Sacramento Kings, Mayor Kevin Johnson need to step up and secure arena benefits for all

One day before last month’s vote to approve the arena deal, the Sacramento Kings and Mayor Kevin Johnson introduced a new coalition called Sacramento First. This group’s goal was to ensure that those impacted by the arena’s development would receive community benefits.

Yes, that sounds like a great thing. In other cities, there are binding community-benefits agreements where developers guarantee affordable housing, fair-wage jobs, loans for impacted small businesses and more.

But the problem here in Sacramento is that the groups who’d been advocating for months for a Kings arena CBA—such as the Sacramento Housing Alliance, Sacramento Loaves & Fishes, and the Environmental Council of Sacramento—were not invited to be a part of the mayor’s group.

Instead, as Nick Miller reported (see “Kings, K.J. snub Sacramento groups working to ensure equal community benefits from new arena,” SN&R News, May 22), the new mayor-led group consisted of pro-arena politicians, a Kings lawyer, the arena’s architect AECOM, Region Builders and even Johnson’s chief of staff, among others.

This is not acceptable. What good is a coalition if stakeholders aren’t invited to the table?

SN&R wants to support the arena and downtown’s revitalization. It’s going to happen, and we hope for the best for the city. But we also need to see a gesture of good faith from the mayor and the Kings. Advocates for affordable housing, mass transit and living wages shouldn’t be kicked to the arena’s curb.