Phil Serna and fellow county supervisors are failing Sacramento. Here’s why | Opinion
Eight years ago, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors invited Sacramento’s new mayor, Darrell Steinberg and the full City Council to a joint meeting in the supervisors’ chambers that focused on housing and homeless issues. Roughly 400 interested citizens watched a meeting lasting more than six hours.
They have not met together in any public meeting on any subject since, even as homelessness grew more visible and more dire in Sacramento County.
New Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty wants to get Sacramento’s most important governments - the city and county - together for a joint meeting on homelessness and other serious topics.
But he hasn’t been able to make it happen because the supervisors seem wedded to a self-created theater of political isolation. McCarty, who went out of his way to be deferential to the supervisors when he was running for his current job, is now resorting to commiserating with his fellow councilmembers about the cold shoulder he is getting from the county.
‘A marriage partnership’
“This is essentially a marriage partnership between the city and county coming together,” McCarty told fellow council members at a Tuesday workshop on housing and homeless issues. “So I have been communicating with several supervisors about this.”
But so far, no meeting. No invitation.
“I’d like to take charge to make that happen with the voices of others,” Councilmember Rick Jennings told the mayor at the Tuesday meeting.
This is embarrassing for the supervisors.
It’s not like the homeless problem has been solved in Sacramento or that these two elected bodies have nothing to discuss. Inside each respective chamber, there are different perspectives on how governments have been responding to the homeless challenge and what should happen next. It is a dynamic that makes some supervisors downright uncomfortable at their own meetings.
Phil Serna is the longest-serving supervisor in Sacramento and is chair of the board this year. But so far, Serna has not shown McCarty the dignity and grace to respond in kind. For a supervisor who supposedly represents half of Sacramento, that’s not exactly putting the city as any kind of priority.
Plenty to talk about
Here is one of many important necessary joint discussions: For decades, the city and county have jointly managed affordable housing programs through a joint powers authority, the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. Now, supervisors are rethinking this partnership entirely while city council members, at least based on their comments Tuesday, seem content with SHRA.
Nationally, the future of the federal voucher program, which provides more than 13,000 affordable housing units to Sacramento-area residents, is in jeopardy under a Trump administration looking for spending cuts.
All this uncertainty surrounding the future direction of affordable housing in the Sacramento area makes this topic ripe for a joint discussion.
“There’s not really a joint shared conversation on… our shared priorities,” said Sacramento Councilmember Caity Maple at the Tuesday meeting. A joint council-supervisor meeting “would be really valuable for me and for us to have that conversation. How do we make that happen? Do we make a formal request to the county? Is that something you do mayor?”
McCarty responded: “I’ve tested the waters.”
Throughout his campaign and new tenure as mayor, McCarty has had opportunity after opportunity to be critical, even constructively, of supervisors and the county on the homeless. But he has not taken the bait. He has stayed true to a spirit of collaboration.
The sunshine of shame beams solely on Serna, who does not serve his Sacramento district or the board at large very well at all.
At some point, the Sacramento City Council should force the issue. Absent Serna doing his job and calling for this meeting, the council should pass a resolution asking for this meeting. So, for that matter, should Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove and Citrus Heights and Folsom. It may take a few joint meetings to get the ball rolling.
The county is the sole provider of the social services that homeless people and other at-risk populations need. It’s not too much to expect supervisors to lead by example and not in a bunker.