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OAK
Measure EE
Governance Structure

Charter Amendment

Mayor-Council Charter Amendments

Transitions Oakland from its current hybrid form of government to a strong-mayor system, making the mayor chief executive of city operations and strengthening the council's role in legislation, budgeting, and oversight.

SPUR's Recommendation

Oakland's government has operated for more than two decades under a hybrid structure that gives voters an executive to blame while withholding the tools that executive needs to govern and leaving the council without independent fiscal capacity to check the budget it approves. SPUR concluded in 2021 that Oakland should commit fully to a strong-mayor system, and the Mayor's Working Group on Charter Reform (which SPUR helped facilitate) reached the same conclusion in January 2026. Measure EE implements most of both bodies’ recommendations, including veto power for the mayor, elimination of the tie-breaking vote, a permanent budget and legislative analyst office for the council, subpoena authority, and a full-time council. The measure moves the city toward clearer accountability.

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Note: SPUR is a sponsor of Measure EE.

What Measure EE Would Do

Measure EE would make the following changes to the duties and authority of Oakland’s mayor and City Council:

  • Make the mayor chief executive, responsible for managing city operations.
  • Create a mayoral veto over legislation, with the council able to override the mayoral veto with 6 of 8 votes, plus a line-item budget veto with the same override threshold.
  • Eliminate the mayor's tie-breaking vote on the council.
  • Narrow the city administrator’s independent hire/fire authority to the human resources and finance director positions and give the mayor direct management authority over other departments (some department heads would require council confirmation).
  • Direct the Public Ethics Commission to set salaries every two years for the City Council, mayor, city attorney, and city auditor, benchmarked against comparable cities.
  • Declare councilmembers full-time employees and bar their outside employment.
  • Create the Office of Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst.
  • Grant the City Council subpoena power.
  • Allow the council to confirm select department heads (finance, HR, public works, and transportation).
  • Clarify councilmembers’ ability to request information and report constituent complaints without exposure to misdemeanor liability.
  • Set procedures for filling a council vacancy created when the council president becomes acting mayor.

The Backstory

A city’s charter establishes its governance framework. Most U.S. cities adopt one of two well-established governance models. In the strong-mayor model, the mayor is elected citywide and serves as the chief executive, managing city operations, proposing budgets, and exercising veto power over legislation and the final budget. In the council-manager model, the City Council acts as the unified legislative authority and appoints a city manager who directs city operations and often proposes a city budget, which the City Council may amend before adopting.

Oakland is unusual in that it merges elements of both models in a unique way, which creates ambiguity about authority and responsibility:

  • The mayor doesn’t serve on the council but lacks the powers of a strong mayor. They can’t vote on the council (except for breaking ties) or veto its decisions, leaving them unable to shape city policy directly.
  • The city administrator manages city agencies and operations, as in a council-manager system. But unlike a typical city manager who answers to the council, Oakland’s administrator serves at the mayor’s pleasure, meaning the mayor can fire them at will.
  • While the mayor has no formal power to appoint department heads, they exert significant influence over the administrator who does.

Because no single official has clear executive authority, the council and mayor can adopt a budget built on competing revenue assumptions, the city administrator answers to both branches, and residents struggle to identify who is accountable when city services fall short.

Oakland operated under a council-manager government from 1931 until 1998, when voters passed Measure X, moving toward a strong-mayor model. However, this measure was temporary, and the changes ultimately stopped short of granting the mayor veto power or direct authority to hire and fire department heads. The result was a unique hybrid of council-manager and strong-mayor forms that has persisted for more than two decades.

SPUR examined this structure in its 2021 report Making Government Work and recommended moving Oakland to a clearly defined strong-mayor system.1 Mayor Barbara Lee subsequently asked SPUR and the League of Women Voters of Oakland to co-facilitate the Working Group on Charter Reform, which engaged more than 750 residents between August 2025 and January 2026 before unanimously recommending a strong-mayor structure. Measure EE includes many of SPUR’s policy proposals and the working group’s recommendations.

Mayor Lee introduced Measure EE, and four council votes plus the mayor’s tie-breaking vote placed it on the ballot. It requires a simple majority (50% plus one vote) to pass.

Equity Impacts

The strong-mayor governance model is intended to better address disparities across neighborhoods by aligning citywide leadership with citywide outcomes. Problems such as public safety, homelessness, illegal dumping, and infrastructure affect the entire city. A mayor who neglects historically underserved areas risks worsening citywide conditions and can face political consequences from the broader electorate.

Clearer authority and better coordination between city offices and between the city and other local governments could support improved service delivery, housing development, and other government-run programs that directly benefit Oakland’s lower-income neighborhoods and residents. Unified executive authority may also help ensure that resources and infrastructure investment reach neighborhoods that have historically been underinvested in a fragmented system.

Pros

  • The measure would resolve the structural ambiguity of Oakland's hybrid government by clearly assigning executive authority to the mayor and legislative/oversight authority to the city council, making it easier for voters to hold officials accountable and incentivizing both branches to work together.
  • It would give the mayor the tools, including veto and line-item veto power and direct management authority, to deliver on a citywide agenda, rather than proposing an unenforceable budget and priorities.
  • The new Office of Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst would give the council its own fiscal expertise, strengthening its ability to check the mayor’s budget proposals.
  • Making councilmembers full-time, better-compensated employees should improve the quality and consistency of legislative oversight.
  • Subpoena and hearing authority brings Oakland’s council closer to the oversight powers typical of other strong-mayor cities.
  • Stronger mayoral authority enables faster decision-making and a citywide approach to service delivery, and it could support allocating resources across districts with very different needs.

Cons

  • Centralizing executive power in the Mayor’s Office raises the stakes of any single election and requires candidates to be strong administrators.
  • Electoral pressures may drive mayors toward visible quick wins rather than long-term investments in operational and structural improvements.
  • By allowing council salaries to be reset, the measure could increase costs that would need to be balanced elsewhere.
Vote YES on Measure EE - Governance Structure
Footnotes

1 Sarah Karlinsky, Making Government Work, SPUR, November 2021.