Bee Opinionated: Election night woes + County trouble + Mail time blues
This is Robin Epley again with The Bee Editorial Board. Hope you liked Yousef Baig’s turn at the helm as much as I did last week. I think I’ll let him stick around.
The Sacramento County Grand Jury took the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors to task yet again this week, writing that the county’s leaders “missed the point” of their investigation from earlier this year that accused the board of “(abandoning) responsibility for COVID spending” during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
In fact, the grand jury released two separate reports which condemned the supervisors’ handling of the pandemic, calling for new policies to increase oversight and accountability. The grand jury said the board of supervisors “undermined public confidence in government” when they allocated a majority of $181 million in federal coronavirus aid toward the Sheriff’s Office in 2020.
The Board of Supervisors operates with so little oversight that I often feel like I’m shouting into a tunnel. Perhaps the grand jury feels that way. As California Opinion Editor Marcos Bretón put it recently, it feels a bit like shooting spit wads at a fortress.
For years, the county has allowed the city of Sacramento to clean up its messes on the pandemic and — perhaps most flagrantly — on homelessness, even though it’s the region’s largest health and human services provider.
Then, whenever questioned — either by journalists, city leaders, or anyone else who follows what takes place in the county chambers — they admonish them and tune out the dissent like pariahs.
Voters had a chance to change that on Tuesday night, but…
Caviar to the general (election)
“Sacramento voters had two chances to upend the status quo on the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday night and redirect decades of stagnant governing, but voters showed little interest in electing any clear promise of change, or the first millennial to the board.”
I, and the rest of the editorial board watched Tuesday night as the election results rolled in, and as District 2 Supervisor Patrick Kennedy handily win a third term against opponent Duke Cooney and District 5 candidates Pat Hume and Jaclyn Moreno advance to a runoff in the November election. The editorial board endorsed Moreno, an endorsement we stand by.
It’s imperative that someone like Moreno gets a seat on the board and starts instituting changes that are so desperately needed. When voters are checked out, we get the elected officials we deserve. In Sacramento County, that could mean more of the same ineffective leaders.
The turnout for Tuesday’s election is around 22%, according to the latest counts, which means candidates only had to convince 11% or more of more than 800,000 registered voters to vote for them, and that tiny slice of the population is essentially deciding who makes the laws and enforces them. Are we really OK with that?
And yes, I know that midterms and primaries are never great for voter turnout, and voters are particularly predisposed to be apathetic this year because the governor and U.S. Senate races are foregone conclusions, but come on — less than 30%? That’s abysmal. We have to do better.
It’s Mail Time Blues
Assistant Opinion Editor Yousef Baig issued a direct appeal on behalf of his mailbox this week, commenting on the amount of mailers and attack ads — even from members of the same party — that seem to be the hallmark of this election, connecting to the same reason a Democratic state legislature can’t seem to work together.
“For Californians wondering why a state Legislature filled with Democrats is incapable of solving our entrenched crises, look no further than the nastiness surrounding the race for its next Sacramento-area senator. Neither Sacramento City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby nor former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has served a single day in the Senate, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by all the Democratic infighting, a cornerstone of today’s Capitol.
“I can already imagine my tiny apartment mailbox pleading with them to stop stuffing it with attack ads.”
Opinion of the Week
“I guess we’re going to have to, sort of, unpack the term ‘destroy the community,’” — BRIDGE Housing project manager Jon McCall, responding to Sacramento City Councilor Sean Loloee’s trolling question that an affordable housing project could “destroy” the Woodlake neighborhood in his district. At one point, Loloee even suggested that Sacramento was “turning into a semi-dictatorship in the name of affordability.” Sheesh.
Got thoughts? What would you like to see in this newsletter every week? Got a story tip or an opinion to tell the world? Let us know what you think about this email and our work in general by emailing us at any time via opinion@sacbee.com.
Stay spicy,
Robin Epley
