Three initiatives are underway right now that will shape Santa Clara’s government for decades. Done right, they could rebuild public trust and restore ethical leadership. Done poorly — or done in secret, without genuine public participation as two of them currently are— they will entrench the status quo, continue the City in its current direction, and make ethics and public trust reform harder than ever.
- Charter Review — The Charter Review Committee is doing genuinely good work, but two critical constraints threaten to undermine it:
a. The Stadium Authority—which shares board members, legal counsel, and staff with the city—has been excluded from Charter consideration despite influencing every part of City government. The Stadium Authority is technically a distinct legal entity, but that cannot be the excuse that leaves it completely out of the Charter. The solution may be a separate chapter devoted to the Stadium Authority, but those drafting the update need to address at minimum:
i. Role conflicts—The officials who serve simultaneously as Council members and Stadium Authority board members carry two sets of job responsibilities that need to be brought into alignment, with clear rules for what to do when the people’s best interests and the team’s conflict.
ii. Conflicting responsibilities—The Council is responsible solely to the people of Santa Clara and to a set of local, state, and federal laws. The Stadium Authority is responsible to the people, the lenders, the team, and others, and to laws relevant to joint powers authority and public/private partnerships. Those competing obligations need to be clarified and resolved.
iii. Fiduciary duties—Including care, loyalty, impartiality, accountability, and protecting public trust need to be spelled out for the Council/Board and City/Stadium Senior Staff and for situations where they conflict.
iv. Ethical guardrails and independent oversight—Right now, the Stadium Authority operates without an ethics code or oversight, while the Council and Senior Staff must follow the City’s Code. The same people cannot operate under two different ethical standards depending on which hat they’re wearing. The Stadium Authority needs an ethics infrastructure that mirrors the city’s—and then goes further, with additional guardrails that apply every time those officials act in their Stadium Authority capacity, and both need to be subject to the same independent oversight.