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Big ideas week continues at Sacramento Current. The last episode was about new notions in California state budgeting. In this podcast, we drill down on a new idea for local governments that I’ve been really excited about. It’s called participatory budgeting and it’s been piloted in districts in New York, Chicago, and soon San Francisco. But the City of Vallejo, Ca, is the only city in the US to try it on a citywide basis. The idea is simple–turn a chunk of your budget over to citizens, and they’ll decide directly how to spend it. To find out more, I called up Vallejo City Council member Marti Brown. Brown has a strong Sacramento connection, she worked as a redevelopment planner here for several years, and recently took a job a director of the North Franklin District Business Association. Brown highly recommends PB, and I think Sacramento ought to consider a similar project. Earlier this month, we voted to tax ourselves to improve our city, why not let us have more input in deciding how that money is spent? I don’t know if the idea would ever catch on here. We’ve seen a certain anti-democratic impulse among certain council members recently. Measure M comes to mind. But who knows? (I’m out of town posting this with limited broadband and unable to use the usual WordPress podcast widget. So I’m using Soundcloud instead. This podcast will be added to iTunes later.)

So, Proposition 30 passed. That’s good, right? But what keeps us from ending up with tens of billions in deficits next time? Not much. In fact, a lot of people say that deficits and volatility are built-in to California’s system–with its two-thirds vote requirements for taxes, ballot box budgeting, and outmoded tax system. What can we do about it?  Does the Democrats’ new super-majority open up possibilities for reform? Beats me. But that’s why we invited folks from the CSUS Hornet Politics and Policy chapter in to talk budget reform. Josh Rosa, Maya Wallace and Devin Lavelle are alums, and policy wonks, and friends of the podcast. (Devin has contributed some great posts on this blog, for example.) They’re also helping to put on an event next month, called What’s Possible: New Ideas About our Fiscal Path Forward. The event is co-sponsored by California Forward, and will be moderated by political podcast hero John Myers, now political editor over at Channel 10 KXTV. Guests include West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, and Scott Pattison, executive director at the National Association of State Budget Officers.  Also, Josh Lerner, who is director of the New York-based Participatory Budgeting Project, and who I wrote a little bit about in my column last week. In other words, it’s going to be a wonk fest–but good if you’re into that sort of thing. Sort of like this podcast.

This podcast is a sort of companion piece to a story I’ve got out in this week’s News and Review.  “KJ Inc.” is an attempt to explain–as succinctly as I can–some of the problems presented by mayor Kevin Johnson’s network of non-profit organizations, starting with the seldom-talked about Sacramento Public Policy Foundation. These groups allow the mayor to raise unlimited amounts of money from big donors–much of it secretly. See below for documents showing all of the donations to the mayor and council member via “behested” payments for the last 7 years. Most council members raise money in this way for established charities. The mayor is different, raising more than a million dollars for his own organization–which is controlled by him. The mayor has also managed to leverage a certain amount of free labor and office space for his non-profits, courtesy of the taxpayer. Despite the gift of public resources, some of the people who run the mayor’s operation–like Chris Tapio and Kunal Merchant–don’t feel obliged to answer any questions about what they do. And it’s all legal. I hope you’ll read the story, it’s not short. And listen to the podcast, it is short. And I hope the City Manager, John Shirey, will soon decide one way or the other whether he thinks it’s ok for the mayor to use City Hall to support his own private organizations in this way. Thanks Isaac, for sitting down and talking with me about the story, and for all the other stuff you do. CC Form803 CurrentFilings

I was hoping to have this up yesterday, but c’est la vie. I’ll be posting more later, but for now here’s an interview I did June 7th with Noah Wilkinson. Noah is a former Sacramentan who moved to Portland in 2008. He shares his perspective on the pros and cons of these twin cities and gives us some ideas as to how we can make Sacramento better.

This is the last episode before the big election June 5, I like to think of it as the season finale. But sorry, no long summer break , we’ll be back next week with vote results and God knows what all. We’ve been super-focused on the City, obviously, perhaps too much to the exclusion of everything else.  The County Board of Supervisors controls a much bigger budget (and has much deeper deficits to deal with). The board oversees, sort of, the Sheriff, and District Attorney. And the county is where most of the social services come from–like public health, and mental health. Well, they used to provide that. This week we talked to Gary Blenner and Jeff Kravitz, both running for County Supervisor–in District 4 (Folsom, Antelope, Bumfuck) and District 3 (Arden Arcade, Fair Oaks, Carmichael). They are progressive democrats running against entrenched republicans, in conservative districts. But they’re fun to talk to, and they’re running real campaigns, as best they can. I did a write up on their race here. And you can check out a couple of their campaign commercials below. As always, we love (civil) feedback and ideas for future segments. Our local music this week is from a band called, The Who and the What Now, we used their track Death to the Boogaloos in the opening. The closing music is I can’t help it if I’m sexy, by local artist Rich Varone. I know just how Rich feels. Thanks for listening.

The one that’s not Gavin Newsom is our guest this week What the heck is the Sacramento Current band rambling on about this week? Well, I’m glad you asked! In this latest episode, Tamie Dramer joins the panel and adds a long over due female perspective to our collective wonky-ness. We rap about a last-minute pullout at a mayoral forum, springtime gardening and how to get 23 trees worth of leaves into a green bin (spoiler alert: you can’t), and a look ahead towards a series of interviews with the candidates running for City Council. If you enjoy the Sacramento Current podcast, don’t forget to share it with a friend!