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Dublin residents will determine term limits for future mayors and councilmembers, as well as the city’s rules on lobbying and transparency, with their vote on Measure JJ – the so-called “Government Accountability Act” – on their Nov. 5 ballot.
If passed, councilmembers and commissioners would be prohibited from accepting gifts from lobbyists and city contractors and lobbyists couldn’t serve on city commissions, according to the measure. Also, Dublin would be required to post all city contracts on its website.
As for term limits, future city electeds could serve for a maximum of 12 consecutive years between mayor and council, an increase from the current cap of eight consecutive years for council and/or mayor.
When City Council approved the measure to go to ballot on Nov. 7, 2023, councilmembers Jean Josey and Kashef Qaadri considered the accountability items as masks to the real intent of the measure: term extensions.
This election season, Dublin residents will be able to voice their opinion through their vote on Measure JJ.
In addition to extending term limits, the measure would close a loophole in the current ordinance which “can allow a person to serve consecutive terms that exceeds 10 years”, according to city communications manager Shari Jackman.
Currently, an exception exists where a partial term of less than one year for the mayor or two years for the City Council doesn’t count towards the consecutive year limit, according to the resolution.
So depending on when the oath of office is held, there’s the potential that the term threshold is not met, according to Dublin city clerk Marsha Moore.
Moore added, “No one has run for another term because of the term limit definition that I am aware of.”
Positions on the measure
No one submitted a ballot argument in favor of Measure JJ by the deadline, according to the city’s website.
But Resolution No. 117-23 offered support for moving the item to the ballot.
The extra years of consecutive terms would help the flow of leadership as Dublin enters district-based elections, the resolution says.
“The City’s term limits are among the shortest in Alameda County and the Tri-Valley region,” the resolution adds.
At a mayoral and council candidate forum on Sept. 19, the measure’s intent came into focus when Josey and Vice Mayor Sherry Hu centered the measure on term limits.
Gift-giving is not an actual issue in Dublin, they agreed.
Josey, who voted against advancing the resolution for the ballot, added, “We don’t put lobbyists and contractors on our committees and commissions now… (and) we already post our contracts on our website”.
Similarly Jackman told the Weekly, “We do not know of any current or former councilmembers or commissioners who have accepted gifts from lobbyists, or of lobbyists having served as a councilmember or commissioner.”
With regard to Measure JJ’s item on publishing city contracts, Jackman said, “The measure would not change the way that the City Council does business.”
Measure JJ recently took a hit from the Alameda County chapter of the Civil Grand Jury Association, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the civil grand jury system through education and outreach.
It deemed the ballot language of Measure JJ below-average on accuracy and fairness compared to other Alameda County local ballot measures.
“This measure is particularly deceptive in hiding the fact that this measure is actually a term-limit expansion masquerading as a term-limit restriction,” the grand jury wrote.
In tune with grand jury’s assessment, Dublin mayoral candidate Tom Evans said that the measure is deceptive in the ballot argument against Measure JJ.
“Why can’t the Dublin City leaders who write this stuff just be up front about what they want? This measure was crafted for one reason – extending term limits,” Evan begins the argument.
He clarifies that the city is not imposing term limits for the first time. Instead, they are trying to extend term limits. To give the measure the best chance of voter approval, the council agreed to add in anti-lobbying and transparency items, Evans argued.
“A presentation was given about how to word the measure to get the best results, and which wording polled best,” he said. “Survey research showed that if they used certain words and added the three extra fluff items about lobbyists and contracts, then voters would be more likely to vote for it.”
Council’s 2023 deliberations
The presentation Evans referred to took place on Nov. 7, 2023, where the council advanced the “Government Accountability Act” for the ballot.
In favor of the measure were Qaadri, then-mayor Melissa Hernandez and then-councilmember Michael McCorriston, who is now mayor after Hernandez’s resignation to join the BART Board of Directors. Hu and Josey voted in opposition.
During the meeting, city staff offered six potential ballot measures focused on extending term limits.
Two of the options, 3A and 3B, included anti-lobbying and transparency items. The other four simply asked for term extensions.
But city attorney John Bakker and city staff found that recently, California voters haven’t typically passed measures to increase term limits when voting on that single item.
“I told Linda (Smith, Dublin city manager,) ‘Look, most of these get smoked. They go down in flames if it’s just a straightforward ballot measure,’” Bakker said at the council meeting on Nov. 7. “But we did identify a couple of ballot measures in two cities — one in Oxnard and one in Temple City in Los Angeles County. And those were styled, as this proposed Option 3 is styled, where the changes are accompanied by some other government accountability-type provisions. And they tended to do much better and in fact passed.”
Later Bakker said that if passed by voters, this would be Dublin’s first regulation on lobbyists.
Josey responded, “I find it a little bit ironic that we’re talking about transparency in government and that option isn’t terribly transparent … It says to ‘impose’ term limits, as opposed to saying it’s ‘extending’ term limits.”
Qaadri commented that he didn’t want to conflate government accountability with a request for extended term limits on the ballot.
When asked why he opposed the options that included government accountability, Qaadri said, “I see it as disingenuous. It seems like a mask to get something passed.”
But Hernandez said she wanted to bring Dublin term limits up to Alameda County norms.
“There are enough people paying attention that if we were to put item 3B, for example, out there, I think it’s going to blow up in this huge negative campaign where people are going to say ‘they’re trying to hide things’ and ‘they’re not being transparent,’” Josey said. “I just think it’s a can of worms that we don’t want to open.”
Item 3B was passed word-for-word and will appear on the November ballot.
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