On the phony Kings arena outrage, strong-mayor freshness and city school district accountability -Sacramento News & Review

Sacramento News & Review - On the phony Kings arena outrage, strong-mayor freshness and city school district accountability - Bites - Opinions - August 22, 2013:

On the phony Kings arena outrage, strong-mayor freshness and city school district accountability

Rich guys are always trying to jam each other up and steer the public process, and public money, toward their own interests

By Cosmo Garvin 
cosmog@newsreview.com

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This article was published on 08.22.13.

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Bites did a double take when charter-school advocate Penny Schwinn resigned her elected post on the Sacramento County Board of Education last month in order to take a high-paying job in the bureaucracy of the Sacramento City Unified School District.
She’s now SCUSD’s new assistant superintendent of performance management—which comes with a$133,617 salary. The job is one of many, many six-figure gigs in the administration, and is described as being “the accountability leader” for the district, which is also the job description of the district’s chief accountability officer ($149,914).
Schwinn is qualified for the big bucks because she was at Teach for America for three years, a St. Hope administrator for two years and, of course, she founded her own charter school,
Schwinn was executive director of the school. It was her baby. But she had to give it up to take the Sac city job.
Sort of. Perhaps as an added perk, the district is appointing Schwinn to Capitol Collegiate’s governing board. According to district policy, Schwinn will be the district’s “eyes and ears” and help provide oversight of the school she founded.
Who better to be the public’s watchdogover a charter school than the person who started that charter school, hired its staff and created its culture? Surely, if there were anything wrong over at Capitol Collegiate, Schwinn will let us know, pronto. Right?
Nevertheless, Bites asked district spokesman Gabe Ross, “Couldn’t there be a conflict of interest there?”
“The role on the board is not a conflict of interest,” he replied. So, there you go.

Sacramento Tomorrow was supposed to be a new, fresh look at Sacramento’s governance. But every time Bites checks in, up pops another crony from the old Boss Johnson brigade.
Here’s an excerpt from the fundraising email for Sacramento Tomorrow sent out by developer Jon Bagatelos—or “The Bag Man,” as he’s sometimes called (in this column). Bagatelos is a big Kevin Johnson fundraiser and one of the money guys behind previous strong-mayor plans.
“In the past few years we have made a lot of changes to the City Council for the betterment