How many times must the city council be told? Do not give Howard Chan a raise | Opinion
The future of Sacramento City Manager Howard Chan’s much-desired raise remains too much a mystery after a first city council meeting of the year that was mired in its mistakes of 2023.
Though the meeting marked the first of the new year, the Sacramento City Council was mired in the past as it had to address serious issues that lingered from several outstandingly poor decisions it made back in December.
Instead of making the hard-but-right choice of denying Chan yet another raise, the council punted on the problem to another meeting as it takes steps to strip his ability to directly place his salary on the agenda.
So far the council has only made a small concession to ethics, and that’s not at all what the public was asking of them. It also still allows the formidable city manager to sway someone else on the council to do his bidding should he decide he wants more money in the future.
The whole situation seems to further underline the very serious power imbalance Sacramento’s elected officials have (or rather, don’t have) over their own employees.
Chan wants not only a 5% raise, bringing his salary to a whopping $420,000, but also a total of 10 weeks vacation time. It’s also telling that the city saw zero movement on the announcement of a new managed homeless Safe Ground site until Chan felt his salary adjustment was in jeopardy. Even then, the site was announced in the under-served District 2 the day after that district’s council member resigned and could no longer raise protest.
In a show of deference to public anger, Councilman Eric Guerra made a motion for a change to Chapter 7 of the council’s Rules and Procedures: He proposed to remove the city manager’s ability to place items on the agenda pertaining to matters of his compensation, or the compensation of anyone else who reports to council. Only the mayor would be able to bring forward those agenda items in the future, Guerra suggested.
“Whether it’s an actual or perceived conflict of interest, it matters,” he said.
The council voted unanimously to delay the vote until the rule change was made.
Moving the vote to a later date serves only to delay and lessen public opinion, in what — I assume — is the hope that the council can ultimately pass Chan’s raise under the guise of a “cost of living” increase without as much public backlash as they experienced Tuesday night, thanks to the city’s blatant disregard for the Brown Act, which requires a certain amount of public notice be given before government salaries are discussed.
“If any of you on this dais are not feeling the love or respect of your community right now it’s because you are not showing them love or respect. That vote was despicable,” Keyon Bliss, a Sacramento resident and a member of the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission, told the council.
“You’re already the highest salaried city manager in California, you have an ethical duty to buckle down and make smart decisions with our money,” said David Drelinger, a candidate for the district 6 council seat. “Do the right thing for the city.”
“I think (Chan) ought to be fired, or get a 20% pay cut,” said another resident, Robert Copeland.
Hear hear.
After such a public lambasting, the city council members were falling over themselves to apologize profusely, but their words meant little when their vote felt unnecessarily bureaucratic and confusing for much of the public in the audience.
Who approved the vote?
In December, the city came under fire for violating the Brown Act, an error that was likely due to a mistake by city staff, most likely City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood or City Clerk Mindy Cuppy.
If it was the former, then it is the third egregious legal mistake Alcala Wood’s made in recent history — the first was her staunch and legally indefensible insistence that a staffer of councilwoman Katie Valenzuela was a physical threat to City Hall because he supported a 2021 protest outside Chan’s home.
The second was her laughable investigation of former city councilman Sean Loloee’s residency; an ongoing farce the city attorney perpetuated until the federal Department of Justice finally conducted their own independent investigation and proved Loloee lived in a tony Granite Bay mansion, not in a small, shared Del Paso Heights home with his employee and her family.
Forgotten, too, in the hullabaloo over the City Manager’s raise was the fact that the City Attorney’s salary was also on the agenda, a raise that would bring Alcala Wood’s billable hourly rate to $177.211822 — a number that feels a few numbers too large, on either side of the decimal point.
And if the Brown Act violation was a mistake by City Clerk Cuppy, then it comes on the heels of an erroneous and consequential election fundraising timetable snafu that landed councilwoman Valenzuela and mayoral candidate Dr. Flojaune Cofer in front of the city’s ethics commission by default, though they were both entirely cleared of any wrongdoing.
Whoever was at fault, the council’s year ended not with a neat bow, but rather looking like a wrapping job done by a toddler. They’re mired in scandal, left to profusely apologize for errors that never should have happened and rationalizing yet another raise for a power-mad city manager.
Chan could bring it back
Mayor Darrell Steinberg made it clear in his remarks that evening that he supports giving Chan a “cost of living” raise, though how much it costs to live in Sacramento surely doesn’t math out to $420,000 per year — just ask any of the thousands living in a tent on Broadway or Roseville Road.
“I can support a reasonable cost of living increase,” Steinberg said, “(but) I draw the line at these additional hours in the public sector… I can’t do it, even non-cashable hours. Even though it’s not his intent, there’s potential, just appearance-wise.” Steinberg (or his successor) will be the only one who can bring the item back to council, and thankfully he doesn’t seem inclined, though calling it a “cost of living” raise leaves serious concerns about how the city might try to pass something in the future.
It’s amazing how the public can yell at the council until they’re blue in the face about an issue and the city can still feign ignorance about what exactly it is the people want from them.
Do. Not. Give. Chan. A. Raise. (Nor an hour’s more vacation.)
Is that clear enough?
This story was originally published January 16, 2024 at 11:15 AM.
