Former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has landed her next gig: president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, the influential business-backed policy group that shapes regional economic and housing policy across the nine-county Bay Area.

If your first reaction is "wait, based on what track record?" — you're not alone.

Schaaf served as Oakland's mayor from 2015 to 2023, presiding over a period in which the city saw skyrocketing homelessness, rising crime, and a fiscal trajectory that made San Francisco look disciplined by comparison. Oakland's budget problems didn't start with Schaaf, but they certainly didn't improve on her watch. Her tenure was perhaps most memorable for her 2018 decision to publicly warn residents about impending ICE raids — a move that made her a progressive folk hero and a lightning rod for everyone else.

As one SF resident put it with devastating understatement: "As mayor of Oakland all I can say is she was a mayor."

Now Schaaf will helm an organization that bills itself as a champion of the Bay Area's economic competitiveness. The Bay Area Council isn't government, but it wields enormous influence over regional policy — from housing development to transportation to workforce issues. Its members include major employers and real estate interests. Schaaf has also been serving on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which as one local observer noted, should "make clear who she represents and what her agenda is."

There's a pattern in Bay Area politics that never gets old: leaders who preside over dysfunction in one role get rewarded with a bigger title and a cushier position. It's the Peter Principle with a regional planning twist. Instead of accountability, we get musical chairs.

The Bay Area Council has real power to advocate for policies that could make this region more affordable and more competitive. Whether Schaaf is the person to push for the kind of fiscal discipline and deregulation the region desperately needs is... let's just say we're skeptical. Oakland's track record speaks for itself, even if no one in the hiring process wanted to listen.