Not with a city still dealing with the pandemic, an economic downturn, homelessness, a housing crisis and public safety concerns. Oh. Did we mention no returning councilmembers who backed him in the November election?

Then there’s this: Last fall’s mayoral campaign featured nasty attack ads from both sides that worsened the longstanding divide between labor and business, making finding common ground on council issues that much harder.

It leaves the business-backed Mahan with three options:

• Fight with labor at every turn, likely resulting in little or no progress on the mayor’s priorities.

• Capitulate to labor’s agenda, which would anger those who elected him.

• Seek common ground with labor and find ways to collaborate in the best interest of San Jose residents.

We like the third option. And so does Mahan, as demonstrated by his approach in his first days in office. It’s a smart strategy. If labor is willing to cooperate.

Mahan last week nominated council newcomer Rosemary Kamei as vice mayor. It’s an intriguing choice. Kamei was endorsed by the South Bay Labor Council — the same organization that spent $5 million backing Cindy Chavez’ effort to defeat Mahan.

But Kamei proved to be an independent voice on the Santa Clara County Board of Education, which explains in part why she was also endorsed for the City Council by the business-oriented Santa Clara County Association of Realtors. Kamei now represents District 1, the traditionally moderate district that includes Santana Row and Westgate. If approved as vice mayor by the full council Jan. 24, Kamei is perfectly positioned to serve as a bridge between labor and business.

Mahan then extended an olive branch to the four returning council members who backed Chavez last fall. He selected Dev Davis, Pam Foley, David Cohen and Sergio Jimenez to serve on the powerful Rules and Open Government Committee, which controls the council agenda. The mayor will add a fifth member after the vacant District 8 and District 10 seats are filled.

Mahan’s third significant move was creating five transition committees aimed at making the council laser-focused on what he sees as the city’s five highest priorities: homelessness, public safety, blight and beautification, economic development and innovation. The committees will consist of council members, city staff and community members. They will meet for roughly eight weeks to make recommendations on how the city should proceed and how to measure success. The latter is a key element of Mahan’s campaign promise to bring more accountability to city government.

Getting the council on the same page and working collaboratively is a tall order. But give Mahan credit for taking meaningful steps to try to make it a reality.

Constant turnover at the highest levels of city staff. Violation of city codes. Failure to manage financial and fiscal risks. Creation of a deep culture of distrust and fear.

The civil grand jury nailed it. The only downside is the timing of its release last week. What took so long? Cupertino residents could have used the report in 2020 when they voted to continue Better Cupertino’s stranglehold on the council. Or prior to the 2022 election.

Thank goodness Cupertino voters saw the light in November. The election of J.R. Fruen and Sheila Mohan to the council in November gives Mayor Hung Wei a 3-2 majority over Better Cupertino’s remaining councilmembers, Kitty Moore and Liang Chao.

But there’s still work to be done. Moore and Chao aren’t about to give up their NIMBY approach to development. And Better Cupertino’s disruptive reach still extends to the city’s commissions that often produce future council candidates.

The report’s main criticisms focus on what the civil grand jury cited as the “council manic” behavior of Moore and former Mayor Darcy Paul. The latter was termed out of office and in November finished last of four candidates in the Cupertino Union School District Board race.

The report said Paul asked city staff members to work at events that were not part of official city business and to take on additional work outside of scheduled work hours.

Moore was accused of violating city policies barring interference in the day-to-day operations of city staff, including inappropriately asking a staff member about charges the worker made on a city credit card.

That kind of behavior helped create an environment that led to the city having four city managers in the last four years. Jim Throop lasted just six months on the job before Pamela Wu took over in August.

The city has also been plagued by turnover in other key staff positions, including Deputy City Manager Katy Nomura’s departure last fall. The report said high turnover has hurt Cupertino’s ability to recruit qualified staff. No kidding.

The grand jury recommends that the city establish a public ethics commission to create a training program for all councilmembers and hire a consultant to study staff morale and make recommendations to improve employee retention.

Those are good suggestions. And the new council should reverse the previous council’s NIMBY attitude and do its part to help solve the Bay Area’s ongoing housing crisis.

Cupertino is in danger of missing its deadline providing a roadmap that explains how the city will meet state-mandated housing goals. The threat is real. The inaction of the previous council, led by the three Better Cupertino members, risks the city’s missing out on affordable housing and infrastructure funding. If Cupertino fails to comply, it also could be forced to accept large housing projects that exceed the city’s zoning laws, as long as they include affordable housing.

The election of Fruen and Mohan to the council gives the city good reason to hope for a better future. But Cupertino still has a lot of work to do to escape its image as one of the most mismanaged cities in the South Bay.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

The political hit pieces dominating the closing days of the San Jose mayor’s race are a sad commentary on the state of South Bay politics.

All told, more than $8 million has been spent primarily on attack ads that both camps call unfair. Voters should ignore the hit pieces and focus instead on what each candidate is likely to do if elected. And equally important, not do.

Voters should be looking for the best person to provide responsible fiscal leadership as the city faces serious budgetary challenges. As we’ve said before, that person is City Councilman Matt Mahan.

The most important role San Jose’s mayor plays is setting the city’s priorities through the budget process. That is especially challenging in San Jose. The city may be in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it also has the lowest jobs-to-housing ratio of any major city in the nation, severely limiting tax revenues.

Pension costs currently account for 18% of the city’s general fund budget — a problem likely to get worse because San Jose has only funded $5.9 billion of its $9.5 billion in accrued pension liabilities. That’s a stunningly poor 62% funded ratio, far worse than most California cities.

It’s a situation that calls for prudent management and smart use of taxpayers’ dollars — especially given the likelihood of a recession.

Mahan wants to revamp how San Jose does its budgeting. He has a firm grasp on the city’s finances. He would use a zero-based-budget approach to determine how the city could most efficiently spend its money.

Whoever wins the mayor election will likely be working with a labor-majority City Council. It will be doubly important that the city have a mayor who will serve as a check to pie-in-the-sky budget expenditures. That’s Mahan. It’s certainly not his opponent, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.

Chavez touts that when she served on the City Council from 1998-2006, San Jose was the safest big city in America. That is true. But what she doesn’t say is that, during those years, she was a driving force for the costly pension benefits that plague the city to this day, requiring a reduction of the size of the city’s police force and severe cuts to library hours and parks maintenance work.

Her penchant for big spending has been evident in the growth of Santa Clara County’s budget during her years as a supervisor. In the last decade, the county budget has grown from $4.5 billion to $11.5 billion a year.

As we have said before, Chavez isn’t just beholden to labor. She is labor and everything it stands for. That’s important, for example, because the police union that is backing her campaign is seeking a 14% pay hike soon after the Nov. 8 election. Police officers deserve fair compensation for their hard work. But if the City Council were to approve such a large increase, it would curtail things such as San Jose’s ability to add more cops to its police force. That’s especially true in the event of an economic downturn.

Mahan is best suited to provide the prudent leadership San Jose needs. Voters should elect him as the city’s next mayor.

Leave it to Laurie Smith to make a mockery of the judicial system in her final act as Santa Clara County sheriff.

Smith submitted her resignation Monday in the midst of jury deliberations on whether she should be shown the door. It came just two months before her term would have expired anyhow.

It’s a sad indictment of the judicial system that she can avoid avoid any meaningful punishment because it took so long to bring this case to trial.

Smith should have resigned two years ago, when the extent of her failings first came to light. At the very least, she should have quit last December, when a Santa Clara County civil grand jury called for her removal from office and accused her of six counts of corruption and willful misconduct.

Instead, she stalled and ran out the clock. Now, almost a year later, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Nancy Fineman will rule Wednesday on a request by Smith’s attorney, Allen Ruby, to dismiss the accusation. He argued Monday that the penalty she faces — removal from office — is now meaningless.

That argument will likely carry the day, from a legal perspective, however unfortunate it would be. Allowing Smith to quit at this stage of the trial enables her to avoid accountability and robs the public of the closure it needs.

We first called for the sheriff to resign in September 2020 after she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when appearing before a county criminal grand jury as part of a pay-to-play concealed weapons investigation. Law enforcement officials must be held to the highest legal and ethical standards and must be fully cooperative in any criminal investigation. Her refusal to answer questions under oath about whether she, the county’s top cop, knew about corruption in her office, or worse, was involved in it, made her unfit to hold office.

Then, in August 2021, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a vote of no confidence in Smith and called for a civil grand jury investigation. The supervisors cited the excessive abuse at the county jail that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars; an alleged criminal informant who was beaten by more than 30 other jail inmates last November with no deputy intervention; and a San Jose Sharks playoff ticket scandal case in which Smith allegedly evaded gift-reporting laws.

The subsequent civil grand jury accusation alleged Smith engaged in political favoritism by leveraging her control over issuing concealed-carry weapons permits. The sheriff was also accused of failing to cooperate with the county law-enforcement auditor in an investigation into negligence allegations stemming from a 2018 jail inmate’s injury that led to a $10 million county settlement.

To this day, there has been no penalty for Smith. And now, with her resignation just two months before the end of her term, Smith will again avoid accountability. That’s not justice.

The system has failed Santa Clara County residents. They deserved a sheriff who was trustworthy and adhered to the highest law enforcement standards. Laurie Smith failed to meet that standard.

Two days after the new Twitter owner said the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” under his watch, he let fly with one of the most irresponsible tweets by a tech industry CEO in Silicon Valley history.

In the process, Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” gave credence to the widespread fear that he will not stop disinformation, hate speech or inciting of violence on the social media platform.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted an unfounded rumor about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Musk’s tweet, which he later deleted, linked to an article by a fringe website that the Los Angeles Times has reported is “notorious for fake news.”

Musk was replying to a tweet by Hillary Clinton that criticized Republicans’ “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” and said, “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.”

Musk countered, saying, “There is a tiny possibility that there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and posting a link to the baseless, anti-LGBTQ article.

Wow.

It’s precisely this type of factless rumor-mongering that causes people to lose trust in the technology industry’s ability to police its social media platforms. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have had a lock on the title of least-trusted of any major American tech company. But Musk is signaling there is a challenger for that dubious distinction.

Silicon Valley leaders used to understand that the tech industry needed to be a trusted force for good, not just a money-making machine. David Packard and Steve Jobs embraced that philosophy. And for more than a decade Google employees lived by the company’s “do no evil” motto, before it was officially altered in 2015 to “do the right thing” when Google was reorganized under its new parent company, Alphabet.

Since then, the landscape has dramatically shifted, and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter might prove the most destructive to tech’s reputation and integrity.

Right-wing pundits are already testing whether Twitter’s existing policies on misinformation will be enforced. Buzzwords such as “ivermectin,” “Trump won” and racial slurs began popping up on Twitter on Friday, testing whether Musk would adopt an “anything goes” approach to the site. And it’s uncertain whether he will allow users whom the platform has previously banned — including Donald Trump, white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — to tweet at will.

Social media platforms are immensely complex. In a better world, tech industry leaders would have taken a lead role in developing well-thought out regulations. It’s now up to a divided Congress, which can’t even agree on an Internet Bill of Rights, to rein in Zuckerberg and Musk before they do any more damage. Such is the sad state of the tech industry today.

A report released this week concludes that Kremen violated board governance policies by bullying, verbally assaulting or threatening Valley Water employees. In other cases where Kremen did not violate board policies, he nevertheless acted in a manner unbecoming of a public official. The report also indicates that Kremen failed to alter his behavior despite being admonished by Valley Water CEO Rick Callender.

Investigators from the Renne Public Law Group interviewed more than 50 witnesses, including Kremen and Callender. After investigating 25 allegations, their report concluded that, in six instances based on a preponderance of evidence, Kremen broke board governance policies:

• In March 2020, Kremen called in financial planning and management division workers to tell them to place a subordinate on a personal improvement plan. When an employee disagreed that step was warranted, Kremen reportedly told the employee that he would rip the employee’s subordinate to shreds during the next Board appearance and the employee, too. Kremen allegedly also said that the subordinate would be the first to be fired if Valley Water suffered financial hardship as the result of the pandemic.

• In July 2020, Kremen used profanity in a hostile manner toward a finance employee that constituted abusive conduct. The employee said Kremen wanted a district financial statement to be presented in the manner of a private company’s report and told the employee “don’t tell me government GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) is the reason why you can’t do that because I don’t give a f—.”

• In a June 2021 board subcommittee meeting, Kremen bullied and threatened the job of an Integrated Water Management Division employee. Kremen criticized staff on the lack of progress on a Valley Water initiative. Investigators listened to an audio recording in which “Kremen’s tone is angry, exasperated and aggressive.”

Kremen was first elected to the District 7 seat on the board in 2014. He raised nearly $350,000 — most of it out of his own pocket — to defeat incumbent Brian Schmidt. That was at least five times more than had ever been spent by a candidate for the water district.

Since then, the Valley Water District’s problems keep getting worse. In September, we recommended that voters replace Kremen on the board with Rebecca Eisenberg.

We noted the district’s overbudget projects, support for the $19 billion Delta tunnels, failure to recognize the Coyote Creek flood threat that caused $100 million damages, and inaction on Anderson Dam that puts the valley’s water supply at risk during one of California’s worst droughts.

And there was the self-serving June ballot measure, backed by Kremen, Tony Estremera, John Varela and Richard Santos, to extend their terms in office by an additional four years. The wording of Measure A, which cost $3.2 million to put on the ballot, implied that it was more restrictive of how long a board member could serve than what was already in place. The opposite was true.

It’s bad enough that Kremen is wrong on policy issues and willing to mislead voters to extend how long he can serve. Now, the details of his abusive behavior and overstepping of authority further make clear to voters why he must go.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

Morgan Hill has grown from a 1970’s city dominated by agricultural interests with just 7,000 people to 45,000 today, challenging the small-town charm that attracted many residents. Voters will decide two measures this fall that would help shape the city’s future.

Measure A would prohibit new buildings designed as storage and distribution centers throughout the city. The measure’s intent is to encourage job-generating industries that provide higher economic benefit to the city and promote the retention and expansion of existing businesses.

Measure B would amend Morgan Hill’s General Plan to require voter approval of future Monterey Road lane reductions. The measure would, for example, prevent the City Council from making Morgan Hill’s downtown area more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists without an expensive ballot measure.

Voters should support Measure A and reject Measure B on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Measure A

E-commerce companies such as Amazon have been gobbling up industrial land in rural areas such as Morgan Hill that are near major metropolitan areas. The issue came to a head in 2020 when Morgan Hill residents became alarmed about the proposed Trammell Cove project at the intersection of Cochrane Road and Depaul Drive. The City Council repeatedly voiced its opposition to major distribution centers that would sharply increase truck traffic in the city and eat up land zoned as industrial that could be put to better use. In 2020, the council adopted an ordinance prohibiting new buildings that have 75,000 or more square feet of floor area, ceiling heights of more than 34 feet, and more more than one truck-loading dock per 25,000 square feet.

Voters should approve adopting the measure prohibiting distribution centers within the city limits.

Measure B

Four-lane Monterey Road runs through the heart of Morgan Hill’s vibrant downtown.

In 2015, the City Council reduced it to two lanes for six months through the downtown area. The “road diet” produced mixed results, including additional traffic in surrounding neighborhoods. But making the downtown area safer and more attractive for pedestrians and bicyclists is a worthy goal. It’s also part of the city’s Downtown Specific Plan.

The City Council should take steps to improve traffic flow throughout the downtown area (between Dunne and Main streets) before any effort to narrow Monterey Road to two lanes. But it makes no sense to put the issue to a vote of the public — at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars — every time the council wants to consider a Monterey Road lane reduction.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

In 2020, the Loma Prieta Union School District put a parcel tax measure before voters that would have added an annual tax of $164 on property owners.

It fell 1 percentage point short of the needed two-thirds approval.

So it would seem inconceivable that the district would put another parcel tax before voters that is more than double the size of the measure rejected two years ago. Especially when the region is facing financial uncertainty.

Yet, that’s exactly what they did. Measure M would establish an annual parcel tax of $348 for eight years, raising an estimated $640,000 a year.

Loma Prieta is one of the smallest districts in the Bay Area. Loma Prieta Elementary School and C.T. English Middle School serve 450 students in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The district says its parcel tax would primarily go toward teacher salary increases. Loma Prieta teachers are among the lowest paid in the region. But the proposed tax is simply too much to ask taxpayers feeling the pinch of economic uncertainty. Voters should reject Measure M on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

A century ago, in 1922, the newly formed Campbell Union School District built a grammar school at the intersection of East Campbell Avenue and Winchester Boulevard.

For 42 years, it served as the only grammar school in the district. A marker with a photograph of Campbell Union Grammar School commemorates its history at what is now the Heritage Village offices.

Today, the district serves 6,500 students at eight elementary schools, two TK-8 schools, two middle schools, a home school program and district-operated preschools in Campbell, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, San Jose, Santa Clara and Saratoga.

The district is seeking approval of a $96 million bond measure that is primarily designed to modernize aging school facilities, as several of the schools are more than 50 years old. District officials have a solid record of making prudent use of taxpayer dollars. Voters should pass Measure T on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The measure would cost property owners a projected average $12 per $100,000 of assessed value annually for the next 39 years. Property owners are currently paying off other district voter-approved bonds at a annual rate of about $67 per $100,000 of assessed value.

The district says it plans to time issuance of the new bonds so that the tax-rate increase from Measure T would match the expected decrease in the tax rate collected from previous bond measures as they are paid off.

That would mean that district property owners would see the tax rate on their supplemental tax bills remain steady. Property owners also have an annual $49-per-parcel tax payment, approved by voters in 2015, that helps cover district operation costs.

Measure T requires 55% approval by voters.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

Two years ago the Campbell Union High School District asked voters to approve a parcel tax extension that contained no sunset date.

We urged a no vote, saying that time limitations provide incentives for school officials to make wise use of tax dollars, knowing that if they fail to do so voters may not be so generous the next time. That’s especially true during a financial crisis, when voters face their own set of budget challenges.

This year the district is coming back to voters with Measure O, an $85-per-year parcel tax that — yes — contains a sunset clause limiting the tax to 10 years.

Measure O would generate an estimated $5 million annually. It is intended to replace the 2013 Measure A annual parcel tax of $85 per parcel that expires in 2023. Measure O requires two-thirds support to pass.

Campbell Union serves about 8,000 students in five high schools: Branham, Del Mar, Leigh, Prospect and Westmont. The revenues from the parcel tax would go toward school operations.

We noted two years ago that the Campbell Union High School District has been reasonably prudent with taxpayer dollars. With the addition of the sunset clause for this ballot measure, we recommend that voters approve Measure O.