-making, where elected officials act as fiduciaries of the public trust, weighing all sides of an issue to arrive at a course of action that serves the greatest good and the most people?

What if politicians held themselves to higher standards, and committed to following the values and principles they ran on in their campaigns, and to hold themselves publicly accountable for their actions and voting records?

What if each elected official were personally committed to making the very best decisions as measured by the greatest good of the most people?

How would such a leader approach governance duties and decision-making? Would they show the humility to understand that the best decisions are not always obvious, and that a process of discovery, expert input, and having an accurate sense of public sentiments is not that easy to do? Would they demonstrate humility or hubris?

Here are some principles that might move us closer towards these ideals.

Structured, Transparent Process

We begin with the understanding that not all issues are of equal importance, and some issues of special significance should follow an enhanced process, with adequate time available for deliberation, long before a final decision is made.

Significant changes to public assets (like parks, roads, or zoning) should be subjected to a formal deliberation protocol. Clear timelines for major proposals should be standardized, e.g., a minimum 60-day public discussion window before any vote. Significant changes to community life should not be made hastily, except in dire emergencies. Getting it right is far more important than getting it done.

Public dashboards could be developed not only to display background information, costs, alternatives, and historical data, but also to collect and accumulate feedback.

The public comment period for Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) serves as a model for collecting data, performing analysis, and permitting public comments that must be answered with informed responses. Legal challenges on this record would be available should a dire need arise.

Collecting public opinion is not a poll, and should not be understood in the same way as voting. What is important is to assemble all of the various viewpoints and issues. 20 people who say the same thing are not “better” than 1 who holds a competing view. Discernment, balance, and critical processes are the foundations of good decisions.

All of this requires considerable self-discipline and commitment. It can’t be accomplished by simply reading the staff report, making up your mind, mechanically going through the motions of meaningless public input until finally, you cast your vote for what you have already decided is best.

The goal of all social processes, whether for justice, planning, or governance, is to balance competing interests through a fair and principled process that results in the greatest good for the most people.

This requires considerably more effort than simply showing up to meetings twice a month. It takes time and effort to learn what the competing interests are, how they can be balanced, and how to determine the greater good. Once decisions are made, measuring outcomes and assuming accountability for those results all comprise the responsibilities of leadership.

Authentic Public Engagement

Does it clarify the diversity of competing interests when 20 people make the same point over and over, and the one dissenting opinion gets lost in the noise? That is not authentic public engagement; it is political theatre.

Authentic engagement relies on the authenticity of the elected representative, and whether they believe in their duty as stewards for the citizens, and the best way to represent the public is by learning what is most valued by them.

The alternative is a leader who assumes that elections bestow superior knowledge exclusively to them, their personal feelings are the public pulse, and confidence in their wisdom guarantees they will always do the best for their community, even when outcomes are divorced from accountability.

Some Ideas for How We Might Do Better

Here are some suggestions that might help with the big issues of broad public concern:

• Use multiple modes of input, including community forums, online and in-person surveys, stakeholder workshops with residents, businesses, environmental advocates, etc., who can represent and intelligently articulate competing interests and practical realities.

• This is not a forum for mob rule. It is a forum for experts, whether professional or laypeople, who have invested in educating themselves and who bring valuable contributions to the process. Sorry, the “open mike” contest model is not useful here.

• Design deliberative town halls for significant issues, and learn how to use them effectively. Multiple perspectives must be invited, but meetings cannot become venues for protest movements. Participants must have longer time slots for constructive inputs, meaningful conversations, debate, and thoughtful deliberations.

Institutional Guardrails Against Ideological Capture

Decisions above a certain threshold of impact (e.g., changing access to major public amenities or redesign of central downtown) must gain either supermajority approval in the council (e.g., 5 of 7 votes) or undergo a non-binding public referendum to guide the final votes.

Ideological capture degenerates into power struggles and works counter to representative deliberations. The focus should not be on power, but on duty; the duty to make good decisions that properly balance competing interests. That is not an easy task, and that helps explain why our elected officials don’t usually bother developing these skills and techniques.

Accountability by Design

Councilmembers should issue a public written explanation for their votes on significant decisions, citing what they learned from public input, the trade-offs considered, and their evidence-based reasoning. This is more similar to a Supreme Court decision than minutes of a council meeting. The majority may issue a common opinion, and the minority can do the same. These can become significant factors in re-election campaigns.

Provide for post-decision review after implementation. The job is not over once decisions are made. Deciders must also be responsible for outcomes. The council should revisit the effects and evaluate successes, failures, or unintended consequences, while preserving the potential to reverse or adjust. At a minimum, leaders must voluntarily accept responsibility for being held accountable.

Shift the Frame of Elections

Elections should focus less on ideological labels and more on civic competence, track records of integrity and inclusion, and the pattern of their willingness to prioritize public benefit over factional loyalty.

While greater effort can be made to enforce this from the outside, candidates should commit to this kind of accountability as a condition for election. What would be a better indication of leadership capacity than to require them to articulate the principles and values they commit to while in the office they seek?

The current structure of candidate forums and campaign events accomplishes few of these objectives. We should encourage issue-specific candidate forums and nonpartisan voter education to reduce tribal voting behavior.

This cannot be accomplished by the controlled, rigid formats of current League of Women Voters-style forums. The public should have a shot at challenging candidates with tough questions and meaningful discussions. Character, values, and commitment to duty are the primary attributes of leadership. This cannot be explored when set questions are asked, rote answers are given, and no follow-up from other candidates or the public is allowed.

We leave these forums having learned almost nothing about the character of candidates or what principles they will follow in decision-making. We should not be surprised, under current circumstances, that we didn’t know they were going to do what they did once in office. That kind of power and freedom to impose mandates on the entire community is not what representation is about. That is about the power to impose an ideology on others, not about balancing competing interests for the general good of your constituents, not just the people who voted for you, but all those in your district and city.

Conclusion

The current system I’ve described, one driven by ideological capture, limited transparency, and token public input, leads to public alienation, declining trust, and poor governance. A better system is not only possible but morally necessary: one that respects the people as co-governors, not as obstacles to an agenda.

The alternative is not paralysis or populism, but structured deliberation, built around the idea that good governance is about balancing interests through informed judgment, not bulldozing opposition under the guise of “winning.”