Gas theft, fancy hotels, fake time cards: Sacramento has a rotten culture | Opinion
At the city of Sacramento, a top official says employees are stealing gasoline, falsifying time cards, and taking city cars home. The police chief has spent more than $800 for a single night in a Boston hotel as she travels somewhere nearly once a month. Meanwhile, former City Manager Howard Chan is doing nothing for Sacramento in 2025, while pocketing more than $340,000.
These incidents are seemingly disconnected. But together, they all fit into a consistent and disturbing pattern.
Too many Sacramento employees are embracing a culture of milking the city for everything they can. Any workplace culture stops at the top. And while Chan is now gone, his self-serving legacy lives to this day.
The rank and file have been misbehaving so badly that management recently sent a warning memo to the entire staff to knock it off.
“Human Resources has recently seen a concerning rise in employee misconduct, including misuse of City-owned or rented vehicles and equipment, theft of fuel, inaccurate time reporting, and other instances involving the misuse of public resources,” wrote Aaron Donato, city labor relations manager. “These actions are not only violations of policy, they also erode public trust and may result in discipline, termination, or even criminal prosecution.”
Stealing gasoline and falsifying records to receive taxpayer funds also happen to be crimes.
“We have also observed a rise in unprofessional behavior,” Donato went on to write. “This ranges from off-hand remarks to inappropriate conduct in the workplace. These actions reflect poorly on both the individual and the City. As public servants, we cannot afford to compromise our credibility or professionalism.”
Donato reminded staff that city resources are strictly for city work, to fill out time cards accurately, to behave professionally and to not retaliate. “Any attempt to intimidate, isolate, or otherwise retaliate, whether through direct actions or more subtle behavior, is a serious violation and may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination,” he wrote.
Governments that put the public first don’t need to write memos like this.
Then there is Police Chief Katherine Lester. The Bee’s Joe Rubin has reviewed her travel records of last year and found someone who doesn’t exactly live in steerage on the road. She has flown first class and has managed get frequently reimbursed for most of the cost by finding advertised fares back in economy that are nearly as high. On a Boston trip, she expensed that $800-plus hotel night and rode around in fancy Uber Black cars.
A police spokesman said that a Chan underling had approved that hotel stay and that cheaper Ubers were not available or that Uber Black was an affordable way to move around several people. That City Hall blessed this outrageous hotel expense proves the point.
It’s no coincidence that Chan’s last of eight years in office as city manager was a profile in economic self-absorption. He had grown accustomed to being California’s highest paid city manager, thanks to council-granted perks such as 64 weeks extra vacation to cash out as pay. But he had been denied a raise and an extended contract. And he spent all of 2024, unsuccessfully, trying to advance his own economic well-being.
Meanwhile, all of Sacramento was watching Chan’s crusade unfold. All of City Hall was watching. The capstone to Chan’s time in office was how he resigned, only to get yet another year’s pay at the top assistant city manager level for doing absolutely nothing.
Every time Chan misbehaved, whether by abandoning diversity training or lobbying for a raise in closed session, his underlings got his clear memo.
Sacramento isn’t to serve.
Sacramento is to siphon, for as much as staff can get away with.
Lester should think about what message she is sending to every city resident, and especially her rank and file, the next time she checks into an overpriced hotel room or leaves town, gets on a plane and sits in the front.
If Donato has evidence of city staff committing crimes, perhaps he should track down Lester at the next out-of-town conference to get the police to pursue an actual case.
The interim city manager who is a close ally of Chan, Leyne Milstein, clearly hasn’t turned the culture around. Her appointment basically validated it. Donato’s disturbing memo of staff wrongdoing rises to the level of something she should have placed on an agenda to discuss in public with the mayor and the city council.
If there is to be an agent of positive change, it is the next city manager, expected to be hired sometime later this year. Setting the right example shouldn’t be so hard. This is, after all, supposed to be public service.