Overzealous Mayors and Hush Money

The Sacramento Bee’s Sunday Forum section focused on the strong mayor initiative, providing an interesting historical recap of the city’s governance structure. Our current system is an outgrowth of the 1920s progressive movement that put a city manager executive in charge to protect against overzealous mayors, according to Robert Benedetti, executive director of the Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership at the University of the Pacific:

Governor Hiram Johnson and his allies legislated a separation of politics and administration at the local level, fearing that cities would be ill served if those with visions were the same as those who implemented them. In the name of expediency, visionaries might recruit friends or ideological compatriots and overlook graft or lavish overspending to see their dreams implemented.

This may sound familiar, given the pervasive presence of developer representatives funding Kevin Johnson’s Boss Mayor power grab and serving as his close advisers in City Hall.

Interestingly, Tom Hiltachk – Johnson’s campaign treasurer and the author of the strong mayor initiative – writes in the Bee, “There is a false perception that the mayor is in charge.” Yet during Johnson’s campaign, his staff blamed every city ill on Mayor Heather Fargo. Now, with Johnson in office, the tune has changed.

As noted in this blog previously, Sacramento is increasingly leery of awarding unprecedented power to a single politician. As former City Manager Bill Edgar said in Sunday’s Bee, residents “fear that the council will be disregarded. They don’t want a top-down governance structure.”

This notion of unchecked power is particularly chilling given the latest revelations about the current mayor’s judgment. Allegations that Johnson offered hush money to a volunteer in his Hood Corps service program in connection with his unwelcome sexual advance were reported in media outlets across the country last week (here and here). The volunteer’s sworn statement to investigators was only the latest story about Johnson’s inappropriate conduct with girls (here and here and here).