Sac Supes tried to hide huge salary raises. Did they think no one would notice? | Opinion
According to the Institute for Local Government, “items on a consent calendar are generally non-controversial items that do not require much, if any, discussion.”
The consent calendar process is common to local agencies, such as city councils and boards of supervisors, “to expedite meetings and reserve time for matters that need to be discussed,” and, if you’ve ever attended one of those meetings, it’s usually dispensed with fairly quickly compared to regular agenda items, and often with no public comment period.
So when the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors decided to give themselves a tasty 36% raise, you would think that the topic would be a regular agenda item subject to public comment and public approval. But apparently not.
Let’s take a look at the more than 50 consent calendar items at the Board’s most recent meeting on May 23:
- There was an item to authorize the County Purchasing Agent to negotiate an update to a financial lease agreement — not to exceed $26 million.
- The board authorized a contract for disaster recovery support and consulting for two years, for an amount not to exceed $640,000.
- The board accepted a bid by a local construction company for more than $5.7 million, to repave and repair roads in several sites across the county.
- And, of course, item No. 14 of 59: Oh-so-quietly approving that 36% raise to the supervisors’ salaries, for a total of nearly $250,000 across the board.
Must be nice to give yourself a 36% raise.
Sacramento County Supervisors Phil Serna, Rich Desmond, Sue Frost, Pat Hume and Patrick Kennedy will now make $173,000 per year; a $46,000 increase from their current $127,000-per-year salaries. (The average salary of a Sacramento resident, for comparison, is about $65,582, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
While pay raises within the county’s administration are usually placed on the consent calendar, that’s a different beast: The supervisors approving the pay raise of their employees is not self-enrichment. This looks a little too much like the supervisors were trying to hide a surreptitious raise.
Which leads me to write something I’m not sure I’ve ever even thought before: Thank goodness Supervisor Frost said something.
Frost pulled the item from consent for further discussion, which is something any supervisor can do. In fact, any member of the public can request to have an item pulled from the consent calendar for comment. It simply takes a keen eye and the willingness to read through an incomprehensible jumble of bureaucratic word salad.
Frost said she pulled the item because she couldn’t fathom supporting it, “given the fact that many of my constituents are suffering from increased inflation and increased prices.”
“It’s difficult to give myself a raise at the same time others are suffering,” Frost said. “So I’m gonna go on record as a ‘No’ vote.”
And she did, voting no both times it appeared on consent, which was at the April 18 and May 23 meetings. Good for her.
Frost and I rarely agree, but this time she was right, despite Supervisor Serna’s comically disingenuous protests that “not a single member of this board” requested the raise from County CEO Ann Edwards or any of her staff.
Serna — along with the money-deprived Kennedy, Hume and Desmond — voted yes on the pay raise. Both times. Sure seems like they were requesting it then.
Pay raises and lack of introspection aside, this is indicative of a much larger problem on the board: There were 60 items on the consent calendar on May 23. Prior to that, there were 55 consent items at their May 9 meeting, and there are 45 items on the consent calendar at their most recent meeting on June 6.
Yolo County’s Board of Supervisors had about 38 items at their May 9 meeting, while the Placer County Board of Supervisors only had about a dozen on May 23.
The consent calendar can be a great way to cut through the jungle-like density of a local agency meeting. Their time is limited and so are their audiences’ attention spans. But the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors have clearly been abusing the privilege. Every two weeks, the allocation of millions of dollars is quietly passed without comment, neither by the board nor the public, on the consent calendar.
Good leadership is built on trust. Over and over again, the Sacramento County Supervisors have proven that we can’t trust them to be transparent and intellectually honest about the money they’re spending or where it goes. They’re counting on no one noticing.
Too often, no one does.
This story was originally published June 8, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
