Ten weeks of vacation for the state’s highest-paid city manager? Really, Sacramento? | Opinion

The city of Sacramento is poised to give City Manager Howard Chan a 10-week vacation compensation package that is worth more money than the median income of a family in Sacramento County.

Council members are scheduled to amend Chan’s contract Tuesday night in a move that will send the wrong message to fellow staff and the public. All the other top city bureaucratic positions are up for 5% salary increases, but in Chan’s case, his base pay would increase to $420,664.33. His increase would be retroactive to Feb. 11 — yet another Valentine.

Why single out Chan? His existing compensation package already makes him the highest-paid city manager in California, and he already received a raise last year that bumped him from $372,700 to $400,652. It’s true that Chan is considered to be good at his job, and he is a favorite of Sacramento’s business community.

But this new bump would represent a 60% pay increase since he became city manager just six years ago.

For Chan, the compensation adjustment goes a significant step further. As the proposal states: “In addition to the new hourly rates, the city manager will receive an additional 240 hours of leave time.”

As previously reported, Chan’s contract allows him to cash out his unused leave time. If Chan decides that his regular four weeks of vacation is just fine and cashes out the extra six weeks of leave, he would receive another $48,538.19 in pay. If he decides to take no vacation at all, that’s another $80,896.98.

Chan’s annual pay package totals more than half a million dollars.

No city council that considers public service its highest priority would approve that kind of contract. The Sacramento City Council should reject this proposal.

Fiscal times are getting tougher at city hall. The days of receiving extra federal aid from the COVID era are over. Years of surpluses in state budgets are in the rear-view mirror, with projections of deficits going forward. The city is projected to dip into its own general fund to pay its share of the Golden 1 Center construction in the coming years.

Earlier this month, the Sacramento City Council delegated to Chan the responsibility of identifying and establishing managed “safe ground” encampments for Sacramento’s growing homeless population. Mayor Darrell Steinberg said at the Aug. 1 council meeting that he expects some or all of these sites to be self-governed. That means that there will be no city-paid person at any given site around the clock.

If the public complains, it would be ironic if Chan suggested that his budget is limited and that staffing is too expensive — because Chan himself is too expensive.

The council just spent $26 million to settle a lawsuit with developer Paul Petrovich after courts repeatedly ruled that the council did not give Petrovich a fair hearing on his proposal to add a gas station to his retail center in the redeveloped Curtis Park rail yards. The verdict laid bare the fact that the council can have a fairness problem. The same could be said for Chan’s contract enhancements paid for with public money.

Sacramento voters have repeatedly turned down proposals over the years to move to a “strong mayor” form of governance that allows the top elected official to hire the city manager and truly manage the city. A strong-manager form of leadership does not require nearly three months of paid leave (once those 13 paid holiday days are included). It requires strong judgment. This isn’t it, either from Chan or the council.