California has 482 incorporated cities but just five of them — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and Fresno — have what are called “strong mayors” with executive authority. Others, except for a few tiny villages, have professional city managers to hire and fire employees, draft budgets and perform...
San Francisco Official Charged With Corruption in FBI Probe
SAN FRANCISCO — A top San Francisco public official and go-to bureaucrat to mayors over two decades was charged with public corruption Tuesday, upending City Hall as elected leaders scrambled to reassure the public that bribery and kickbacks would not be tolerated. The complaint unsealed against San Francisco Public Works...
Mayors for Pete: Buttigieg Hunts for Support in City Halls
WEST SACRAMENTO — As Pete Buttigieg works to prove the leader of a city of roughly 100,000 people is ready to assume the American presidency, he's relying on help from politicians who would know best: his fellow mayors. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor has amassed a network of roughly 60...
Walters: Newsom Now Owns the Wildfire and PG&E Crisis
The careers of political executives — presidents, governors and big-city mayors — are often defined, fairly or not, by how they respond to crises. Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, John Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis and Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage...
Walters: 'Big, Hairy' Goal Could Be Newsom's First Defining Moment
The careers of political executives – presidents, governors and big city mayors – are often, fairly or not, defined by how they deal with the crises they encounter. Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression (and later World War II), John Kennedy and the Cuban missile confrontation, Lyndon Johnson and the...