Bee Opinionated: City manager’s salary + Our worst rape myths + Election Day coming soon
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Robin Epley here again with The Sacramento Bee’s Editorial Board. It’s finally my favorite month of the year, in no small part because it’s my birthday month, and obviously, the whole world revolves around me.
I kid — I mean, can you even imagine that kind of ego?
Speaking of overinflated egos, last week the Sacramento City Council approved a 7% raise for city manager Howard Chan, who already got a huge raise last year, bringing his base salary up from about $308,000 to more than $400,000 now.
Chan’s base salary is now the second-highest paid to a city manager in California, according to the state Controller’s Office, while mere weeks ago, the council approved a much smaller contractual raise for the city’s police officers and firefighters, just 3.5%.
“Interestingly, Chan recently endorsed (Angelique) Ashby’s bid for state Senate. Despite acknowledging that he tries to stay out of politics because of ‘the nature of (his) job,’ he took to his Facebook page to endorse Ashby in Tuesday’s election, adding that he wouldn’t be city manager without her ‘support and encouragement.’”
Maybe that’s why Ashby asked all the department heads present in the council chambers to stand up if they supported a raise for Chan. Of course they had to stand up. Chan would have seen who didn’t.
It’s unfortunate that a city as large as Sacramento gives so much authority to an unelected bureaucrat — a bureaucrat who just got a huge raise on the same night he cautioned elected officials about the need for austerity in the face of a looming recession.
Our Brains On Trauma
There are many myths surrounding the behavior of rape victims, wrote Metro columnist Melinda Henneberger this week, but perhaps the most damning of all is that victims of sexual assault do not have subsequent contact with the perpetrator.
“Dr. Barbara Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist in Pennsylvania since 1997, testified on Tuesday at Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles rape trial on some of the most widely accepted misapprehensions about a crime that leads to a conviction only seven times out of 1,000. And can we at least agree that it’s not because the other 993 victims were lying or mistaken?”
Most rape victims do not fight back, they freeze, Ziv told the court. And most do not report it promptly because of shame and self-blame.
“‘This is probably the most difficult rape myth for people to grasp: that it is not uncommon for individuals to have subsequent contact with the perpetrator,’ Ziv said. ‘Some people have continued contact because they want to decrease collateral damage,’ if, as is often the case, the attacker is someone with the power to hurt his victim professionally or personally.”
During opening statements, Weinstein’s defense attorney said all of Weinstein’s accusers are lying. But he singled out California’s First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom for extra insults, calling her “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood” if she hadn’t married California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“As I’ve written before,” Henneberger wrote, “Weinstein deserves due process just like anyone else. But it’s still depressing watching victims of this one crime only be so systematically destroyed. The way victims are treated, in and outside the courtroom, hasn’t changed at all that I can tell. And that anyone comes forward anyway, at such great personal cost, is the only thing about how rape is prosecuted that continues to surprise me.”
Get Out The Vote
Election Day is fast approaching — are you ready for Tuesday? Maybe you’ve already cast your vote by mail or taken advantage of early voting.
The Sacramento Bee’s Editorial Board met with dozens of candidates in advance of making our recommendations for more than three dozen local, state and federal races. We try to present voters with as much information as possible about their representatives, and that information that comes straight from the candidates themselves.
Here’s a quick cheat sheet:
See how easy that is? Find all of the propositions, candidate recommendations and more on our elections page. And don’t forget to vote!
Opinion of the Week
“It’s not you, democracy; it’s us.” — Deputy Opinion Editor Josh Gohlke on Americans’ disillusionment with democracy.
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Robin Epley
