By admin 
In Sacramento County we have joint authorities to advance transit, libraries, sewage treatment and flood control, to name a few. But the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors has long resisted a joint powers authority to address homelessness. Facing our worst crisis, every local government is going it alone.
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It is no wonder that homelessness, based on the latest count, is going up in the Sacramento region.
More than a year ago, State Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento, introduced controversial legislation to force a governance solution for homelessness. Supervisors objected, but vowed to advance a local alternative.
Now more than a year later, nothing of substance has happened.
There has been only one task force meeting, behind closed doors, among a small set of Sacramento councilmembers and supervisors. The message is loud and clear: County supervisors feel no urgency to collaborate on homelessness, even with Ashby breathing down their political necks.
I was leery at first of Ashby’s Senate Bill 802; the notion of legislators telling local governments how to do their job seemed unrealistic. But Ashby has made some deft amendments in the intervening months, and with the legislative clock ticking, (the session ends at on August 31) her moment to act is now.
“Everybody is so tired of the failure and so tired of the foot dragging and so tired of the promise of meeting later,” Ashby said in a recent interview.
Given the perpetual foot dragging of the supervisors, Ashby’s bill is looking better and better.
SB 802 would require the supervisors and all the county’s cities (save Isleton) “to participate in and work together to establish a joint powers authority.” In essence, the legislation creates the table for the local leaders to, perhaps, do something.
This new wording carefully avoids a stronger mandate coming from the Capitol to create this authority on homelessness, as her original bill did. SB 802 is now closer to a call to engage.
At a legislative hearing in July, Deputy County Executive Chevon Kothari said that SB 802 “sets bad precedent by taking away local authority.” She asked legislators to give the county “the latitude to design this locally.”
But the county is on record on numerous occasions objecting to a joint powers authority as a governance structure to collaborate on homeless management. The Sacramento City Council is on record with precisely the opposite perspective.
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“Everything has moved entirely too slowly,” said Sacramento City Councilmember Caity Maple. Talk of a homeless JPA dates back to 2010. “This is not a new thing.”
Ashby said she intends to amend her legislation so that all five supervisors can participate in the JPA. Sacramento would have five representatives, Elk Grove two, and one representative each for Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Citrus Heights.
Technically, an task force of the very same local officials could sit routinely around the very same table and receive updates on homeless management and discuss new approaches. Ashby’s idea is essentially a JPA without its own authority.
But Maple and Ashby see a big difference between something informal and something durable.
“A task force can be stood down at any time,” Ashby said.
A JPA has to behave like a government with all its transparency requirements. ”The meetings happen in public,” Maple said. “The public can review documents. They can come to these meetings and voice their opinions.”
In the staid chamber of the supervisors, county staff make presentations about homelessness as if everything is under control. Such atmospherics couldn’t be maintained at any homeless JPA. There inevitably will be criticism of how the county is failing to provide the necessary treatment for drug addiction and mental illness.
The shortcomings of what we’ve been doing are evident on too many of our streets. There are more than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in Sacramento County, based on the latest count.
Maple on Aug. 6 participated in that first private task forcemeeting with two supervisors (Patrick Kennedy and Rich Desmond) and some other local representatives on homeless governance. She said the next meeting is scheduled for October. This pace of meetings is a joke.
Meanwhile, Ashby needs her bill to pass out of the Assembly so that the Senate can concur on amendments before SB 802 can reach the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom. That’s a lot of votes in a matter of days.
“I’ll have to fight for it,” she said. “I’ll have to make it my top priority.”
How to collaboratively oversee the management of the response to homelessness is a matter best resolved inside local politics. That it hasn’t happened for years is no fault of Ashby’s. SB 802 is the only alternative in town.
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