Sacramentans have no idea what county supervisors do. Ignorance keeps them in power | Opinion
Sacramento County recently hired one of California’s sharpest pollsters to understand what locals thought of county government and its budget priorities. The answer: Almost nothing.
Supervisors learned that the public is blissfully unaware of just about everything they do.
The findings may not help the five supervisors craft a budget this coming year. But it could buoy their re-election chances. They could continue to run a Sacramento County government flying far below the radar of a disengaged public.
“I wish I could come to you today and say that there has been a revolution over the past couple years and the public is really dialed in and paying attention to the work that you are doing,” said David Metz, president of the Los Angeles-based FM3 Research. “Sadly, that is not the case.”
In four different focus groups totaling about 40 Sacramentans from all walks of life, “few of them were able to name who represents them on the Board of Supervisors,” Metz said.
The same holds true of the county’s role in making our society work.
“There is very low awareness of county government,” Metz said. “Anything to do with t he county budget. Very little detailed public awareness.”
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors are, arguably, the five most powerful elected local officials in the 994 square-miles of this county. More powerful than any mayor, any city council member, any legislator. They provide municipal services like road repairs and law enforcement more than any city, including Sacramento. They are the ones responsible for getting the county’s homeless the mental health care or drug treatment that they need. They run the international airport. They fund our justice system, the district attorney and the public defender.
Rich Desmond, the county supervisor representing unincorporated areas such as Arden Arcade and Foothill Farms, tried to make light of the findings. Smiling at Metz, Desmond said, “Please just assure me no one in Arden Arcade or Foothills Farms said that their mayor was Darrell Steinberg,” Desmond jokingly said. “I would feel like a complete failure.”
Metz’s response was no joke. Steinberg, Sacramento’s former mayor, was not confused for the no-name supervisors representing these unincorporated communities. “There were a few people who did think he was on the Board of Supervisors,” Metz said. “His name got mentioned.” Ouch.
So as an exercise by the county to get serious public input on how to prioritize any of its budget spending, the insights Metz and his firm ultimately gleaned had its limits based on the ignorant audience. But the county did learn some valuable tidbits on county politics.
The mindset of county renters, for example, is completely different than that of homeowners. “The renters were much more pessimistic about almost all aspects of life in the county,” Metz said. “They are concerned about making ends meet.”
On homelessness, Sacramento city residents view the homeless challenge quite differently than those in unincorporated county suburbs.
“For people who live in Sacramento or a city that had a significant population of people who are unhoused on the streets, they described it as something of an immediate threat,” Metz said. For Sacramento County’s suburbanites, “they said homelessness is not something I see happening in my community, it is one of the reasons I am pleased with the quality of life in my community.”
Among the focus group participants, there is a shift in thinking of more liberal respondents on how to handle the homeless crisis.
“Three or four years ago, we would see a big partisan divide, where more conservative members of the community tended to focus more on enforcement, laws, clearing encampments,” Metz said. “Those leaning to the left tended to focus more on providing services and compassionate support. To the extent that things have changed, it is that those on the left have become much more mixed on where they were a few years ago.”
It’s a good thing for the supervisors that the public has no idea who they are or what they are doing. When it comes to the homeless, the top solution the focus groups had was to prevent the problem in the first place, to keep them in their homes before losing them and forcing them to live a life on the streets. The county is doing a horrible job, if any, at prevention — particularly with its own money.
If the public were to understand that, all the supervisors would be at risk of getting unelected, particularly those who represent Sacramento where the homeless problem is the worst, Phil Serna and Patrick Kennedy. They happen to be up for re-election next year, should they choose to run again.
It’s beyond unsettling that a body so powerful is so anonymous. It’s bad for democracy. It’s bad for land use planning. It’s bad for setting budget priorities. It’s bad for everything about this county. It’s good that the supervisors hired an expert to confirm that they are impregnable. Now it’s time to do something about that.