By Theresa Clift
After the Sacramento City Council violated state law by granting a raise to City Manager Howard Chan, the council may rescind it — and also prohibit city managers from putting their own raises on future agendas.
The council approved the raise last month, but was set to redo the vote after receiving questions from The Sacramento Bee that revealed the city had violated The Brown Act by approving the raise in a late night so-called special meeting. Special meetings are less transparent because they require a shorter public notice period and no public comments.
On Tuesday, instead of reapproving the raise, which was on the agenda, Councilman Eric Guerra made a motion to delay the vote to a future meeting. That item passed, along with a plan for council to consider changing its rules to make it so the city manager and city attorney can no longer place raises for themselves on agendas.
“Whether it’s an actual or perceived conflict of interest is an important factor,” Guerra said. “I’ve heard from my constituents we need a change.” Chan’s base salary was set to increase from $400,000 to $420,000, with 240 hours leave time. However unlike the December vote, Tuesday’s item would have no longer allowed Chan to cash out the leave time at his discretion. If he had cashed it all out, it would have added roughly $50,000 to his salary.
Source: Sacramento Bee
1 Comment
Why don’t our California legislators, our governor and the CA Attorney General “get it.” The U.S. Supreme court has already determined that people have a right to possess guns to protect themselves. Which is absolutely necessary as the police aren’t really protecting anything these days. Every useless law restricting gun ownership and possession of law avoiding people merely criminal legal conduct and allows criminals an easier path to committing their bandits without concern for the consequences. If you rely on the police to protect you, put the coroner’s office ahead of the call to the police. They’ll likely get there first anyway.