AB 1924, Sacramento Regional Transit District, lead author Nguyen, has apparently passed the Assembly and the Senate, and is awaiting Assembly confirmation of amendments. It is not clear whether there will be any committee meetings at which the public can comment.
AB 1924, when introduced, was just about cleaning up some language related to annexation to make it clearer: AB 1924 for SacRT annexation. However, it now includes significant language about board governance. It reflects what the board asked for back in March: SacRT Board votes to reduce representation for Sac City and Sac County. An earlier board proposal for board governance was rejected by Nguyen because the board was not unified in their proposal. Apparently Nguyen is now willing to carry legislation that only a part of the board supports.
The legislation would nearly guarantee a board seat for any and all entities that are part of the SacRT service area. Though staff has said they are not concerned because negotiations with the city to be annexed would solve this, though it isn’t at all clear how. If a city is annexed, there is no reason to think they would not demand a seat on the board. A seat on the board for every city, no matter how small, would further empower small cities over the population of the service area. This is intentional on their part. They want to take away power from Sacramento County and City of Sacramento, and give it to themselves. The further down the road this goes, the more representation the citizens of the county will lose.
The table below shows current representation, representation if the legislation passes, and potential representation with likely annexations of Galt and West Sacramento. The percent of votes columns shows the exiting vote representation of the various entities, and the representation after legislation and annexation.
| entity | population (2020) | percent of votes | current members | after legislation | after annexation | percent of votes |
| Sac County unincorporated | 610,442 | 39% | 3 | 3 | 3 | 23% |
| Sac City | 524,943 | 33% | 4 | 3 | 3 | 23% |
| Elk Grove | 176,124 | 11% | 2 | 2 | 2 | 15% |
| Citrus Heights | 87,583 | 6% | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8% |
| Folsom | 80,454 | 5% | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8% |
| Rancho Cordova | 79,332 | 5% | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8% |
| Galt | 25,383 | 2% | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8% |
| total Sac Co | 1,585,055 | 12 | 11 | 12 | ||
| West Sacramento | 53,515 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8% | |
| grand total | 1,638,570 | 3% | 12 | 11 | 13 |
The City of Sacramento, which hosts much of the SacRT network, and much of the ridership, would have less than one-quarter of the votes on the board. The city thinks this is unfair, and STAR thinks this is unfair.
STAR believes that voting on the SacRT Board should be population weighted: SacRT Board votes to reduce representation for Sac City and Sac County, and has taken this position for years. But the board has progressively moved away from this model, toward the undemocratic one-member, one-vote model.
Of course things would get much worse if YoloBus and SacRT merged, which is unlikely but has been discussed. Davis, Woodland, Dixon, Winters??? What about the surrounding counties? Roseville, Rocklin, Loomis, Lincoln, Colfax, Auburn? Placerville? Yuba City? Live Oak? Marysville? The SACOG Board is an example of how wrong the one-member one-vote thing can go. The small cities, representing a small portion of the population of the region, hold a very powerful voice on the board.
Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR) 