Events elsewhere—the presidential race, the heat wave, inflation and the economy, the threat to democracy—seem to be on everyone’s mind, pushing local Oakland politics to the provincial background. But in many respects, what happens here in the next 4-1/2 months will prove to be more important to our future than anything else.

I don’t often disagree with Gavin Newsom, but I do on the topic of Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot initiative that made theft of less than $950 a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

The City Council’s passage of Thao’s budget, with its vicious budget cuts to OPD, got a lot of headlines. But less noticed were the three councilmembers who voted against it: Janani Ramachandran, Noel Gallo and Treva Reid.

Carroll Fife rarely if ever speaks at Council meetings, even if she’s present, which she frequently isn’t. She know she controls the agenda even if she just sits there dumbly. The chatterboxes are Kalb, Gallo, Kaplan and, increasingly, Reid. Bas talks a lot, too, due to her presidency, but it’s usually to make some bureaucratic point of order. I think I know why Fife speaks so seldom. She did manage to get in a few words in favor of—what else?—reparations.

Oakland city government is incompetent even when there’s a functioning mayor at the helm, but now that Thao is MIA by the FBI raid, our city is like a ghost ship, with the engine running but no one in the captain’s cabin.