Commentary: Newport shows how costly charter cities are

Having a city charter is like hosting a leech — you have to keep feeding it whether you want to or not.

That’s my conclusion after analyzing Newport Beach’s charter experience. Here’s what I found. (This is drawn from the charter history included in the staff report to the Newport Beach citizens committee that considered amendments for the 2012 ballot.)

Newport Beach’s first attempt to adopt a charter was defeated 53% to 47%. It took five years after that to stitch together the document approved by voters in 1954.

Elected commissions of freeholders (property owners) drafted each charter.

Has it remained as first written? No. Only nine months after initial approval, Newport Beach had to float the first five of an eventual 55 proposed amendments (through 2010, the most recent entry in the history).

Were they all adopted? Newport voters can be a tough audience: Ten were rejected, a failure rate of 18%.

Was the charter reviewed once every 10 years, as is proposed for Costa Mesa? The Newport Beach charter has been reviewed much more frequently: There were 21 charter amendment elections over the 56 years documented in the staff report, for an average of one every 2.7 years.

Are charter amendments a small or large factor in civic life? It seems like every time a resident turns around, it’s time to vote on more changes to the charter. Of the elections held in Newport Beach between 1955 and 2010, the ballots of 21 — or about three out of every four — contained proposed amendments.

How does the page count compare with Costa Mesa’s proposed four-page charter? Twenty-seven pages, not counting the table of contents and the index.

What has the charter cost to develop and keep current? At roughly $100,000 for each of the 21 elections (a conservative estimate, considering election fees, staff time and resources to shepherd the amendments through the political system), that’s a little over $2 million in today’s dollars that Newport Beach taxpayers have spent to keep their charter consistent with requirements of voters and state law.

This is, according to my calculations, an average of $37,500 per year, every year (again, in today’s dollars).

Perhaps these facts about the life-cycle costs of our neighbor’s charter can expand the conversation about whether Costa Mesa should also adopt such a form of governance.

TOM EGAN lives in Costa Mesa.