Election chief sacking a wake-up call
Before John Arntz took the helm two decades ago, the San Francisco Department of Elections was probably best known for churning through its directors and news coverage about ballot boxes floating in the Bay. The discovery of 63 missing ballot boxes after the 2001 election, retrieved as far away as Point Reyes, should remind us of the stark difference from those bad old days and the relative ease of our more recent elections under Arntz.
Indeed, it’s not hyperbole to suggest The Department of Elections under Arntz has set a national standard for how to run municipal elections. Arntz, who is about to finalize the results of his fourth election this year, has overseen increased voter turnout to historic highs, expanded vote-by-mail, opened new poll locations and implemented our ranked-choice voting system. In a city where department heads have recently made the news because they were being investigated by the FBI, the fact that most residents don’t even know John Arntz’s name is a testament to his low-key, competent way of doing business.
San Francisco receives a lot of attention for dysfunctional government and voters are rightfully upset with the direction of the city, but the Department of Elections runs counter to that narrative. Arntz was one of the few department heads who received near universal respect from across San Francisco’s fractured political spectrum. While the integrity of elections across the country has come under attack by antidemocratic forces trying to sow doubt and distrust, San Francisco has made voting easy and transparent.
And yet despite his 20 years of exceptional service, Arntz was unceremoniously shown the door last week. Not by Mayor London Breed, not by the city administrator, or the Board of Supervisors, or anyone you might assume had the power to do so. Instead, the decision was made by the obscure San Francisco Elections Commission, which is made up of six unelected volunteer representatives who meet once every other month or so. By refusing to re-up Arntz’s contract, instead putting his job up for competition, they have injected a high level of uncertainty into the future of San Francisco’s electoral process.
Commission President Chris Jerdonek wrote that the decision to not renew Arntz’s contract “wasn’t about (his) performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City’s racial equity plan.”
This is a bad, and possibly illegal, justification — one that serves as catnip
We need to confront the underlying problems [Arntz’s removal] sheds lights on: We have delegated too much power to commissions and the unelected commissioners who sit on them.
for the right-wing media’s continued bashing of San Francisco.
It’s easy to see that Arntz’s contract should be renewed to preserve confidence in our elections. What may be more difficult is to confront the underlying problems this sheds lights on: We have delegated too much power to commissions and the unelected commissioners who sit on them.
San Francisco has roughly 130 boards, commissions and advisory bodies made up by unpaid representatives tasked with everything from overseeing major enterprise departments like the airport to minor, mostly ceremonial advocacy roles for more obscure issues.
Mayor Breed came under scrutiny earlier this year when it was revealed that she requested that many of her commissioners sign undated resignation letters upon their appointments. She was criticized for trying to usurp the independence of those commissioners.
Arntz’s sacking, however, raises the question: Should these commissioners really be that unaccountable?
Commissioners are typically appointed by some combination of the mayor, the Board of Supervisors and other elected officials. They vote on some of the most important matters in the city, but they operate in relative obscurity; they are not elected by voters, and the city Charter makes it difficult to remove them before their term expires. Furthermore, many commissions have a diluted power structure, where the Board of Supervisors either has an equal number of appointees as the mayor or the board has to approve her nominees. This means the buck ultimately stops with no one. The mayor cannot set an agenda and the Board is not responsible, either. In this directionless vacuum, unelected commissioners operate without consequence and the voters have no one to hold accountable.
If we want different results from City Hall, we need to start looking at systemic reforms. Duplicative commissions should be combined, and outdated commissions should be retired. Those should be easy fixes. Others such as standardizing nomination and approval processes and setting reasonable standards for objective ways to remove commissioners for misconduct, will require a level of cooperation that has long been elusive at City Hall.
Improving a system this large and entrenched will require changes to the City Charter and should not be taken lightly. Ultimately, they may not all be possible, given our local political climate. But unless we try to create a political structure that is designed for accountability, transparency and good governance, we can no longer be surprised by the disappointing outcomes we continue to see.