The Bee endorses change for the 1st District of the Sacramento City Council | Opinion

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When she was elected to the 1st District of the Sacramento City Council four years ago, Lisa Kaplan brought her background as a lawyer and 20 years of service on the Natomas Unified School District board.

“Kaplan has decades of relevant experience as an elected official charged with overseeing a public budget, and demonstrated an unmistakable advantage when it comes to her mastery of the issues facing Sacramento,” we wrote when we endorsed Kaplan in 2022.

She was smart and four years later, at 50, a potential bridge between older councilmembers and younger ones. But Kaplan has instead become a divisive force on the city’s most pressing issue: Homelessness. When she encouraged her constituents to take legal action against the city for planning a micro-community of homeless residents in her district, Kaplan lost us.

In this election we are endorsing Kaplan’s main opponent, former FBI agent Jennifer Chawla; because this district needs a new perspective that balances neighborhood needs with citywide challenges.

Homelessness and a lack of affordable housing are crushing realities in California because of negative decisions made by not-in-my-backyard elected officials. Democrats in California own the issue of homelessness and the severe lack of housing because their liberal talking points are hardly ever matched by their public policy decisions.

We can’t endorse Kaplan this time, because her behavior mirrors that of Democrats across the state who talk about compassion and community while exercising exclusionary practices that exacerbate the very crisis they pledge to fight.

We understand that elected officials are excoriated by not-in-my-backyard constituents but after covering this issue for years, we can’t go along with Sacramento’s brand of performance art on homelessness any longer.

Chawla, 40, demonstrates the potential to forge strong working relationships on the city council and County Board of Supervisors. She has earned our endorsement not simply by virtue of being Kaplan’s opponent, but on her own terms as a candidate.

The youngest of four children, Chawla arrived in the U.S. with her family from India in 1987. She was the first in her family to attend a four-year university, at UC San Diego, and returned to Sacramento in 2011, where she spent the next 13 years working for the FBI.

Chawla rightly identified that the city’s current efforts are merely “a drop in the bucket of what we actually need,” and that the “rapid development” of 1st District has not been matched with “roads, schools, traffic planning (or) public safety resources.”

She is endorsed by Mayor Kevin McCarty and Vice Mayor Karina Talamantes, and it is extremely unusual for a sitting mayor and vice mayor to endorse the opponent of a fellow councilmember. At a March town hall in The Bee’s East Sacramento newsroom, McCarty said he had never seen a city councilmember behave as Kaplan has in his more than 20 years on the local scene. Neither have we.

Unfortunately, Kaplan’s constituents followed her direction and filed a temporary restraining order against the proposed shelter site in March. On April 17, a Sacramento Superior Court judge denied the restraining order seeking to stop 40 tiny homes, each 120 square feet in size, at Arena Boulevard and El Centro Road.

“This petition is not motivated by civic duty, concern for city governance, or concern for the environment,” the city wrote in its court documents against the order. “This action is NIMBYism at its most cynical.”

The Bee later reported that “Judge Shelleyanne Chang sided with city officials, agreeing that residents did not demonstrate imminent harm.” She also noted the environmental review process for the site is not complete and construction can’t begin until it is finished.

We regret that Kaplan has set this mess in motion, and we think the 1st District needs new leadership willing to be brave, over being cynical. We hope Chawla will be that leader.