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“Paradise Lost” reveals a world
in which the Sacramento Region’s economy booms, but its leadership
falters. Infighting, parochial thinking, and lack of support for
necessary public services result in the State’s intervention
to run a region that the locals could not.
After saying her goodbyes, former Sacramento County
Supervisor Wendy Monroe slid behind the wheel of her car, sighed,
and began her journey. Two hours to Reno.
What went wrong? The year 2025 in Sacramento missed
the mark of even some of her lowest expectations. In the crossroads
of commerce, with a pleasant climate and a cost of living well below
that of the Bay Area, the region’s suburbs were prime candidates
to accommodate growing families and Bay Area expatriates at the
turn of the century. But looking back now, how did they let the
balance tip?
GOVERNMENT TOWN
Block after block of government buildings gave
way as Wendy drove to the freeway. There was a time when “government
town” held another meaning; now it really was the government’s
town. The State, throwing up its hands when local officials from
the six counties failed to agree on an environmental resources management
plan, imposed its own regional government. State-appointed representatives
making future land-use decisions! It wasn’t her failure alone,
but she felt the sting nonetheless. Virtually every domain for which
she and other elected officials held responsibility was in disrepair,
from the public schools to the transportation system, from public
health to air quality.
Now many seemed indifferent to the intervention.
It was very different than the early part of the century, when voters
wanted government to simply stay out of the way. Memories of the
boom years of the nineties had fueled another round of speculative
fever. The Dow crossed 12,000 in 2004 and flirted with 15,000 in
2006. Attention turned toward commerce and private gain.
REGIONAL LIVES
Stopped at a light near the onramp, discomfort
grew in Wendy’s chest. Her eyes darted from the woman behind
the shopping cart filled with blankets and clothes to the halo of
graffiti hovering on the wall above her. The car windows were closed,
but she knew the smell of urban poverty and the decay of dreams.
A horn startled her from behind. Had this really been her district?
Urban reinvestment was one example of blood spilled
in Wendy’s political battles. Now infamous, this specific
zip code had seen little investment when times were good, and in
recent years, there had been none. Most of her neighbors were afraid
to drive through the neighborhood, choosing instead to drive an
extra 20 blocks on surface streets before doubling back on the freeway
just to avoid the reminders of poverty. They rejected this shorter
route to their kid’s school, their friends’ houses,
and their shopping malls, most in wealthier, shinier parts of the
six-county region.
She was happy to get out of the capitol city, or
at least in to the line of traffic on the freeway, all intent on
leaving it for the night. Traffic congestion had increased during
the boom years of the first decade of the century, and with no relief
in sight, prospective employers could hardly woo employees to the
area with promises about quality of life. By 2020, Sacramento passed
Atlanta in hours per worker spent on crowded highways. In 2021,
Money Magazine put Sacramento close to the bottom of its list of
“livable places to work.” This was success in a strong
economy?
LOCAL BATTLES
When Cisco decided to relocate its headquarters
from Silicon Valley to Natomas in 2008, a majority of Sacramento
County voters elected to end their commitment to farmland and open-space
protection saying that the Urban Services Boundary was “no
longer relevant.” Majority rule did little to inhibit lawsuits,
however, and for every two steps forward down the path of economic
growth there were one or more steps back in the form of lawsuits
by environmentalists, neighborhood groups, or low income housing
advocates.
Struggling to retain its legitimacy, bending with
the winds, The Sacramento Area Council of Government (SACOG) Board
of Directors abandoned their more ambitious regional plan and approved
a per-capita distribution of federal transportation funds. Wendy
cringed at the thought. The Sacramento Region Blueprint Transportation
and Land Use Plan had been such an opportunity at the turn of the
century. The process was only as good as its participants, and unfortunately,
many of the region’s residents and local governments chose
to go it on their own without participating in the thought beyond
their neighborhoods and jurisdictions. Now, the recently incorporated
cities were happy to allocate the funds without reference to Valley
Vision’s regional open space plan. The dissenting voices of
leadership calling for vision, collaboration, or long-term thinking
were met with an unceremonious and public guffaw from well-orchestrated
interests.
Access points along this freeway had been a prime
motivator for several of the incorporations in the early part of
the century. Why shouldn’t each of these communities profit
from a well-sited retail base like the others on this gentle rise
to the Sierra? One incorporated after another. But look at the outcome:
a big mess, one piece indistinguishable from another.
Originally from a family of cattlemen with land
in this area east of the Sacramento, Wendy (Burnham) Monroe had
worked in her later political life to create and further elegant
arguments for conservation of the area’s working landscapes.
But the case fell short. Why work with neighboring communities to
plan for the land between them when the short-term gain could be
had by acting independently?
By 2007, SACOG looked more like a cross between
a demolition derby and a well-scripted wrestling match than a cooperative
council of governments. Seeing the infighting led critics to question
the federal government’s allocation of a billion dollars to
Sacramento area infrastructure development. Environmentalists, too,
joined the fight over a transportation plan that would only accelerate
growth. The issues were local, but the battle was on a regional
scale.
The counties last into SACOG, were the first out.
Citing local control and the interests of their residents, they
withdrew their time, their money, and their dedication to a larger
regional vision. The more rural counties abandoned their long-term
policies of limiting growth to urban areas. The Yolo County Board—an
ag-land conservation leader in the first part of the century—opted
to allow residential urbanization outside of city limits...especially
when there were opportunities to raise short-term cash.
Push, pull; forward, back. The Sacramento Bee’s
pages had plenty of conflicts to cover, but after feuds inside the
McClatchy family led to a sale of the paper to the Chicago Tribune,
they lacked the editorial leadership to take a stand.
With the Sacramento Region unable to reach agreement
on the Blueprint, the federal funds, whose promise had risen to
$3 billion, were cast into jeopardy. The feds only approved Sacramento’s
plan for air pollution reduction because advances in fuel technology
made it possible to avoid any hard political decisions. And with
the Tribune’s growing chain of papers doing such a sensational
job of covering the dog fights in Sacramento, legislators in Washington
found good cause to hold back on spending those promised billions
for transportation infrastructure in California.
NET LOSS
In retrospect, the loss of those federal funds
for transportation infrastructure probably marked the turning point
in the fortunes of the Sacramento area. After Alcatel merged with
Cisco, their headquarters also shrank. The California Fuel Cell
Partnership decided to move its headquarters from West Sacramento
to Riverside. High housing costs, traffic congestion and poor air
quality led Intel to close its operations in the area. A leading-edge
biotechnology firm that had been intending to locate north of the
airport chose Iowa instead, citing nervousness over the area’s
“lack of civic cohesion” and “inter-jurisdictional
bickering.”
The loss of tax revenues from both business and
newly incorporated cities left the region facing a downward spiral
of under-funded social services and poor prospects for luring new
businesses. In a bitter fight for business development, the City
of Sacramento filed suit against West Sacramento on the proposed
development of a Microsoft campus. As a result, Microsoft relocated
a division to Colorado Springs instead. Wendy’s oldest son
went with it.
Many residents relocated to Nevada and points east
in quest of jobs, cleaner air, and a lower cost of living. Not even
the remaining farmers could make ends meet. Water costs and pollution
damage to crops caused by left them borrowing their way into bankruptcy
court.
Wendy’s mind shifted to the very recent past
as she passed the billboard advertising the Bee. The paper’s
headline the day after she resigned her office was taken directly
from her prepared statement and it rang in her head, “THIS
COUNTY IS UNMANAGEABLE.” The reporter chose to focus on internal
county relations as the reason for her departure. The rest of the
quote which did not run in the paper said much more, “Without
regional action, we can make no lasting strides and will instead
be doomed to lost opportunities, inter-jurisdictional bickering,
and our very own tract of hell.” The message had a small audience
it seemed.
“That’s behind me now,” thought
the former supervisor. She released the cruise control and gently
depressed the accelerator as she felt the car quietly struggling
to keep speed on the steepening slope.
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