Answer: You get The Sweet Melissa!

It’s not saying much, but Los Angeles is way ahead of San Francisco when it comes to a functional municipal legislative body. In the blogging department, however, as much as I appreciate the watchful eye our own bloggers keep on City Hall, only San Francisco has Melissa Griffin. A practicing lawyer who admits she spends way too much time watching San Francisco’s government channel, Melissa blogs with the voice of a Bill Maher crowd favorite and the reasoning of a Supreme Court clerk.

Here’s a recent excerpt from Melissa’s post on the San Francisco City Attorney’s opinion that Michela Alioto-Pier can’t run for reelection:

Last week, I saw a story in the Examiner about how City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office issued an opinion letter saying that Supervisor Alioto-Pier is termed out and therefore ineligible to run for re-election in 2010.

Like a hug from my creepy Uncle Jabbo, something about that just didn’t feel right. My nerd alarm went off and I began to dig into this issue. (Spoiler Alert: As is sometimes the case, I disagree with the City Attorney’s office.) Allow me to lay the groundwork here:

According to section 2.101 of the San Francisco Charter:

“No person elected or appointed as a Supervisor may serve as such for more than two successive four-year terms. Any person appointed to the office of Supervisor to complete in excess of two years of a four-year term shall be deemed, for the purpose of this section, to have served one full term. No person having served two successive four-year terms may serve as a Supervisor, either by election or appointment, until at least four years after the expiration of the second successive term in office.”

Now, section 2.101 has been part of the City Charter since at least 1995 when the Charter was republished (and likely for much longer). And, as you can see, it contemplates a person being appointed to office and sitting there for more than two years. However, in 2001 voters (overwhelmingly) passed Prop C, which amended the Charter to limit the length of time an appointee to the Board (and some other offices) can serve before running for reelection. Specifically, appointees must now run for reelection within one year, but not less than 120 days, from the date of their appointment. So, it is now impossible for a “person [to be] appointed to the office of Supervisor to complete in excess of two years of a four-year term.”

Which brings us to the case of Supervisor Alioto-Pier. She was appointed to represent District Two in January 2004 to fill the seat left empty when Mistermayor was elected. Pursuant to the requirements of Prop C, she ran for reelection several months later, in November of 2004. Because Mistermayor had 2 years left on his term of office, the term that Alioto-Pier ran for and won was for two years. (She was re-elected in 2006.) Not even in my beloved bizarro world that is San Francisco could this be construed as being “appointed to the office of Supervisor to complete in excess of two years of a four-year term.”

It’s worth reading the rest here, even if only to wish your city government had a blogger who covered it like this. Melissa watches San Francisco government in action so we don’t have to. I’m very grateful.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Blog, Michela Alioto-Pier, My Clients. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.