Councilmember-elect Carl DeMaio joined Councilmember Donna Frye at a news conference on June 9 unveiling a bipartisan initiative to reform the rules and policies governing the San Diego City Council.

To do so, the two will lead a study of ways to overhaul how the City Council conducts its business.

In a memo outlining their initiative to Mayor Jerry Sanders and the City Council, Frye and DeMaio are committing to co-chair a six-month study group to generate findings and recommendations for improving how the council conducts business, manages legislation, and interacts with the public.

The goal is to improve the transparency and effectiveness of the City Council in a Strong Mayor-Strong Council form of government.

“I believe strongly that the City Council in the past has been an impediment to reform and a sad example of what is wrong with our city government,” DeMaio said.

DeMaio, a frequent critic of City Hall and the founder of the government watchdog group The Performance Institute, won the election in District 5 with more than 60 percent of the vote.

In races to fill four City Council seats being vacated due to term limits, DeMaio was the only candidate to win outright. DeMaio, a Republican, elected earlier this month to fill the council seat in District 5, which includes Rancho Bernardo and Scripps Ranch, is also the first openly gay man to be elected to the City Council.

“With four new City Council members taking office in December, we have a unique opportunity to change the way the council operates, both culturally and procedurally,” Frye said.

Frye, a Democrat in her second term in District 6, which includes Mission Bay and Clairemont, heralded her partnership with DeMaio, as the “beginning of a new bipartisan cooperative effort.”

The two will hold a series of public meetings over the coming months to generate ideas on how the City Council operates, manages legislation and interacts with the public.

Specifically, they will focus on the council’s role in San Diego’s annual budget, as well as how it oversees city spending and elects committee members and officers, and how to make its activities more open to taxpayers.

Frye also wants guarantees that information from the mayor’s office is received in a timely manner.

“There have been times in the past that we have received information at the very last minute, or not received it at all, or learned about things that are going on by reading the newspaper or watching the television,” Frye said. “That is not a good way to communicate.”

Something also needs to be done about the council’s decorum to create “more civil discourse,” Frye said.

The information gathered will be part of a Nov. 10 report that Frye and DeMaio will present to the incoming City Council. The guidelines will include a comprehensive set of reforms for consideration after the new council members are sworn in on Dec. 8.

The issues on the City Council arose following the voter-approved switch to a strong-mayor form of government in 2004. The change gave the mayor powers previously held by the city manager, such as the ability to hire and fire department heads and prepare the budget.

It also removed the mayor from the City Council, leaving eight members governed by a self-appointed president. The even number on the council has led to stalemates, while the council president position has prompted a power struggle among some on the panel.

Frye and DeMaio’s efforts to reform the council’s policies is a necessary step before voters are asked to make the change to a strong-mayor form of government permanent in 2010, she said.

Voter turnout was light despite a hotly contested campaign between Sanders and Francis for the top job in the nation’s eighth-largest city.

According to Frye and DeMaio, while some progress has been made, the council has had some difficulty repositioning itself to effectively initiate its own legislation, exercise proper review and approval of budget decisions and provide effective oversight of the executive branch.

“The City Council is long overdue for a serious overhaul,” DeMaio said. “With the City Council membership changing, we have a unique opportunity to reposition the City Council as a constructive partner in solving the city’s financial problems.”

“It is time to examine – in a truly bipartisan manner – the policies, structure, and operations of the City Council to make it a more effective and open legislative body,” Frye added.

The two said that they expect disagreements once the bipartisan study effort gets under way. “But we won’t be disagreeable,” Frye said.

She said they wouldn’t let things turn into “some kind of name-calling match, sort of a schoolyard-bully, who’s ‘in with the In Crowd,’ who’s out, who’s this, who’s that? It’s old and it’s tired.”

“It is our hope that this process will generate specific reforms that will enhance the effectiveness of the City Council as a legislative body as well as restore public confidence and trust in city government,” she said.

Council President Scott Peters issued a statement saying he welcomes “the opportunity to build on the progress we have made together over the past three years in transforming the legislature into a more open, responsive and productive body, independent from the executive branch.”

There was no response to a request for comment from the mayor’s office.