OaklandPowerGrab.com

Vote NO on Barbara Lee’s fake charter reform ballot measure for November that bribes city council with massive pay raises in exchange for veto power.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

On June 16, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee used her tie-breaking vote to force a ballot measure onto November’s ballot that does two things at once:

It gives her unilateral veto power over the budget and legislation.

And it quietly bribes City Councilmembers with massive pay raises in exchange for their support.

This wasn’t reform. It was a transaction.

The measure requires councilmembers to work full-time and bans outside employment. Then it hands the Public Ethics Commission the power to benchmark their salaries against “comparable” full-time cities like Los Angeles — where council pay already exceeds $245,000. That’s a potential 125% raise from the current ~$114k. Total compensation with benefits could push past $300k.

They wrote the rules so the only way councilmembers get the big paycheck is if they vote to hand the Mayor line-item veto power and turn themselves into a reactive oversight body with no real budget authority. If she keeps just three loyal votes on the council, she becomes a functional dictator over spending in every neighborhood.

This is the deal.

Her hand-picked Charter Reform Working Group — the same one that suppressed the cleaner, less corrupt Council-Manager alternative — delivered exactly what she wanted. Four councilmembers had the courage to vote against putting it on the ballot. She overrode them with her tie-breaker to ram through her own power expansion.

While Oakland voters were rejecting her $192 parcel tax Measure E in June because they no longer trust City Hall with money, she was engineering a permanent pay hike for politicians and a structural power grab that lets one person defund district projects at will.

This isn’t about fixing government. It’s about consolidating it.

Barbara Lee has spent months talking about “accountability.” What she actually delivered is a system where the Mayor writes the budget, vetoes legislation, and controls the administrative apparatus — while the people who are supposed to check her power get financially incentivized to look the other way.

The same Mayor whose private fundraising from contractors and interests doing business with the city already raises conflict questions now wants even more unchecked authority over those same contracts and budgets.

Oakland doesn’t have a structure problem. It has a leadership and trust problem. Voters just proved they won’t keep writing blank checks for failing services. So instead of fixing the services, City Hall rewrote the rules to give itself more power and more money.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

The full breakdown of what they blocked, what they forced through, and what it actually does to your neighborhoods is at:

https://t.co/QLBcsvpBsu

Read it. Share it. This thing only survives if people don’t understand what was taken off the table.

Vote NO on November 3.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

They keep calling it “reform.”

It’s not.

When Mayor Barbara Lee’s hand-picked working group was tasked with modernizing Oakland’s government, there were two real paths on the table.

One path was a professional Council-Manager system — a cleaner, less corrupt model used by well-run cities across the country. In that system, a professional city manager runs day-to-day operations and answers to the full City Council. The Mayor still has a strong voice, but no single person gets to play God with the budget or legislation.

The other path was the one they chose: turning the Mayor into a near-unilateral executive with line-item veto power over the budget while forcing councilmembers into full-time roles that trigger massive, hidden pay raises.

They didn’t just pick the second option.

They made sure the first option never reached the ballot.

The working group — stacked with people aligned with the Mayor — systematically shut down the Council-Manager alternative. Voters were never allowed to choose between real structural reform and this power grab. They were only given the version that expands one person’s authority and creates a direct financial incentive for councilmembers to go along with it.

This was never about fixing Oakland.

It was about control.

A system where one Mayor can surgically defund neighborhood projects she doesn’t like, while the people elected to represent those neighborhoods get financially tied to the new power structure. All while the city is still failing on basic services and voters just rejected another tax increase because they no longer trust City Hall with their money.

They could have put a real reform in front of you.

Instead, they gave you a self-serving rewrite of the rules designed to benefit the people writing them.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

The full breakdown of what they blocked, what they forced through, and what it actually does to your neighborhoods is at:

https://t.co/QLBcsvpBsu

Read it. Share it. This thing only survives if people don’t understand what was taken off the table.

Vote NO on November 3.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

They keep calling it “reform.”

It’s not.

When Mayor Barbara Lee’s hand-picked working group was tasked with modernizing Oakland’s government, there were two real paths on the table.

One path was a professional Council-Manager system — a cleaner, less corrupt model used by well-run cities across the country. In that system, a professional city manager runs day-to-day operations and answers to the full City Council. The Mayor still has a strong voice, but no single person gets to play God with the budget or legislation.

The other path was the one they chose: turning the Mayor into a near-unilateral executive with line-item veto power over the budget while forcing councilmembers into full-time roles that trigger massive, hidden pay raises.

They didn’t just pick the second option.

They made sure the first option never reached the ballot.

The working group — stacked with people aligned with the Mayor — systematically shut down the Council-Manager alternative. Voters were never allowed to choose between real structural reform and this power grab. They were only given the version that expands one person’s authority and creates a direct financial incentive for councilmembers to go along with it.

This was never about fixing Oakland.

It was about control.

A system where one Mayor can surgically defund neighborhood projects she doesn’t like, while the people elected to represent those neighborhoods get financially tied to the new power structure. All while the city is still failing on basic services and voters just rejected another tax increase because they no longer trust City Hall with their money.

They could have put a real reform in front of you.

Instead, they gave you a self-serving rewrite of the rules designed to benefit the people writing them.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

The full breakdown — the exact provisions, the vote breakdown, the suppressed alternative, the pay math, and the corruption risks — is at

https://t.co/1bHMm0hwAI

Read it. Share it. This is the clearest self-dealing ballot measure Oakland has seen in decades. They’re not even hiding it anymore.

If you’re tired of being governed by people who treat your neighborhoods as afterthoughts and your tax dollars as their personal compensation fund, this is the line.

The measure goes down in November or Oakland loses what little local representation it still has.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

On June 16, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee used her tie-breaking vote to force a ballot measure onto November’s ballot that does two things at once:

It gives her unilateral veto power over the budget and legislation.

And it quietly bribes City Councilmembers with massive pay raises in exchange for their support.

This wasn’t reform. It was a transaction.

The measure requires councilmembers to work full-time and bans outside employment. Then it hands the Public Ethics Commission the power to benchmark their salaries against “comparable” full-time cities like Los Angeles — where council pay already exceeds $245,000. That’s a potential 125% raise from the current ~$114k. Total compensation with benefits could push past $300k.

They wrote the rules so the only way councilmembers get the big paycheck is if they vote to hand the Mayor line-item veto power and turn themselves into a reactive oversight body with no real budget authority. If she keeps just three loyal votes on the council, she becomes a functional dictator over spending in every neighborhood.

This is the deal.

Her hand-picked Charter Reform Working Group — the same one that suppressed the cleaner, less corrupt Council-Manager alternative — delivered exactly what she wanted. Four councilmembers had the courage to vote against putting it on the ballot. She overrode them with her tie-breaker to ram through her own power expansion.

While Oakland voters were rejecting her $192 parcel tax Measure E in June because they no longer trust City Hall with money, she was engineering a permanent pay hike for politicians and a structural power grab that lets one person defund district projects at will.

This isn’t about fixing government. It’s about consolidating it.

Barbara Lee has spent months talking about “accountability.” What she actually delivered is a system where the Mayor writes the budget, vetoes legislation, and controls the administrative apparatus — while the people who are supposed to check her power get financially incentivized to look the other way.

The same Mayor whose private fundraising from contractors and interests doing business with the city already raises conflict questions now wants even more unchecked authority over those same contracts and budgets.

Oakland doesn’t have a structure problem. It has a leadership and trust problem. Voters just proved they won’t keep writing blank checks for failing services. So instead of fixing the services, City Hall rewrote the rules to give itself more power and more money.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

The full breakdown — the exact provisions, the vote breakdown, the suppressed alternative, the pay math, and the corruption risks — is at

https://t.co/1bHMm0hwAI

Read it. Share it. This is the clearest self-dealing ballot measure Oakland has seen in decades. They’re not even hiding it anymore.

If you’re tired of being governed by people who treat your neighborhoods as afterthoughts and your tax dollars as their personal compensation fund, this is the line.

The measure goes down in November or Oakland loses what little local representation it still has.

[OaklandPowerGrab.com @OakPowerGrab]

On June 16, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee used her tie-breaking vote to force a ballot measure onto November’s ballot that does two things at once:

It gives her unilateral veto power over the budget and legislation.

And it quietly bribes City Councilmembers with massive pay raises in exchange for their support.

This wasn’t reform. It was a transaction.

The measure requires councilmembers to work full-time and bans outside employment. Then it hands the Public Ethics Commission the power to benchmark their salaries against “comparable” full-time cities like Los Angeles — where council pay already exceeds $245,000. That’s a potential 125% raise from the current ~$114k. Total compensation with benefits could push past $300k.

They wrote the rules so the only way councilmembers get the big paycheck is if they vote to hand the Mayor line-item veto power and turn themselves into a reactive oversight body with no real budget authority. If she keeps just three loyal votes on the council, she becomes a functional dictator over spending in every neighborhood.

This is the deal.

Her hand-picked Charter Reform Working Group — the same one that suppressed the cleaner, less corrupt Council-Manager alternative — delivered exactly what she wanted. Four councilmembers had the courage to vote against putting it on the ballot. She overrode them with her tie-breaker to ram through her own power expansion.

While Oakland voters were rejecting her $192 parcel tax Measure E in June because they no longer trust City Hall with money, she was engineering a permanent pay hike for politicians and a structural power grab that lets one person defund district projects at will.

This isn’t about fixing government. It’s about consolidating it.

Barbara Lee has spent months talking about “accountability.” What she actually delivered is a system where the Mayor writes the budget, vetoes legislation, and controls the administrative apparatus — while the people who are supposed to check her power get financially incentivized to look the other way.

The same Mayor whose private fundraising from contractors and interests doing business with the city already raises conflict questions now wants even more unchecked authority over those same contracts and budgets.

Oakland doesn’t have a structure problem. It has a leadership and trust problem. Voters just proved they won’t keep writing blank checks for failing services. So instead of fixing the services, City Hall rewrote the rules to give itself more power and more money.