‘A travesty.’ Sacramento mayor, City Council blasted for tax spending plan for police
The leader of a citizen commission tasked with helping the Sacramento City Council decide how to spend tens of millions of dollars in new sales tax money is claiming the commission has been excluded from the process. And she wants nearly $50 million in tax dollars headed to the police department budget to be shifted instead toward economic development, affordable housing and homelessness initiatives.
Flojaune Cofer, chairwoman of the Measure U Citizens Advisory Committee, blasted Mayor Darrell Steinberg during a five-hour meeting Tuesday – the committee’s first since February.
During the three-month recess prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, City Manager Howard Chan proposed a budget and the council approved it weeks earlier than normal.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, includes using Measure U sales tax money to pay for core city services, including $45.7 million to the police department. While a Measure U ballot measure approved by voters in 2012 was designed to go mostly to core city services, a 2018 Measure U was sold to voters largely on the basis that it would support new inclusive economic development projects and uplift underserved neighborhoods.
The city can legally use the money for anything, however, as it flows to the general fund. City officials said they had to use Measure U funds for core services this year – including the police department – to make up for the more than $90 million loss in expected revenue due to the virus.
Steinberg, the champion of the 2018 Measure U, said to make up for that, he wants to use the roughly $89 million in federal coronavirus stimulus (CARES) money for projects to help disadvantaged communities that were also affected by the virus.
But that excluded the Measure U commission. To remedy that, Steinberg offered the 15-member commission an option to help determine how to spend the remaining CARES money that the council hasn’t already allocated – about $55 million. The Measure U approved in 2018 was projected to bring in about $50 million a year.
Cofer and Kimberly Williams, the commission vice chair, did not jump on board with that compromise, saying that the CARES money is one-time only and must be spent by the end of the year only on certain coronavirus-related items.
“Our system isn’t working now with money that we’re supposed to be responsible for, so how is it going to work with funding that’s one-time funding?” Williams asked the mayor. “I feel like that’s just setting us up for another situation that we won’t be able to be effective.”
“Everything we are doing relates to COVID because what COVID has done is exacerbated the inequities that existed before the virus,” Steinberg said.
Cofer: Remove police funding from budget
After four hours sitting at the council dais Tuesday, Cofer, unleashed her frustration she said she’s been holding in for months.
“What I see here is us rolling over and playing dead at a time we should be fighting,” Cofer told Steinberg. “What you’ve given to us, it shouldn’t even be considered it is so ridiculous. We should be screaming and furious about this because this is a travesty.”
Steinberg listened, defended his police reform proposal he presented earlier that day, but also pledged to do better.
“You asked me to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and sit in that seat and think about what you had to say,” Steinberg told Cofer. “I will do that. But I will also remind you I went to bed last night and woke up this morning and proposed the most fundamental redistribution of police resources that has actually been put forward by an elected official in this city.”
Steinberg’s proposal is to hire a city inspector general and overhaul the 911 system so non-police trained civilians can respond to non-criminal calls. As part of that proposal, he wants the council to shift money from the police department over the next two years. The exact amount will be determined over the next two months after examining police call data, but will be at least $10 million, Steinberg told The Sacramento Bee Tuesday.
Cofer called that idea “uninspired.” She wants the City Council to remove the $45.7 million in budgeted Measure U money allocated to the police department and redirect it to inclusive economic development, affordable housing and homelessness initiatives. So far, eight members have signed on, Cofer said.
The police are planning to use that money, from both the 2012 and 2018 ballot initiatives, to restore positions in the department such as community service officers, dispatchers, forensic investigators and officers. It will also fund body-worn cameras, ShotSpotter gunshot detection devices and police observation device programs, as well as mental health related strategies, according to the budget document.
The council can amend the budget at any time, as long as it places the item on a council meeting agenda. No council members have so far publicly expressed interest in amending the approved budget or placing a “defund the police” item on the agenda.
“Could the budget be reopened? Sure it could,” Steinberg said. “But I’m not as as interested in kind of a quick hit and run.”
Councilwoman-Elect Katie Valenzuela and Pastor Les Simmons, a candidate for City Council in south Sacramento, have also been pushing the council to immediately start “defunding” the police, starting with at least $10 million of its $157.5 million budget. That budget is up from $131.6 million from fiscal year 2017-18.
More than 300 residents submitted written comments to the Measure U citizens commission saying they wanted either less city money or no city money going to the police, Cofer said. She and two other Black committee members, Khalil Ferguson and Williams, spent about an hour reading a sampling of those letters aloud Tuesday.
But Steinberg said some in the public feel differently.
According to a recent city survey about coronavirus stimulus, 83 percent of residents said uninterrupted police, fire and emergency medical services were extremely or very important, Steinberg said.
The city has spent more than $70 million in the last year and a half on projects for homeless shelters, youth and equitable economic devleopment, Steinberg told the committee. Included in that is $10 million in coronavirus assistance the council planned to adopt Tuesday for small business assistance, including 75 percent to businesses in economically disadvantaged areas. Steinberg acknowledged the committee has not had enough input on those decisions, though, and pledged to fix that.
“It’s been extremely difficult for me trying to make a difference,” commission member Dean Murakami told the mayor during the meeting.
The Sacramento Police Officers Association’s current contract, which expires in September 2021, gives officers annual 3.5 percent raises. Cofer wants the city to renegotiate that contract due to the pandemic, as state worker unions are doing. Steinberg said that’s not doable, due to binding arbitration.
“I would not hold out hope for that prospect,” Steinberg told Cofer. “I would not.”
But the idea is becoming less radical. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti last week proposed the city remove at least $250 million from LAPD’s $1.8 billion budget and redirect it toward health initiatives, youth jobs and “peace centers.” That change would take back raises for officers previously agreed upon in the union contract.
Minneapolis, where the police custody death of George Floyd sparked national protests, is moving to disband and restructure its police department.
