Flashy? No. Smart? Yeah. Steinberg tops the list of America’s best, and unsung, mayors
As a rule, the mayor of Sacramento is not typically included on any lists of “best” or “most innovative” or “most interesting” mayors in America. But as he approaches a March re-election for a second term in office, Darrell Steinberg is building a body of work that could land him on someone’s list of best or most effective, most activist, or most consequential mayors of a big American city.
From arguably knowing more and engaging more on homelessness than many, if not most, politicians...
To being a key player in landing a Major League Soccer franchise for Sacramento...
To paving the way for rebuilds of the city convention center and waterfront...
To passing a sales tax that funds essential city services and investments...
To confronting Sacramento’s racist legacy of redlining...
To helping keep the peace when the state capital could have exploded after city cops killed Stephon Clark in 2018...
One could argue that Steinberg’s reach has already extended beyond that of predecessors going back decades.
Yet Steinberg’s name does not yet resonate outside the Sacramento region due to a variety of artificial factors used to anoint legislators with less skill. For the purposes of this discussion, we shall distill these factors to a few key bullet points and dub them:
Top Five Reasons why Big Stein is the best kept political secret outside of Sacramento.
1. He ain’t young. At 60, Steinberg has been a fixture in the local political scene for nearly 30 years and therefore bereft of that “flavor of the month” mojo that attracts the fancy of “who is hot” list-makers.
2. He ain’t an up-and comer. Steinberg has no springboard to higher office attached to his City Hall seat. After leading the state Senate from fiscal ruin to prosperity by the time he termed out in 2014, Steinberg had the bonafides and the intellect to do the only big jobs that interested him: state attorney general or state supreme court justice. But former Gov. Jerry Brown stiffed him on both counts. So Steinberg had to make a choice: mayor of Sacramento or make a lot of money as a lawyer. The latter prospect would be relished by many. But making money for the sake of making money bores Steinberg to tears and dims his inner light that burns most brightly when he is in the political fray. So Mr. Mayor it is.
3. He aint flashy. Gov. Gavin Newsom can go on the “The View” and kill it with a smile and a wink. Mayor Steinberg? Uh, no.
4. He ain’t revolutionary or evolutionary. Steinberg doesn’t represent an underrepresented community or gender as mayor. In fact, Steinberg’s 2016 election ended more than 30 years of gender, racial and ethnic diversity in Sacramento’s mayor’s office. Since 1983, every Sacramento Mayor had either been among the first female mayors in city history, the first Latino mayor, the first Asian American mayor and the first African American mayor. Was Steinberg the first Jewish mayor in city history? No. In 1892 – yes, 1892 – Bernard Steinman became Sacramento’s first Jewish mayor and held the office until 1896.
5. And finally, he ain’t done. Consider Steinberg’s first term was about planting seeds across a spectrum of city needs. He hopes these seeds will grow into solutions to big problems or into amenities to improve civic life while also spurring investment in Sacramento.
Steinberg’s urgency on the homeless
He is mocked routinely by conservative voices in Sacramento who view him as a classic liberal who never met a tax he didn’t like. Business types say he talks about homelessness too much while homeless advocates say he doesn’t do enough.
You notice I don’t have any direct quotes to offer because in Sacramento, smack talking “off the record” is a far more popular sport than NBA basketball. For all the bluster in Sacramento, we’re pretty chicken about saying what we think publicly.
I’ve spent four years listening to all the talk about Steinberg while at the same time listening to state capital big shots mutter about “poor Darrell” being stuck with a mayor’s job that is beneath him. I must admit that I even bought into this talk until I was confronted with an idea that made sense:
The first term of Mayor Darrell Steinberg was right on time because he brought a complex skill set to a complex city that is redefining itself and would be harmed if a small mind were sitting in the mayor’s chair right now.
Steinberg as mayor is living proof that Sacramento has grown up. Sacramento has serious upside and serious problems and requires a serious mind to attend to both. And that serious mind, and this serious mayor, has had to be a one-man band pushing serious issues while the rest of the region lags behind in a small-minded “cowtown” mentality.
Take the issue of homelessness, for example. For the first time in my 30-year Bee career I am a member of The Bee editorial board and, for the first time, I sat in on a series of meetings with local elected and officials and their opponents who were all vying for The Bee’s endorsement.
And what became crystal clear to me in those meetings was how most every elected official in this region is AWOL on homelessness. Rep. Doris Matsui? Rep. Ami Bera? County Supervisor Sue Frost? City Councilman Eric Guerra? City Councilman Allen Warren? AWOL. Matsui and Bera have no clue what they should do. Warren talks a good game with no results. Guerra’s knowledge of the issue is fleeting at best. And Frost? I couldn’t even understand what she was trying to say. It was embarrassing.
Steinberg is out there trying to confront a health, safety and mental health crisis while most everyone else either rehashes uninformed talking points, or talks a good game devoid of results, or snipes from the sidelines. On Sacramento’s council, Jay Schenirer, Steve Hansen and Jeff Harris are out in the community, trying to answer Steinberg’s call for homeless shelters in every council district. Everyone else? AWOL.
The county of Sacramento? AWOL, too. That doesn’t include County Supervisor Phil Serna or some key county health experts who are doing good work. But the county administration and most county supervisors are missing and, rest assured, they will be called out by name as 2020 progresses.
Steinberg rightly calculated that building a regional coalition on homelessness was a waste of time. Instead, he decided to flood the zone with a serious of initiatives hoping the rest of the region would finally match his urgency.
We’re still waiting on that, but in his first term, Steinberg did secure $64 million of federal and local funds for casework and housing coordination services for the needy. He opened the city’s first low-barrier homeless shelter in North Sacramento. The Capitol Park Hotel shelter has opened in downtown Sacramento. A shelter in Meadowview was approved. All told, the city expects to have more than 650 new or repurposed shelter beds for the homeless population.
“Homelessness is an epic crisis and yet everything (government) does is voluntary,” Steinberg said. “Name another area of government where everything you are called upon to do is voluntary.”
As as leader of Gov. Newsom’s task force, Steinberg is pushing for the state to make housing homeless people mandatory for cities and counties.
It’s a big, provocative idea and, with Newsom’s state of the state address approaching, we’ll see if Steinberg’s idea is adopted. But again, sniping about this issue is easy even as it proliferates and gets worse by the day.
Scores MLS Soccer and more
Steinberg was also the indispensable player who saved Sacramento’s MLS bid by finding a billionaire, Ron Burkle, to buy the franchise. With Burkle in, MLS said yes after years of flirting with Sacramento.
This year, we should begin to see bulldozers moving earth to build a new MLS stadium at the old Sacramento Railyards.
The city convention center is already under renovation after Steinberg played a key role in making that happen. Work will begin on remaking the downtown waterfront. Steinberg and Councilwoman Angelique Ashby attracted 5,000 jobs to Sacramento by landing a deal with managed care giant, Centene.
Steinberg kept his cool with emotions boiled over at the shooting death of Clark. While other cities have erupted in violence and tear gas, Sacramento remained calm.
It hasn’t all been great, of course. Steinberg’s nadir was the bad deal he struck between teachers and the Sacramento City Unified School District. The district couldn’t afford the raises he brokered. And Steinberg has been unwilling to speak strongly on the issue. He’s tried to continue to float solutions that don’t work for a district facing insolvency.
He is nothing if not a pragmatic politician who does not want to speak too forcefully to the California Teachers Association, a powerful lobby. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty said what Steinberg wouldn’t: That the district can’t afford to use any savings from reduced health care plans to hire more teachers.
And sadly, Steinberg opposed Measure G, which seeks to guarantee a funding stream for youth in Sacramento. He stood on the side of a firefighters union claiming that the measure will hamstring the city finances when the evidence of that is shaky at best. Steinberg was trying to hard to split the difference when the city can and should do more to invest in youth.
The guy can be too transactional and cautious. But Steinberg has raised his office to meet challenging times. He’s a force for good, a calming voice. And most of all, he’s grasped where we are on homelessness while others nibble on the margins.
His next four years in office could reshape Sacramento for a new future. He is, without a doubt, the best person for this great challenge.
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
