Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution adopting a plan to implement SB 415, changing the date of Long Beach Municipal and School District Primary and General Elections.  (Citywide)
Thank you very much. Seeing that there, that concludes public comment. Thank you all that came out for public comment. I appreciate you guys coming out. Okay. Next up is going to go ahead and be item number. What's the next 30. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to request the city attorney to prepare a resolution adopting a plan to implement SB 415. Changing the date of the Long Beach Municipal and School District Primary and General Elections Citywide. Mr. City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor. And members of the Council. Senate Bill 415 amended the election code was signed by Governor Brown in 2015. The intent of Senate Bill 415 is to improve voter turnout at local elections. SB 415 requires the local public agency with a nine concurrent election to change its dates either the statewide primary or a general election . If the agency's voter turnout for the municipal election held on a non concurrent date was at least 25% lower than the average voter turnout for the last four statewide general elections. SB 415 only impacts regularly scheduled local elections. Primary and general. It doesn't affect the timing of special elections. So those items may go on a ballot at any time as allowed by state law. For nearly two years, it was unclear whether this bill applied to Long Beach as a charter city and the provisions of the Charter of the City of Long Beach directly conflict with the provisions of SB 415. In 2016, a request was made to the California Attorney General to clarify that issue. And in July of this year, the Attorney General issued opinion, holding that SB 415 does in fact apply to charter cities and school districts governed by their city charter. So while the Attorney General opinion is not legally binding like a court decision, they're viewed by the courts as highly persuasive excuse me. And local agencies generally follow them as they would a court decision. So what is required? SB 415 requires a political subdivision may hold an election on other than statewide election dates. If, by January 1st of 2018, the city has adopted a plan to consolidate future elections with a statewide election no later than January of or no later than 2022. The bill or the law doesn't really go into what the specifics of the plan are. But it is our recommendation that we recommend the Council to adopt or direct us to prepare a resolution for your consideration. Adopting a plan. The There has been a change since this item was placed on the agenda. The governor did sign Senate Bill 568 568 further complicates this this already complicated item. What 568 does is it will move effective 2019 the state's primary election from June to March and allow the governor to move that even earlier in the year during presidential elections. So the impact of this would be beginning in 2020. The city would have to move their elections or the city has three options. They could adopt and move in 2018, 2020 or 2022. Our office is not recommending moving for the 2018 elections. This is a matter of just practically being able to do it in that time frame. We already are in the election cycle. The it would also, we believe, create additional confusion for the voters because in 18 they would vote in June, in November and then in 2020 you would vote in March and November. So we and also the city clerk can weigh in here, too, that the we may not be able to consolidate with the county in 18. We're hoping by 2020 the county would have their new election system in place so that we can consolidate and that would save money. We also need to work with our partners at the school district to bring them into the process. We have reached out to them and we will work with them on a go forward basis on how that implements and impacts them. So tonight, if the motion as provided would direct us to prepare a resolution adopting a plan to implement SB 415 and to move the primary general elections pursuant to state law and the effective date we are asking or recommending it be 2020. If that recommendation is adopted, what would be the next steps we would return with that resolution? Adopting the plan to change the election dates further, the resolution would direct the city attorney to draft amendments to the Long Beach Municipal Code to make the necessary changes to implement the plan. That would include ordinance to change the election cycle when election funds become surplus. What date? So the elected official would take office if elected in November. It could be the third Tuesday in December. It would take we would have to look at how long is it for the certification of the election and what would be the desire . So we would come back to council with those recommendations. We're not asking for those decisions to be made tonight. That would come back. We would have the resolution directing us to prepare those amendments. We would draft those amendments, come back and get input from the city council. City council can direct that to committee. They can do what they like without. Then we would come back with a final version. So at this time, we believe that the city is required to move their election under the law. It does invalidate, in essence, a portion of our charter on when the election dates are held. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. There is a motion on a second to approve the city attorney's recommendation for 2020. Councilmember Pearce. Thank you. I actually would like to hear from our city clerk just her take on this item before making any comments and hearing from my colleagues, if that's okay. Just your. I know that there's a legal recommendation right at the state level. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the 2020 timeline. Does that allow us, you think, the right amount of time to work with the county? The information that we have received from the county is that they will be ready for us in 2020 if they are if they have their election system certified and are ready to take us in 2020, I think it's a good opportunity for us to go forward and consolidate our election with them. It is a an election cycle that is not city wide, it's the even district. So I think it's a good testing ground at that at that time for us to move forward. And in your opinion, if we did it in 2018, that would put you guys in a little bit of chaos. I think it would put the county in a little bit of chaos. Our election cycle for 2018 started on January one, 2017. So we are already in the middle of our election cycle and we've already started the process working with candidates campaign finance. So I think right now our 2018 election would be best held with the city clerk's office. Great. Thank you for for that. I, I support the 2020 timeline. I want to thank the city attorney for providing us with a detailed report. And I know that that has been a big question if Long Beach actually had to do this. And so it's great to have that clarity. I also you know, I think my two concerns is making sure that we go with the 2020 timeline and making sure that we're actually working with Lexi and with the school board and that before this item come back for its final vote, that we actually have some some clarity on where everybody is in their election process and that we're working as a city holistically moving that stuff forward. And you did clarify that this we can take this vote today and then it'll come we can put it back into the Elections Oversight Committee. That's correct. We would bring back the resolution, adopting the plan, and to request us to prepare the ordinance. It maybe be it would be my recommendation that we move forward with obviously what I've recommended tonight. And then when the motion came back or the resolution came back, adopting adopting that resolution at the time I came back with the draft ordinance to the entire body, I think would be the time that if necessary or if that's the desire of the council to send it to the Election Oversight Committee for further discussion. Or you may pick just specific items that you want to discuss. So we would bring the entire thing, all the draft back to the council to bring them an up to date and tell them where we are on this. And at that time, if that at the Election Oversight Committee or whatever committee the council decides to send it to. We'd be happy to do that. And what is the timeline that we need to work within if we go with the 2020? Very good. The under SB 415, the council has to adopt a plan by before January 1st of 2018. We believe that the resolution we would bring back to you is kind of the 5000 foot view of what your plan is. Your plan is to implement the change and to move to the statewide primary and general election in 2020. The the details of the plan are to be determined. We would be working with that. So we would come back to you as we prepare that. I'm not sure we can get to it by the end of the year, but early 2018 we would have the resolution. Are the ordinances in front of you maybe after the holidays for you to consider and we would have everything in place hopefully no later than spring of 18 so that we would be prepared for 2020. Great. So we have from now until spring of 2018 to finalize that plan, working with the clerk, working with NBCC and School Board as well. And I say that that's optimistic on when we would have it. We have until obviously 2020 to get everything we need to have it everything in place. I have reached out and spoken to the Long Beach Unified School District and to Long Beach City College. They are aware of this item tonight. I have told them that depending on the action of the council, we would be following up with them after this evening to keep them updated and then into the process. One of the concerns for the school district, for example, is. The November election. They adopt their budget, I'm told, in December. And so having a new person coming in, either the night of the budget adoption or the first week after that may cause them some issues. So they want to talk to us about the impact of those changes. Okay. Thank you for answering the questions. I just want to say, you know, that this is, I think, a move in the right direction. I think we have a lot of hope that aligning our election cycles will increase voter turnout. I know we've had voter turnout as low as 10%, as high as 40%, and that the highest is whenever we have it in June and November. And so as much as we can as a city, I know that our our city clerk has spent a long time and for the last three city clerks, it's been a long time trying to make sure that we're engaging with as many residents as possible so that, yes, African-Americans, Latinos, that the diverse population is fully engaged in our election cycle. And so I think that this absolutely is the right move, and I urge my colleagues to support this as well. Thank you. Thank you. Count summary Rango. Vice Mayor Richardson. Gray averaged a disparity. Council Councilwoman Mango. Skip to skip you. I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So thank you. Who. Who prepared this report was this city attorney's office? Yes, it was. I think you did a did a pretty good job at justifying whether or not the city of Long Beach qualifies as a as a city under as SB 415 in terms of the 25% decline. Would you mind walking us through the methodology here for a moment? I'm going to. We asked the city if we're talking about the math on the 25%. That's why I went to law school. The the city clerk. We gave her the numbers and asked her to verify these numbers. And so if there's specific questions on the turnout or the years of the of the numbers, they provided those numbers. Well, I think it's what it does is it presents a strong case for not if, but when. Right. It narrows the conversation to make it very clearly that we we do meet this threshold that's that's required here. And it's and it's not even close between 25% and some of the percentages that I see here. So I think it's important because this is a really important debate for our city. I think it's important that the city understand our residents understand how far we compared to the 25% decline in turnout between and alignment with the state with the June, November versus our local turnout. So walk us through your methodology. And we. We used numbers provided to us by the Registrar Recorder's office in Los Angeles on voter turnout for all the elections in this item to to use as a base for our comparison. And then we used also our own statistics for our turnout over the last four election cycles. So you can see that. We. Clearly fall under that 25% threshold in elections where it was not a citywide election and it was maybe just one or two districts. We took that into account when we were doing our math. I know that questions come up and it was the total voters that were involved in that election that we used as our base for this statistical analysis. So everything is even across the board. Is there any particular election that you had questions on? No, not specifically. So the numbers that I see here, it says the percentage difference between the city's district primary election turnout and four statewide general election average is as follows. I see 68% decline in 2010. So between the states turnout and our local turnout was a 68% difference, way higher than 2576 in 2012, 66 in 2014. And just as recent as 2016, a 75% difference in turnout. Now, I know that there's been a lot of conversation about what we can do to increase participation. SB 14, whether it was popular or not. The title of it was the Voter Participation Act. And this is one of the simplest things we can do to simply ensure that voting is simple and easy and more people participate in the civic process. That's something that support. Therefore, I think the question I can support staff's recommendation because it allows us time to to prepare for that, submit this plan and get our affairs in order by 2020. It wouldn't make any sense by 2018. My final question, city manager or city attorney, when do we have to evaluate any potential fiscal impact here? We since this is required by state law, I think that the clerk is going to depending on the action of the council tonight. When we come back, not with the resolution, but with the ordinance. We could certainly, I believe that would give us enough time to talk about the fiscal impact. One of the unknowns is, as the clerk had mentioned, the county, if they're ready for us, that's one cost. If they're not ready for us, that's another cost. If we're we're doing a two vote Tuesday on both the June or the March and the November dates, you're looking at significant costs similar to what you're probably incurring now. Okay. So we anticipate cost would likely be similar, but we will have an opportunity to vet that out some other time. We will we will know more as we get closer to 2019 and 2020. It's hard to make that call right now because the county does not have their voting system in place. So we don't know what our share of that will be. We only know what it has been historically. And I don't think that's going to be a fair representation of what it will be in 2020 if their new election system is in place. So I think it gives us time. This motion gives us time to to get this right. And I think fundamentally, this just. Means, you know, we have an opportunity to state whether more or fewer people should have the right and the opportunity and easy opportunity to vote and determine their own future. And I think that that's I feel really good about staff recommendations, so I'll be supporting that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Ringa. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, well, for me, it's very simple. It increases voter turnout and it aligns the city of Long Beach with the states and the feds. So I think I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Councilman. Super. Now. Just very quickly, the what we have in place currently would be. An April. Primary, followed by a June election that will go away no matter what. So if you're in a runoff election, you have six weeks between April and June moving forward. I guess the primary would be in March possibly, and then the runoff would be in November. That is correct. Under SB 415 and the way we need to implement the law, obviously the council would have other options to consider in the future. If there is a, you know, a instant runoff type of situation, you could study you could study different items if that period of time is too long between the two elections. And I certainly, as I sit here, realize how long a period of time that would be. It's forever. And so but. SB 415 that's a separate issue for for a different night and a different discussion. But yes, you're absolutely correct. The April and June will go away and 2020 we would be on the state's schedule. Okay. Thank you. So we can decide that at a later date. I just thought that was important to bring out right now in terms of transparency. And a few of us up here have participated in the runoff and that six weeks seems like an eternity. I can't imagine waiting till November, our whole summer in and around the runoff. Imagine. Yes, Councilman Austin. Yeah, I'll be very brief. My, I'm going to be supportive of this item because I think it makes a lot of sense. Number one, I mean, obviously, there's going to be some impacts to our local elections here in Long Beach. But on a national level, I think it's very, very important that California be a strong voice and be relevant on the national electoral process. And so I'm kind of I'm very happy to see that the legislation was passed and there will be move in our primary up. But I will agree with Councilmember Supernova's assessment, though, if we're going to have a move the primary up to March and possibly a runoff in November, that can make for some very interesting campaigning dynamics. So but but I will support. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilman and. Yes, thank you, Mayor, because increasing voter turnout is important, I think, in all our neighborhoods and our residents here, you know, no city matter. But, you know, I'm hoping that we can consider transit transitioning this into to 2020 in order to provide, you know, sufficient outreach and time to those who are, you know, coordinate this election. It will be done quick and faster and everyone will be have a chance at least to come out and vote, because that is a very important November is very important, I think, for everyone. Thank you. Thank you for supporting this counts already. Any public comment saying we're going to go out and cast our vote as we're casting? I just want to also just add I'm very supportive. Mr. City Attorney, I know you worked very hard on this. I know there was a lot of a lot of work from you and your team. But this is for I think, for a lot of us who have been watching this issue and particularly around the issue of voter rights and ensuring that that that people have access to voting and to ensuring that people aren't voting sometimes 3 to 4 times a year. I think this is absolutely the step in the right direction. So I'm very happy about this moving forward as well. Cast your votes, please.