STAR is concerned about governance of SacRT. The Board of Directors is composed of officials elected to city councils and county Board of Supervisors. These people do serve on the SacRT board by choice, appointed by the mayor or the county chair, so they have some interest in transit, but it is often an interest among many interests. These officials serve on a large number of boards and commissions and committees, and find it difficult to pay the attention that each of them needs and deserves. They often comment on this challenge. Sometimes an entity will fail to make quorum because members have conflict with other duties. For SacRT, some board meetings start without a quorum, though one is achieved as board members trickle in.

STAR is also concerned that the SacRT Board of Directors is not providing effective oversight to General Manager/CEO Henry Li. At each board meeting, the consent calendar, delegating many things to the GM, gets longer and longer, while the agenda for action or information gets shorter and shorter. SacRT has always had the issue that the result of projects and changes do not get reported back to the board. Many projects are called ‘pilot’, which presumably means that a new idea is being tested to see if it works. For most such projects, the board is never updated, nor is a conclusion reached or at least publicized, and many are never heard from again.

One possible solution to these issues is to have a directly elected board. The SMUD board is often held up as an example of an effective elected board, with seven members elected by district. We have heard that though the board is currently considered very effective, it has not always been so.

Another possible solution is to have either the county or the Sacramento Transportation Authority (SacTA) operate transit. SacTA does not have authorization to operate transit, but could receive that by legislation. The county does have authorization, and operates South County Transit, but does not have expertise in, and probably interest in, operating transit. The Sacramento Board of Commissioners is elected, but the SacTA board is composed of elected officers from other agencies, similar to SacRT. It is quite possible that SacRT will annex West Sacramento, and possible that it will eventually annex Yolo County and Roseville Transit. In this case, operation at the Sacramento County level no longer makes sense.

In the city and county of San Francisco, SFMTA operates transit and the entire transportation system including parking. SFMTA has a board, but it is appointed by the mayor, not directly elected. In Los Angeles County, Metro operates transit and the entire transportation system, though there are many city agencies that also serve these functions. Metro has a board, composed of electeds from the city and county, and appointed members representing the other cities. Neither of these two leading boards is directly elected.

STAR is not claiming, and does not know, whether SacRT would be better operated under a different governance model, but does believe that options should be discussed, including a directly elected board. The SMUD board is organized into seven districts covering the service area, which closely but not exactly match the SacRT service area, and these districts might be copied by SacRT.

We have searched to see if there are terms specific to boards directly elected, or composed of other elected officials, or appointed, but there don’t seem to be.

• SacRT Governance