Sacramento supervisors earned criticism along with their hefty new pay raises | Opinion

In many jobs, amassing a track record filled with public rebukes and accusations of mismanagement of money could lead to a swift boot out the door. For the Sacramento County Supervisors, it’s led to a 36% pay raise. Which they voted on for themselves.

Along with that extra money, they’re now earning some much-deserved criticism.

At their May 23 meeting, supervisors Phil Serna, Patrick Kennedy, Rich Desmond and Pat Hume voted to approve their pay raise of more than $46,000 — and then they tried to hide it on the consent calendar with about 50 other items that got approved with a single vote.

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Supervisor Sue Frost, in a rare, reasonable state of mind, pulled the item for discussion and was the only vote against it.

Now the Sacramento Taxpayers Association has officially denounced the Board of Supervisors’ raise, calling it “just inappropriate and wrong.”

“First, considering the economic challenges the county is currently facing, the timing of the pay raise could not have been more inopportune,” said Association President W. Bruce Lee in a statement. “Second, the process of using the ‘consent calendar’ for the passage of the pay increase in order to avoid public scrutiny is highly inappropriate.”

Members of the Sacramento Taxpayers Association obviously keep a keen eye on the revenue side, but they also monitor utility rates, bond measures as well as city and county budgets. They frequently testify at public hearings and meetings in support of taxpayer-related issues, because both process and substance matter.

“Board members justified the pay raise by citing the County Executive’s advice to the Board that a substantial increase was necessary as some media outlets quoted that Supervisor pay had not increased since 1991,” Lee said.

“However, in examining the public record it is discovered that from just 2012 to 2022 (or 10 years) the Supervisors’ base pay went up by $34,000 a year, not counting a car allowance, pension and higher pay for serving on regional committees and commissions that they appoint themselves to.”

The board giving itself such a huge pay raise reeks of special treatment. Undoubtedly there are job classifications throughout the county system that are underpaid compared to nearby peers, but putting the elected officials’ own paychecks as a higher priority sends the following message: “Our needs come first.”

The county supervisors have been cited numerous times by the Sacramento County Grand Jury, including once just last week, when the board was warned it could lose control of the county’s two jails to a court-appointed receiver if it doesn’t immediately improve jail conditions.

The Grand Jury’s official complaints about the county jails include a lack of adequate staffing, the unnecessary and harmful use of isolation for prisoners, a failure to provide adequate medical and mental care, and discrimination against inmates with disabilities.

Last year, the Board all but ignored another Grand Jury report that found the supervisors had “scant interaction” with the county’s Office of Public Health for the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic until public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye had to plead for funding in August 2020.

The report stated that the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors had “abdicated its responsibility to determine community needs” and that the board had “used the vast majority of the CARES Act funding it received to augment the county budget and support county operations while providing minimal support to the Sacramento County Health Department or other county agencies.”

The Board of Supervisors released a statement saying it “disagreed wholly” with most of the findings, which prompted the Grand Jury to respond in turn that “the board’s responses to the Grand Jury report reflects a continuing refusal to acknowledge or accept responsibility for any deficiencies of leadership, accountability or engagement during a countywide emergency.”

“The board, unfortunately, cloaks itself in bureaucratic, misleading, and at times inaccurate statements,” wrote the Grand Jury just one year ago.

Supervisors also got questioned and criticized by the public at their June 13 meeting, mostly by members of SEIU Local 2015, the in-home healthcare workers union which has been requesting a raise from the county to $20 per hour since negotiations began in December.

“As a home care provider, it’s been rough,” said Loretta Jackson, an SEIU 2015 member. “I’m asking that each and every one of you would find it in your hearts to give us a raise. I’m not here to beat you over the heads about the raise you received because I’m happy for you; because if it’s going to help you to live a long and happy life, that’s what we’re asking for.”

It must be hard for the supervisors to sit there with such stony faces and an extra $46,000 in their pockets while listening to their constituents speak about having to live in their cars, but it’s unsurprising considering how they already treat the homeless in this county, as though they are disgusting burdens and not an effect of the county’s own, appalling lack of resources and care.

The chances of getting this raise revoked are slim so let’s at least agree that it shouldn’t ever go down this way again: Supervisors should establish a policy at their next meeting to always place their raises before the public in a formal hearing, and never again on a consent calendar.