Sacramento mayor sought council members’ ideas to cut budget. Here’s what they said
When Sacramento council members balked at some of the city manager’s proposed budget cuts last week, Mayor Kevin McCarty asked the council to submit their alternative fiscal strategies in written memos.
Six council members disclosed to The Bee their budget-cutting memos. But two officials don’t want to share their alternative strategies to close the $66 million shortfall — a concerning point for one advocate.
“The public is entitled to understand how their elected leaders are going about cutting costs or raising taxes,” First Amendment Coalition Executive Director David Snyder said. “Those topics are at the height of the public interest in understanding how the city works.”
City Manager Maraskeshia Smith proposed bridging a $66.2 million shortfall by cutting park maintenance workers, closing wading pools and freezing violence prevention grants. At the May 5 meeting, the mayor gave the council members a Thursday deadline to file their written alternative cuts.
“If not, we won’t be able to look at those suggestions,” McCarty said.
McCarty’s office, when asked last week for these memos, declined to provide them. A spokesperson said the documents may be withheld under a section of the law allowing government officials to deliberate in private. She directed a reporter to file a public records act request.
The California Public Records Act, a law guiding the disclosure of government documents, includes the “deliberative process privilege.” City officials, when wielding that exemption, must determine if the public interest in keeping documents secret outweighs the public interest in disclosing documents, Snyder said.
A budget’s deliberation is one of the “most significant discussions” that a city undertakes, Snyder said. City officials have often said a budget demonstrates the values of a city.
“Wanting to keep these memos secret suggests that they’re not saying the same thing in the memo that they were saying in public,” he said.
In the end, six of the council members shared their proposals directly with The Bee. The respective spokespersons for council members Karina Talamantes and Eric Guerra did not provide a memo or say if one had been submitted.
McCarty did not file a memo, according to his spokesperson.
What are the council members’ priorities?
The memos also underscore a difference between public comments and private deliberations.
Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum on May 5 proposed to completely eliminate funding for the Department of Community Response, which has a $41.5 million budget. In an interview with The Bee the next day, Pluckebaum clarified he did not seek to entirely cut DCR’s budget, but instead restructure the agency.
But folding DCR is still under consideration for Pluckebaum.
His memo, provided to The Bee, lists “reducing or eliminating Department of Community Response expenses through outsourcing.”
Pluckebaum also seeks to increase parking rates and expand hours for which people must pay, according to his memo. He represents areas with highly concentrations of parking meters, such as downtown, midtown and East Sacramento.
The memos demonstrate a plethora of opinions from council members, each representing a constituency with unique priorities. The suggestions offer insight into the decision-making process of each official.
- Councilmember Lisa Kaplan, who represents North Natomas and Robla, wants to cut funding for two temporary homeless shelters and freeze or eliminate parking enforcement positions. She seeks to restore school resource officers for the Natomas Unified School District, and retain park maintenance workers and violence prevention funding.
- Councilmember Roger Dickinson, who represents Old North Sacramento, Del Paso Park and Hagginwood, hopes to retain violence prevention funding and keep wading pools open. He suggests raising parking rates, deleting 13 parking enforcement positions and ending the city’s ethics commission, which reviews complaints against elected and appointed officials.
- Councilmember Caity Maple, who represents Oak Park and Magan Park, seeks to retain park maintenance workers set to be replaced by contractors, restore pool hours and keep violence prevention funding. She suggests reducing the scope of contracts for security and outside lawyers. She also suggests reviewing “upper and middle management structures across departments and identifying duplicative or unnecessary roles where possible.”
- Councilmember Rick Jennings seeks to keep wading pools and restore funding to violence prevention grants. He suggests cutting seven vacant parking enforcement officer positions.
- Councilmember Mai Vang seeks to restore violence prevention grants, city pools and a City Hall program for students to learn about their government. She proposes reallocating money from vacant police positions to help fund youth programs.
Earlier this year, city officials proposed cutting a Hiram Johnson High School’s Law Academy, a program in which students learned about law enforcement. Dozens of students descended on City Hall, wielding signs and pleas to restore this funding.
City officials listened and moved to save this program.
“That’s called democracy,” Synder said. “That doesn’t work very well when the people who are being affected by the policy don’t even know that the policy is coming or how it was formulated.”
