Government
Oakland has a mayor-council government. The mayor is elected for a four-year term. The Oakland City Council has eight council members representing seven districts in Oakland with one member elected at-large; council members serve staggered four-year terms. The mayor appoints a city administrator, subject to the confirmation by the City Council, who is the chief administrative officer of the city. Other city officers include: city attorney (elected), city auditor (elected), and city clerk (appointed by city administrator). Oakland's Mayor is subject to a tenure limited to two terms. There are no term limits for the city council. Three council members are currently on their fourth term, and Councilman De La Fuente is serving for his fifth term, approaching two decades in office.
Oakland City Hall was evacuated after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake until $80M seismic retrofit and hazard abatement work was complete in 1995.
Jean Quan was elected mayor in November 2010, beating Don Perata and Rebecca Kaplan in the city's first ranked choice balloting.
In the state legislature Oakland is located in the 9th Senate District, represented by Democrat Loni Hancock, and in the 14th, 16th, and 18th Assembly Districts, represented by Democrats Nancy Skinner, Sandré Swanson, and Mary Hayashi respectively. Oakland is represented in the United States House of Representatives by Barbara Lee and is located in California's 9th Congressional District, which has a Cook PVI of D +38.
Read more about this topic: Oakland, California
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.”
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“Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)