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Two members like the idea. Two are opposed. A fifth thinks it’s not a high priority.

These five members of the Sacramento City Council gave their views Thursday on a recommendation from an advisory group to make the council positions full time. The City Council has nine members because it includes the mayor. Currently, eight City Council positions are part time, while the mayor serves full time.

Councilmembers earn $52,000 per year.

The full-time recommendation comes from the city’s Charter Review Committee. Councilwoman Lauren Hammond asked the committee to study the topic.

Council positions are  “full-time work,” Hammond said. Sacramento has become a big city and councilmembers should be able to concentrate full-time on their their jobs, she noted.

And it’s difficult “to go back and forth from one job to the other,” she said.

Hammond’s sole job now is councilmember. She worked for more than two decades as a telecommunications contract administrator for the state Senate.

Hammond said she doesn’t think the idea should be put into effect now because a salary adjustment would be involved.

“I think when the economy gets better -- I think that would be a better time to discuss it,” Hammond said.

Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell also favors the idea, echoing Hammond’s comments that Sacramento’s growth makes being a councilmember a more difficult job. “Several of us already work more than forty hours a week,” she said. Pannell’s sole employment is with the City Council.

Councilmembers Rob Fong and Steve Cohn are opposed to the full-time councilmember idea. “I think for someone like myself, it’s certainly important to be able to have another career,” Fong said. “It’s tough to raise a family on a councilman’s salary.”

He noted, though, that the committee recommends that full-time councilmembers could have outside incomes. 

Fong works as a consultant for clients that include the California Democratic Party.

Cohn said he thought it was unnecessary to make the post a full-time job. He said he doesn’t see why there would be a need to “preclude people from having outside interests.” Cohn is an attorney for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District. In response to a question he said he is SMUD’s “No. 2” attorney. 

Councilman Ray Tretheway said the committee’s idea of a full-time City Council is a second-tier issue following other pressing key issues such as the city’s governance structure. He is the executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation.

Photo by Anthony Bento.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.