Oakland Mayoral Candidate: Courtney Ruby

Having vented about our current mayor, I feel calm, relaxed and ready to return to the task at hand. Courtney Ruby is the City Auditor, and she decided in February 2014 to run for Mayor because of public safety concerns. Ms. Ruby's website (www.CourtneyRuby.com) does not seem to have a platform listed, although she is very critical of the current administration and city council. Not that I blame her.

In lieu of specifics in her mayoral campaign, I decided to check out her work as the City Auditor.  In some ways, her work as auditor has been very strong. She has called out wrongdoing by some entrenched city councilmembers in the Ruby Report, and was very frank in her assessment of the pension liabilities and its impact on governance. She has been recognized nationally for her auditor performance in Oakland, and now that I've read her reports, I wish she had more exposure in Oakland. That said, her proposed solutions are a little weak. We have a $1.5 billion pension liability in Oakland, and her recommendation is to convene a Pension Advisory Committee, and maybe a coalition of similarly situated cities to lobby Sacramento on the issue. This is unsettling to me; when I was advising public pensions, we were telling them to expect the hammer to fall back in 2005. If Oakland doesn't have a committee of this kind, or hasn't been in this kind of dialogue already, we are in deep trouble. Trouble deeper than a Pension Advisory Group will solve.

The suggestions in the Ruby Report are much more specific and actionable. They start at page 37 of the Ruby Report, and indicate that our elected officials are engaged in an unbelievable amount of meddling, self-dealing and inappropriate conduct. Knowing that there's this level of dysfunction; why would she want to be Mayor? The job sounds like Chief Cat Herder.

I am interested in hearing more from Ms. Ruby, but I also wonder whether she wouldn't be an excellent partner in transparency and accountability to a different Mayor. She seems like an awesome Auditor, and might be a good Mayor. But wouldn't it be better to have a great auditor and a great mayor?