Chan got an award from a group with 19 Sacramento contracts. Something smells | Opinion
In October of last year, City Manager Howard Chan, Sacramento’s most powerful public official, was not-so-privately threatening to resign if the City Council would not extend his contract. Days before a crucial council meeting, the city’s public relations website, the City Express, published a story about how Chan had won an award.
It was quite an honor, called the President’s Award, given by the California Black Chamber of Commerce. Why would a statewide organization be honoring a city bureaucrat in Sacramento? And how could the City Council risk losing Chan if his management had received such statewide acclaim?
Well, as it turns out, the California Black Chamber of Commerce had already been given roughly $1.2 million million in 19 contracts handed out by the city.
Meanwhile, Chamber President Jay King would emerge as one of the most vocal Sacramentans urging the City Council to extend Chan’s contract.
Considering these details, it’s appropriate for the City Council to learn the correlation between some of Chan’s biggest supporters and the city contracts that Chan and his team awarded them.
We do know that Chan enjoyed the avid support from business leaders like King, who packed the council chambers to sing Chan’s praises. Business leaders also lobbied council members intensely to extend Chan’s contract as if the city’s future depended on it.
Chan’s rise in political power coincided with an extraordinary period of city disbursements to various non-profit organizations and others in Sacramento, some that hold considerable political clout.
With businesses reeling from the COVID crisis, the federal government gave Sacramento about $200 million in funds to stimulate the economy. Larger grants were approved by the City Council after Chan and his staff had recommended them. Others were approved by Chan and his staff directly.
Either way, Chan wasn’t just a city manager. He was, for this period, a rainmaker of money. So much money was given out to so many organizations in so many contracts, a city spokeswoman said that there isn’t even a list detailing them all.
Right in the thick of giving out all that money, the City Council would make Chan the highest-paid city manager in California. In 2022, it would give Chan an additional 64 weeks of vacation to cash out whenever he wanted. In the end, Chan would work for about eight years and get paid for about 10 (he got an additional year’s pay simply by quitting).
But by last year, this spigot of city largesse was beginning to run dry. Chan’s contract was set to expire, carefully designed years earlier by then-mayor Darrell Steinberg to give his successor the political luxury of a choice. Chan had signed that contract. But he had clearly changed his mind. Allies in the business and non-profit community began pressuring the City Council to keep Chan aboard indefinitely, both in public and in private.
King now finds himself in the spotlight not because of the amount of Sacramento money it got, but because of a single conversation with a candidate for mayor, public health activist Flo Cofer. She lost in November by a razor-thin margin to then-Assemblyman Kevin McCarty.
Speaking before the council shortly after the election, Cofer said, “I was told that I would be given a campaign contribution in exchange for agreeing to extend the city manager’s contract by one year… I worry why at least two political donors in Sacramento are willing to commit crimes to try to keep the unelected city manager in his job. ”
The Bee identified King as the person who talked to Cofer and developer Paul Petrovich as the alleged potential donor. Both have strenuously denied any wrongdoing, Petrovich saying so in a letter to the council that echoed his support for Chan.
King told The Bee’s Joe Rubin that the scrutiny of his organization is unfair and that others got far more money than he did. “Did you look at ... at the Asian chamber? Did you look at that $6.9 million?” referring to contracts the city has had with another group.
King has a point.
There should be a broader look, particularly one undertaken by the city itself.
Undoubtedly there are inefficiencies when any government doles out that amount of money that fast. The city has gone to some effort to be transparent about the overall spending of the largest chunk of federal money, the $120 million via the American Rescue Plan Act. It has conducted some broad audits.
But there is no way for any member of the public to truly follow the money. Without a comprehensive list of who got what from whom, the city can’t either.
An event that includes an award for the city manager, paid for in part with city funds, whose leader is a vocal proponent of the city manager, is the definition of a red flag. Chan’s job was to prevent abuse, not enable it.
What other organizations got money for similarly dubious purposes? As Cofer told the council, “It makes me worry about business as usual in Sacramento.”
In a transparent Sacramento, the City Council for starters would ask its City Auditor to compile that non-existent list of who got all that money. And then the auditor would suggest how to dig a little deeper. Undoubtedly the city would learn some helpful lessons along the way.
But I am not holding my breath. I am expecting business as usual in Sacramento.
This story was originally published February 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.