Issue date: 10/8/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Nixon Sacramento mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson [Click to enlarge]

Kevin Johnson is challenging Heather Fargo to become mayor for Sacramento. A former NBA basketball player and community organizer in the Oak Park neighborhood, Johnson hopes to bring the kind of leadership he feels was lacking at City Hall for the past eight years. He spoke with The State Hornet to outline his views before Monday's debate.

State Hornet: What is your vision for the city of Sacramento? What are some things that you would like to see the city improve, or some things neglected altogether that you hope to bring about as mayor?

Kevin Johnson: Part of the reason I'm running for mayor is that I love Sacramento; I'm a third-generation Sacramentan. I played in the NBA for 12 years and could live anywhere I wanted, and I wanted to come back to the city that I love and care so much about. I just felt that Sacramento, with the right leadership, could go to the next level. I think we have the opportunity to be a top-notch city. Bold leadership will make a big difference. Two of my top priorities are public safety and schools. Number one (being) public safety… Public safety has to be (a number one priority) in my vision. Number two: Schools. You can't have a great city without great schools. Sac State and UC Davis are our keys in terms of employers, our keys in terms of intellectual capital, our keys in terms of developing young people and talent and the educated workforce of the future.

SH: In the short term, how do you plan to address things like having brownouts at our fire stations (and) our cops are now two to a car so we have less patrol cars on the street (with) no overtime so they're having to complete paperwork before the end of their shifts? How do you plan to address that in the immediate future to make people feel more comfortable?

KJ: It's very challenging in Sacramento. For me, it's really a couple of things. You have to have a mayor who's in touch and realizes we have an issue before us. First of all, realizing we have a challenge in front of us. Number two: As a mayor, I have to be an advocate and take advantage of this pulpit, and make public safety a top priority. That's what I have committed to do. Sacramento spends 51 percent of its general fund on public safety. Without doing anything different; just taking the resources we have and reprioritizing those, you would get an additional $21 million for law enforcement and $17 million of additional revenue for fire. That would create the huge dent that we need to take on and alleviate some of these challenges.

SH: There is a federal investigation going on, and that puts things in people minds. Some of it has to do with AmeriCorps volunteers working with your organization. If the university starts working on internship programs with you, what do you say to us that makes us feel that these issues are not going to exist, that we're not going to be hearing about these issues with regards to Sac State?

KJ: The first thing I would say to students is, number one: these are allegations; there has been no facts and nothing proven. I feel very confident that when the U.S. Attorney's office finishes their investigation, we'll be absolved of any wrongdoing. I feel confident that there will be no criminal challenges whatsoever. What I would say to the university is we've had great partnerships with St. HOPE and Sac State over the last 18 years. We'll just continue to build on those, and as mayor of this city we'll be able to do that 10-20-fold. We all need each other, and I think the city has a tremendous opportunity to be an ideal partner for the university. We'll comply with any challenge if we've fallen short.



Hornet news can be reached at news@statehornet.com

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