Council OKs rule in spat with Brooks
The Oakland City Council passed a rule change Tuesday that could lead to the removal of Councilwoman Desley Brooks from her position as a committee chair despite calls from her supporters that it would create abuses of power.
Brooks, who directs the prominent Public Safety Committee, was ordered to pay more than $500,000 in punitive damages last month after a jury found she shoved former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown at an Oakland restaurant in 2015, causing her to fall and suffer bruises and a torn rotator cuff.
That was on top of the $3.8 million judgment Brown won from the city. The jury concluded that Brooks had acted in her capacity as a city employee and engaged in elder abuse on the then-72-year-old Brown, who was promoting a housing project that Brooks opposed.
“I have always stated that it was in self-defense that I pushed her away from me. I am 57 years old. … I, too, in my mind, am not a spring chicken,” Brooks said during a 20-minute speech in which she attacked most of her council colleagues. “I am the most-loved member of the Oakland City Council.”
Council members have been discussing in closed session with city attorneys whether to appeal the rulings. Some of them have expressed frustration at Brooks and the monetary award and say she should no longer wield authority over matters of public safety.
Some officials’ resentment toward Brooks grew in recent weeks after she proposed a plan that would give 5 percent of the city’s capital improvement projects to job training centers, three-quarters of which would go to a nonprofit in her district. Councilwoman Annie Campbell Washington and Mayor Libby Schaaf questioned whether the measure would be legal.
The rule change makes no mention of Brooks’ position, and its authors said Tuesday it wasn’t directed at any particular person. It gives the council president — now Larry Reid — the power to make committee and chair assignments at any time. The old rules allowed the president to do so every two years.
An initial writing of the resolution, which wouldn’t have required confirmation by a council vote, was narrowly voted down.
Separately, and less controversially, the rules revision allows an item pulled from a meeting’s consent calendar to be heard the same night, rather than punted to a meeting two weeks later.
The council members who backed the changes say they bring Oakland in line with how other cities operate. Last month, the three sponsors — Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Campbell Washington and Reid — moved to expedite a vote on the proposal, bypassing a committee meeting and bringing it directly Tuesday to the full council.
Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, along with Brooks, said that action violated the state Brown Act, which governs public legislative meetings. Kaplan said she was concerned about a consolidation of power.
“Any council president could be mad at anybody any day for any reason and could remove them from a committee,” she said, when the original resolution was still on the table. “It is really quite frightening to think that it could be used as vote trading, that it could be used to threaten people.”
But McElhaney said she’s been trying to get these rules passed since 2014 for the sake of good governance. She said they were needed reforms that create “continuity of service” should a committee chair become incapacitated.
“I’m hard pressed to believe any president would abuse power in a way that would cause that kind of disruption,” McElhaney said.