Normally City Atty. Carol Schwab is the shyest executive at City Hall.
Here she was last evening at the going-away reception for Mehaul O’Leary and Andy Weissman, telling her audience that being a City Councilman is complicated.
While new Council members Thomas Small and Goran Eriksson looked on, Ms. Schwab said they will need to know “the complex laws and regulations that govern cities now.”
Being a do-gooder with sweet intentions is meaningless.
“It is required the City Council come up to speed on all of this,” Ms. Schwab said.
As an attorney, Mr. Weissman may have had a slightly easier learning path than the Irish pub owner Mr. O’Leary.
“Even as a lawyer, Andy has had to learn new laws that come up,” said Ms. Schwab. “Among them, the Brown Act, the Public Records Act. Then there are the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution.
“We are constantly hearing new ideas, and we tell them ‘No, you can’t do that.’ Or they will say, ‘Tell us how we can do it.’”
Ms. Schwab said that both Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Weissman “have been great supporters of our office. In return, they have given suggestions, many sometimes.”
Turning to a related but separate dimension of being on the City Council, “remember they make the laws for the city,” Ms. Schwab said. “They make tons of laws for the city. They require city staff to enforce the laws.
“They also defend the city, and they make decisions about initiating litigation.
“We have done smoking ordinances, we have done housing ordinances, we have done campaign finance. Then there are laws that have been in our code for 30 years, we are allowed to change.
“Mehaul and Andy have done all of this with fairness and wisdom,” Ms. Schwab said.
