The six-county regional planning agency has been collecting pats on the back for its Blueprint process for a few years now, but today’s front page treatment in the venerable Wall Street Journal all but smashes all previous accolades.
For those who don’t know what SACOG is, it oversees planning for the Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba, Placer, and El Dorado county region. It’s not a federal, state, county, or city agency — it’s a joint powers authority, comprised of paid staff and a board of directors who are elected officials (city council and county supervisors) from throughout the region, with some jurisdictions having more votes depending on population.
It is designated by the federal government as the Metropolitan Planning Organization and by the state as the Regional Transportation Planning Agency — which means that SACOG works with all levels of government to determine which transportation projects will happen, where they will go, and when they will happen. These include projects big and small — from major capital investments like light rail expansions to smaller projects like adding new bike lanes or sidewalks in a particular neighborhood.
In recent years, SACOG has turned to the community at large to participate in the Blueprint — an interactive, multi-media, hands-on process that gets some disparate groups of people talking to each other about transportation issues. Bicycle advocates, senior citizens, transit riders, developers, builders, disabled people, welfare-to-work clients, and everyday single-occupant-vehicle commuters throughout the region worked side-by-side to devise the best solutions to our transportation issues.
At long last, concepts like linking transportation planning to land use decisions and seriously considering transportation demand management tactics were part of the same conversation.
When I worked at SACOG in the ’90s, the agency was in a significant time of change. There were some old-timers who were around before the agency had as much authority as it does now, back when it used to be called the Sacramento Regional Area Planning Commission. Then, there was a group of us newbies, and we thought that more people should be involved in the process. Federal and state legislation required a minimum level of public involvement, and that’s essentially what had been happening for years. We wanted to involve everyone, or at least the everyones who made sense.
Early in my tenure, I distinctly remember watching Metrocable one night, and former Sacramento County Supervisor Illa Collin asked if a particular project they were discussing at the Board of Supervisors meeting had to go through SACOG, and there was a collective groan among her fellow electeds. I talked about it the next morning with my carpool partner/work friend/sharer of a cube wall, and he and I vowed to remain strong.
The middle managers always seemed to know the drill; they were right there with us.
We young’uns continued to push; the older folks retired; board members changed from election cycle to election cycle; the middle managers became upper management, and new blood was brought in.
Finally, the transportation planning process was involving more people. Elected officials didn’t groan at the thought of SACOG; rather, they wanted to be on the board, necessitating a change in the board structure to accommodate more people. Finally, the agency was strategic and looked to as THE authority.
As the tide was continuing to change, many of us moved on — whether we joined the private sector, went to work for one of the member jurisdictions, or moved to Australia to make clown documentaries.
I will always look back fondly at my experience with SACOG. They gave me, a young woman with zero planning experience and an English degree, the shot to learn something completely new. The knowledge I gained there sparked further interest in the industry and led to an ever-fulfilling career.
So, to you, my fellow SACOGians both past and present, I give you a hearty RIGHT AWN! for your work on the Blueprint and the coverage in the Wall Street Journal. It is overdue and much-deserved.
The Sac Rag 
I’d like to see two things: 1) a specific list of projects that would not have come about, were it not for SACOG (e.g.; particular light-rail lines, like Sac to Folsom, etc.), and 2) how much money does this SACOG entity cost the taxpayers every year (including building delays incurred by private parties)?
Not to be too much of a negative nelly here, but I’m leaning toward a “nice but not necessary” position on this govt. entity. You saying that no light rail lines could be built between cities, or bike lanes couldn’t get completed? And administration of this is costing me how much each year? It’s not really clear what they do- they stamp approval on multi-city light rail lines? From your description, it sounds like SACOG was just generally accepted as yet another layer of government everyone has to get used to- not that they did anything to gain acceptance.
Their website implies that they are involved in “preparing the region’s long-range transportation plan.” They also “approve[] the distribution of affordable housing in the region and assists in planning for transit, bicycle networks, clean air and airport land uses.”
So- not to be too stupid here, but where is the transportation plan for, say, 2050? We gettin’ a new freeway? Where? I sense a “planning committee” somewhere- needing a budget, pens, an office…
Looking around Sacramento (from Davis to Roseville), it looks like all the “transit” issues are addressed by a “people will take the existing freeways from where they live to where they work” mentality. “Airport land use”? They lands the planes on the tarmac, avoiding trees. People drives their cars from the airport. “Affordable housing”? What has SACOG done to get “affordable housing” on the market- still in committee I assume?
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With so many projects in the plans and with so limited funding, it’s critical to bring cities and counties together to prioritize and stage what will happen when.
Because most transportation funding is on a use it or lose it basis, there needs to be a regional approach to make the best of federal dollars and local (city and county) matching dollars that fund projects.
A recent example of this are two major projects in Placer County: the expansion of the HOV lanes on I-80 (note that I am not looking to open the argument on the merit of HOV lanes at this point) and the Lincoln Bypass project, both of which required diverting resources away from other projects, but it was a regional decision among the affected cities and counties that these are the two most critical needs right now.
An example from more than a decade ago was the innovative public financing of the new bridge in Folsom. Cities and counties aren’t given a bucket of money to spend on projects as they please; it’s pretty specific how certain funds are spent. SACOG negotiated a funding swap with one of the Bay Area planning agencies that allowed the City of Folsom to implement the project. Had SACOG not stepped in, this project still might be on a list waiting to happen.
The value that an agency like SACOG brings is connecting the dots among the cities and counties — a mix of urban, rural, and suburban interests — plus each of the various groups noted above (bike and pedestrian, the elderly, etc., not to mention the NIMBY factor) to work together to set the priorities.
The staff knows the ins and outs of the planning, funding, and project delivery process — not to mention resources like the Regional Census Data Center, GIS mapping services, transportation demand management resources, among many others. Regarding the Airport Land Use Commission, there are some rather interesting (for those of us into that kind of thing) regulations about development around airports.
If this is something that concerns you, I urge you to get involved in the process. If there’s something about the process that you don’t like (once you learn a little more about it), then speak up and help make effective changes.
A good resource for anyone who’s interested in these types of issues is the big green book called “The Practice of Local Government Planning,” published by the International City Management Association.
I totally understand the skepticism, and your questions are indeed valid. It’s actually refreshing to have an honest-to-goodness snark-free question from the TS.
As a former insider, I look at this from a completely different point of view. As a taxpayer, I have some of the same questions as you, so hopefully someone much more informed and up-to-date than I am can shed some additional light on this.
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Thank you RG- good examples to start. As an owner of MANY realistic sex dolls, I’m always open to more HOV lanes.
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I think that most of the mixed-use developers who have begun transforming downtown in the last 5 yrs would argue that it would not have happened at all without SACOG. They’ve also picked up the slack at a dozen municipalities that don’t even have their own planning departments, and their funding – provided by the federal transportation omnibus budget acts – is money that would otherwise mostly be going toward big business tax breaks.
If anything, I’d say we get a better return from tax dollars paid to SACOG than we do to most city, county or even state-based planning entities. And the Sacramento region, being the fastest-growing such region in the US, requires this sort of thing more than pretty much any other COG-reliant area in the state.
They’re also the most open to community involvement – just try being involved with the city and county planning departments the way that SACOG is constantly trying to get people to interact with it! Good luck … their entire mission is predicated on community involvement. Personally, I think you could completely fold city & county planning into SACOG. growing it by 4 or 5 times, and saving an enormous amount of money…
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