The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday did what neither candidate running for mayor wanted, which was to dump City Manager Howard Chan’s unresolved contract in the lap of whoever wins November’s mayoral election. Sacramento’s new mayor will have to deal with this mess at a December meeting normally reserved for family photos after a typically stress-free swearing-in ceremony.
It was a profile in cowardice by an elected city council frozen between being sick of dealing with Chan’s contract demands but also fearing the wrath of people backing Chan, the unelected manager with all the juice at Sacramento City Hall.
Pillars of Sacramento’s business community and a sizable contingent of city employees came to City Hall Tuesday afternoon in Chan’s defense, hoping he stays for at least another year. And it was clear from their comments that Chan is their leader, not the mayor and certainly not the council.
The mayoral candidates backed by business and city employees did not make the November runoff, so Chan is the political horse that they intend to ride as long as they can.
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“We have lost control of our city manager,” said outgoing councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, one of two votes against Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s proposal to punt Chan’s expiring contract to the next council and mayor.
“It’s a little bit of darned if you do and darned if you don’t,” said Steinberg, who has pursued the wordsmithing of compromise and consensus his entire career. The mayor was trying to replicate an option he was afforded as Sacramento’s new leader nearly eight years ago, which was a leadership role in selecting a new city manager back in 2017.
But this simply isn’t the same set of circumstances. It’s far from clear if Chan wants to serve just through 2025 or indefinitely based on council agenda documents. And unless something changes with a new mayor and two new council members, there are not the votes to do just about anything when it comes to the city manager. And in a divided Sacramento, that seems to suit city employees and the business elite just fine.
“Howard has shown critical leadership for us,” Michael Ault, president of Sacramento’s Downtown Partnership, told the council. “Now is the time for stable leadership.”
The Chan-centric nature of Ault’s view of leadership was simply too much for the departing mayor. “This has been a collaboration with the entire city council,” he said. “Not just the city manager.”
What’s ironic about Tuesday’s tense council meeting was how unnecessary it all was, and how Chan and Chan alone decided to make his future such a central issue just as ballots have arrived in city mailboxes and a historic election for a new mayor is under way between public health activist Flojaune Cofer and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty.
Chan was granted an employment agreement while becoming city manager back in 2017. It has been amended over the years, most notably in 2022, when the council granted Chan an additional 64 weeks of paid leave to cash out at any time. The perk has made Chan the highest paid city manager for the last two years.
The council also previously voted to sunset Chan’s contract at the end of this year. But that doesn’t mean that Chan - or a key perk in this contract - suddenly goes away.
The contract guarantees Chan yet another year of extra pay — at the top scale of an assistant city manager, or about $340,000 — even if he was he terminated or left voluntarily . This guarantee doesn’t go away at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve when the rest of the agreement does expire. Rather, “This paragraph will survive the termination of this Agreement,” his contract says.
Nonetheless, the council voted Tuesday to eliminate a 60-day notice required in the current contract for Chan to voluntarily leave the top management job. And just after a new mayor and new council is sworn in on Dec. 10, the next council must consider a request by Chan to have his contract extended through 2025.
“Underhanded moves like this are exactly why we need a new style of leadership at City Hall,” Cofer said last week . “The new council deserves to be able to thoughtfully make this important decision together on their own timeline without political manipulation.”
As for McCarty, “I would be opposed to having the city manager’s contract on the (Dec. 10) agenda,” he said in a statement via spokesman Andrew Acosta to The Bee’s Theresa Clift. “New members of the council are being sworn in that night and this issue deserves a thoughtful discussion.”
Councilman Rick Jennings said that a full year’s contract extension for Chan, something he supports, was about “treating (Chan) with dignity and respect and professionalism and not tearing that person down.”
This felt, rather, all about political power, and who really wields it in Sacramento.
It is certainly not Steinberg. Or the city council. Rather, Steinberg perhaps inadvertently has afforded Chan potentially huge leverage over the next council, a dynamic that was not forced upon him as a new mayor.
Councilwoman Mai Vang openly worried Tuesday about Chan continuing to maneuver for votes. She noted that under the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, six council members cannot privately huddle to discuss the future of the city manager. But Chan can do so, in one private council member meeting at a time.
“I want to make sure that the new mayor…does not get overruled by six votes because a city manager is not subject to the Brown Act,” Vang said. That’s exactly a scenario that Steinberg has set in motion.
Chan shamed this mayor and the council when the city hastily placed on the last agenda of 2023 a pay raise for himself — a 5% salary bump and six extra weeks of vacation. The council’s approval was nullified because it had violated the Brown Act by considering such an action with barely 24 hours’ notice.
“We have spent months and months and hours and days and so much time trying to negotiate a deal with our city manager,” said Councilwoman Karina Talamantes. “And we haven’t had any luck….We have so many critical problems in our city. And we are focused on this.”
There will be no transition of power in Sacramento on Dec. 10, because absent some big changes, it doesn’t appear that the elected officials actually run much of anything in this town any longer.
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