With scant notice, the Sacramento City Council may take a vote that stinks today | Opinion

With the bare minimum legal notice, Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the Sacramento City Council are giving the public the least time allowable to learn that city elected leaders are considering raising the base pay for City Manager Howard Chan to a staggering $420,664 and, if that wasn’t enough, Chan may get a bump in vacation that will give him 10 paid weeks off a year.

Chan was already the highest-paid municipal manager in California.

The tactic could not be worse for both the mayor, the council and a manager who is pushing too hard for himself as opposed to his city in structural deficit.

In a Tuesday meeting packed with labor agreements for the city’s various bargaining units, the agenda at the final possible moment posted a new “special meeting” at 6 p.m. that now includes salary adjustments up to 5 percent for the city’s charter officers and the special vacation boost of six extra weeks for Chan, or 240 hours. This is on top of the 160 hours, or four weeks, Chan already receives as a veteran city employee who also gets 11 paid city holidays.

This is an even worse idea now than when a reluctant Chan pulled the very same proposal from consideration on August 29. California is expected to face a record budget deficit as high as $68 billion that will cause fiscal pain at every level of state government. Yet Steinberg and the City Council seem all too eager to treat the city’s top employee differently than the rank and file and every other manager.

Within City Hall, Chan is portrayed by some as obsessively convinced he is underpaid and undervalued. In meeting by meeting, he makes his case with the elected leaders who ostensibly control the city purse. City of Sacramento voters have seen fit to keep the municipal power in the hands of an unelected city manager instead of an elected mayor.

How is that working out?

Placing this vacation proposal on the agenda at the eleventh hour reveals that Steinberg and a majority of the council are afraid of their manager. They are afraid of the potential repercussions of saying no. They prefer public criticism over a scorned Chan. There is no other conclusion to draw.

That Chan is insisting on jamming through his own special entitlements package, above and beyond far more modest adjustments for his peers, reveals just how little he thinks of his council and the standing of those “elected leaders,” some of whom like to remind Chan that he works for them. Well, yes and no.

Six weeks of extra vacation for Chan is worth another $49,233. If he wants just 21 days off (the paid city holidays plus two weeks of leave), he could cash out his time and make another $65,644.

Chan’s pension at the moment via the California Public Employees Retirement System is capped at $330,000 worth of government income. That cap will rise over time. But clearly, he could make up for income that will not count towards a future monthly pension. Ten weeks of vacation could make Chan whole. This logic makes sense to only one person on the planet.

The message that Chan is sending is: I can manipulate the process, making pawns out of the council majority, to make it happen.

Chan would have an actual case for a raise if he simply waited. On August 1, the council asked Chan to do its job and establish new managed homeless encampments known as Safe Ground entirely at his discretion. He has yet to establish a single site. If and when he does, he could rightfully say he has been doing three jobs — his own, that of the mayor, and the council.

But Chan does not want to allow Steinberg and the council to save face by adhering to a customary process that gives the public several days of notice.

As the city enters a difficult era of cost-cutting, Howard Chan has taken care of himself.

Again.

Such is public service in City Hall these days. Sacramento should not have the highest-paid city manager in California when the manipulation to get the raise, at the humiliation of all who vote for it, is the most notable achievement.

This story was originally published December 12, 2023 at 4:00 AM.