Bee Opinionated: City and county stay fighting + Newsom’s busted budget + Needed: Valley judges
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Hello again and happy Almost-Fourth, it’s Robin Epley with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board
I spent most of my week watching the City of Sacramento and the County of Sacramento get into yet another petty argument.
It seemed that last Tuesday, at a city workshop to discuss homelessness, the county did not come prepared with a presentation on county homeless services, which angered some city council members who believed they’d made clear what they expected to see.
Council members Karina Talamantes and Lisa Kaplan, in particular, made their displeasure known from the dais, but it turns out that wasn’t the whole story.
“Notably, District 3 Councilmember Karina Talamantes said she had specifically requested that the city receive ‘the same presentation that the county board supervisors got.’”
But I heard a different story from the county. Chevon Kothari, deputy county executive for social services, had apparently only been notified a mere two minutes before the meeting started that she was expected to present.
“I have to first apologize to the council,” Kothari said at the podium. “We were under the impression that today would just be a workshop on compliance so we did not come prepared with any presentation.”
That announcement launched the workshop in an awkward direction. It left certain council members visibly frustrated and confused as to why county staff would come unprepared to present. County staff were understandably frustrated too, feeling attacked for the courtesy of attending a city council meeting and finding themselves under siege.
Let’s be honest, the details of this squabble don’t really matter, except to say it was indicative of yet one more public argument between the city and county, exemplifying their constant breakdown of communication, while electeds continue to insist relations are excellent behind the scenes.
“There are 1.5 million people in this county, nearly 10,000 of whom are living in indigency, and not a single one of them has time for government infighting — especially not the several unhoused people who are statistically predicted to die from heat stroke in the next few weeks,” I wrote.
“Sacramentans need real solutions to a humanitarian crisis that’s growing by three people for every one who exits homelessness in this region. Tuesday’s miscommunication at the city of Sacramento’s homelessness workshop was embarrassing for everyone involved — but perhaps particularly for the city, as the host and organizer of a meeting that proved so spectacularly unorganized.”
A Bad Start
“If the state budget is an expression of California’s priorities, state leaders have chosen to overlook the suffering of those who live on our big city streets in order to focus on helping vulnerable individuals who are on the brink of homelessness.”
The Bee Editorial Board wrote last week that balancing the budget Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature approved last week is reliant on tax money that “may not materialize if the future months are not as economically rosy as lawmakers assume.”
“Addressing the many facets of homelessness — shelter, transitional housing, permanent housing, mental health care and drug rehabilitation — has the same established need for funding as education, prisons or parks. Yet homelessness has no similarly established home in the state budget. It has to fight for the leftovers. Big city mayors end up fending for themselves and heading home with far less than they need.”
The budget does provide $1 billion for the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program, the board noted, “an important pot of money that helps cities cover the costs of emergency shelters and other homeless needs.” But the League of California Cities sought three times that money.
“Nobody got everything they wanted in this budget, but most needs fared better than homelessness. The unhoused are large in number, some 170,000 Californians and increasing each census. But they are small in clout, with no effective champion inside the halls of power.”
Also from The Bee Editorial Board on Newsom’s budget deal: “Downtown Sacramento was a big loser in a California budget that stiffed cities”
You Be The Judge
“In 1978 the price of gas in California was under 70 cents a gallon, ‘Annie Hall’ won best picture at the Academy Awards and the Dallas Cowboys were Super Bowl champions.
“That was also the last time a new judgeship was created in the U.S. District Court that oversees the Central Valley.”
Today the Eastern District covers 34 counties, with key cities such as Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield and Redding, wrote The Fresno Bee Editorial Board last week.
The district has four federal prisons, nearly 200 federal buildings, 13 national forests, nine national parks, 19 state prisons and 923,000 acres of federal land. Nearly 8.5 million people live in the district — and the six judges hearing cases are badly overworked.
Each Eastern District judge handles an average of 1,300 cases at any given moment, for a total of 2.6 times more than the average for judges in all other federal courts in the western United States.
The Bee Editorial Board in 2019 urged Congress to work to get more judges for the Eastern District, but little happened.
Now, Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and two other colleagues — fellow Democrat Doris Matsui of Sacramento and Republican Jay Obernolte of Hesperia — have authored a bill they call the CASE Load Act, which stands for “Creating Additional Seats to Ease Legally Overburdened Adjudicators’ Dockets Act. ” It is House Resolution 3223 and would authorize the hiring of five new judges spread over six years.
“Skyrocketing caseloads and staffing shortages in the Eastern District Court of California have created a judicial emergency that will only worsen if we don’t address it now,” Costa said in a news release. “Over a million Californians lack equal access to justice. My legislation will fairly address the need to ensure the court can fulfill the American promise of the federal judicial system.”
“Congress must act to get more judicial positions for the Eastern District,” wrote The Fresno Bee Editorial Board. “Failing to do that would be a miscarriage of justice in a real sense.”
That’s Your Opinion
A roundup of some of The Bee’s best op-eds this week:
“By gutting Affirmative Action, the Supreme Court makes it easier to kill diversity” by Erwin Chemerinsky
“Sixty percent of selective colleges and universities have been engaging in affirmative action. Now they can’t. Especially at more selective schools, there will be fewer Black and Latino students. They will be harmed, as will all of the students who are deprived of the benefits of diversity in their education. The hope must be that schools will not give up on diversity, make the concerted effort that now will be needed to achieve it and learn from what has worked in California.”
“Biden taps into farmworker leader’s family in re-election bid. Who is Julie Chávez Rodríguez?” by Juan Esparza Loera
“Chávez Rodríguez’s own words offer the best perspective:’Growing up in the farmworker movement, I was surrounded by some of the country’s best organizers,” she wrote in a 2014 essay for UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies. “I spent my childhood in meetings, at rallies, walking picket lines and handing out leaflets in front of supermarkets. …I lived a tremendously privileged childhood, not in terms of material wealth since my parents were full-time volunteers for the United Farm Workers, but in terms of experience,” she wrote. “The opportunity to travel with my grandfather, to learn from him, and to see him organizing is one of the most valuable classrooms I have ever been in.’”
“If the Supreme Court kills Affirmative Action this week, equality will suffer” by Frank Sotomayor
“Stanford is better for having produced these outstanding alums. Our nation is better when colleges and universities reflect their communities. Halting efforts to make colleges and universities more inclusive comes at the same time America is on the road to being a multicultural nation where non-Hispanic whites will no longer be in the majority by 2050.”
Opinion of the Week
“He wouldn’t last three seconds with Atkins.” — Editorial Cartoonist Jack Ohman writing after the California GOP paraded former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell around the California State Senate floor earlier this week, causing a few Senators to walk out in protest. Ohman was referencing Grenell’s chances in — what I can only assume is — a metaphorical boxing ring with President pro Tempore of the California State Senate, Toni Atkins. Atkins is a heavyweight LGBTQIA+ icon while the former is... how did State Senator Scott Weiner put it? Oh yes “a self-hating gay man (and) a scam artist pink-washer.”
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.
Please be safe this weekend,
Robin
