Who’s going to step in and manage Sacramento? Only an outsider can shake up City Hall | Opinion
This week, Sacramento starts the new year with nobody steering the proverbial ship. Eight-year City Manager Howard Chan, unable to get a contract extension, is gone. Nobody for now is in his place. Mayor Kevin McCarty needs to find a temporary replacement, and fast. But who?
With one assistant city manager busy looking for work elsewhere, McCarty is essentially down to one logical insider choice. The alternative is to find the smartest gun from the outside to temporarily run City Hall, make some tough decisions and inevitably shake things up.
For a city that has found itself with an irreparably broken relationship between its council and its top manager, some new blood to reshape the culture and reframe the art of the possible is exceedingly tempting. It also comes with risk.
The choice will be the first glimpse of how Kevin McCarty will lead the city, either an incrementalist or something closer to a revolutionary.
A top assistant is courting Dallas
Inside the city’s organizational chart, two assistant city managers best positioned by their experience to step in and run the city. One is the assistant who oversees public safety. The other is the one with years of budget experience.
Mario Lara, the assistant city manager closest to police, fire and homeless issues, is looking for work elsewhere. Dallas media outlets are reporting that Lara is one of three finalists to be the new manager to run Texas’ third largest city (behind Houston and San Antonio).
Lara has overseen the city’s Department of Community Response, which has been on the front lines of homeless management as it has fielded thousands of community calls for help. He has capably presented updates to council members in meeting after meeting. But a lieutenant who longs for Texas all but disqualifies himself for temporarily leading Sacramento.
That leaves the assistant who knows the numbers.
Leyne Milstein is a 19-year city employee who has steadily risen through the ranks, starting as a policy analyst and, later the budget manager and finance director. Known for her no-nonsense style, Milstein is as close to a Chan protege as currently exists inside city management.
Is Sacramento experience an asset?
The choice for interim city manager largely hinges on whether McCarty and the council view City Hall as heading in the right direction or in need of a dramatic course correction.
Chan, with the help of Milstein, was the architect of the ongoing fiscal year budget that closed a projected $50 million gap between revenues and expenditures with a combination of cuts and increases in various fees and parking citations, most notably eliminating free Sunday parking at meters. But it was only after the City Council had given staff more than 10% raises over two years that Chan told the council it “can’t afford” spending that was “not sustainable.”
The initial forecast was even bleaker for the coming year, a projected $77 million, although McCarty has said that conditions have improved with approved state funds to continue homeless shelter programs. But the council is set to repeat an ugly budget process having largely exhausted options other than ones that the City Council has resisted, such as exploring cheaper ways to provide city services like garbage or saying no to police and fire unions wanting higher pay.
Chan avoided rocking the boat inside his city while its manager. Would Milstein have the courage to do what Chan never did? Or does true change take an outsider?
The mayor so far is a mystery
What does Mayor McCarty think?
“No comment,” the mayor texted me when asked. “Thank you.”
For now, McCarty’s silence is likely prudent. He has only so much time to privately sort out his options.
It would be a godsend if McCarty could find some municipal mercenary to come to Sacramento for a year, blow up some boxes, confront the council with tough choices and leave the next permanent city manager in a much better place.
The status quo shouldn’t be an option anymore. The backlog of deferred maintenance, for one example, is roughly the size of the entire annual city budget. So is the city’s unfunded pension obligation.
But running Sacramento differently, really differently, has eluded all of McCarty’s recent predecessors.
In Sacramento, more frequently than not, the safe choice is the wrong choice.