’Outright lies’: Candidates for Sacramento County supervisor go on the attack at forum

Sacramento County Fifth District supervisors’ candidates Pat Hume and Jaclyn Moreno squared off at a Thursday election forum, drawing sharp distinctions in how each would represent the south county as the campaigns entered their final month.

Hume, the Elk Grove council member, touted himself as the experienced, consensus choice to succeed Supervisor Don Nottoli. Hume counts the support of Nottoli, law enforcement and most of the county’s elected leaders.

“Public service is in my blood,” Hume said. “I can bring people together to find solutions.”

Moreno, director of Elk Grove’s Cosumnes Community Services District, has campaigned as a change agent for a Board of Supervisors sometimes criticized as slow-footed in addressing community needs.

“This race is about values and experience,” Moreno said at the forum inside the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors chambers She said more closely hews to south Sacramento County voters’ values, while citing the support of educators, health care workers and local unions.

“They want a pro-choice supervisor who will address climate change and look at policy through a climate lens,” Moreno said, adding her experience as a mental health professional can be “instrumental” in helping to tackle the county’s homeless and mental health crises.

More recently Moreno has challenged Hume to outline his stance on women’s right to choose. He has declined to answer the question directly.

The two saved their salvos for last, Hume accusing Moreno supporters of hurling “baseless charges” and of “fear mongering” at his campaign and Moreno of erasing her digital footprint from social media.

Moreno slammed the charges in her closing remarks as “outright lies,” and painted Hume as an anti-abortion conservative supported by Christian nationalists as Hume cried out, “False. False.”

The candidates staked out their differences in the brisk but wide-ranging debate, moderated by the League of Women Voters, on everything from the county’s response to homelessness and the COVID-19 pandemic to transportation and public safety.

Hume backs Measure A, the half-cent countywide transportation tax measure on the November ballot to fund billions of dollars in roads improvements including the Sacramento Capital SouthEast Connector. Moreno opposes Measure A.

Moreno said she couldn’t support the measure without guarantees that projects like the connector would not trigger sprawl that would spread onto now-rural south county land.

Moreno criticized county leaders’ handling of the region’s homelessness crisis and the Board of Supervisors’ recent passage of camping bans on the American River Parkway, on flood levees, and near homeless shelters, schools and libraries.

The result of the bans: “People will be shifted from one place to another,” Moreno said, calling for more stakeholders to be involved in solving the problem and an internal audit of county spending on the crisis.

“Time will tell whether it was the right move, but it was a move,” Hume said of the camping bans, calling homelessness the county’s “No. 1 issue.”

“We can’t let perfection stand in the way of good,” he said.

Hume pivoted to public safety and the growing unease he says people are feeling about their personal security.

“People don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods,” Hume said. “The No. 1 responsibility of government is to provide for the public defense and we’re failing at that. People should feel safe.”

As Sacramento was shaken again by a violent string of shootings that left five dead in the space of three days this week, Moreno said she would push for more action as supervisor.

“It terrifies me to be a parent in this community. The county needs more programs in place and I will advocate for more funding for gun violence and violence prevention,” Moreno said.

Hume said he would advocate to roll back legislation on early jail and prison releases and suggested that the rising fentanyl crisis was more pressing than gun violence, without offering what he might do to address the drug issue.

“It’s a shame that we focus so much on gun violence,” he said, in saying fentanyl deaths outpace gun deaths.

Moreno continued to press Hume for his stance on women’s reproductive rights, saying Hume has dodged the issue.

“Women are under attack in this country and we need a person to strongly advocate for women’s bodily autonomy,” Moreno said. “The county is in a unique position to get this work done. We need to fight for this right.”

Hume dismissed the assertion as “not a supervisors’ issue.”

“This is settled law,” he said. “This is not a county issue...so I’m not going to spend time on it. I would rather talk about things that are important that the voters are telling me.”