(gentle music) - Representing the Eighth District Senator Angelique Ashby is known for her energetic approach in tackling tough issues.

She joins us today for a candid conversation about leadership policy and her vision for Sacramento.

Welcome, Senator Ashby.

- Thank you for having me back on the show.

It's so good to be here with you.

- It's so good to see you.

Last time you were here, we were talking about a bill SB802 that dealt with homeless reform and reorganization.

- Yeah.

- And just to be very blunt about it, it was the equivalent of you pulling a pin on a grenade and rolling it into someplace.

But anyway, at least that was the reaction of some of your elected colleagues.

- [Angelique] Yeah.

- But it did generate a lot of focus and clarity and movement.

So give us the updates.

Senator Ashby, where do things stand now?

- Yeah.

Well, first of all, sometimes you need to change things up a little bit to get people moving.

Sacramento has spent 15 or more years chasing its own tail around the issue of homelessness and making very little progress.

And there are, as you know, many studies and many reports, grand jury reports, failed ballot initiatives, lawsuits, a long trail of failures that lead to this moment, and over $400 million allocated from the state to Sacramento in the last four and a half years for homelessness, which obviously has not moved the marker in the right direction.

So SB802 is my effort to say what we're doing is not working.

We're clearly not coordinating enough.

And at the local level, I want all of the regional cities and the counties to form one joint powers authority to work together for the provision of homelessness.

When we last met, there were a couple members of those regional bodies, one county supervisor and one local mayor here at the table with me.

And they were opposed because they each wanna do something different than what the other one wants to do.

And the collaboration piece they see differently.

As, you know, one of the things they asked me for was to hold SBAO2 back and allow them to have this regional meeting that they had put together.

So all of the smaller cities and the county and some nonprofits and things would come together on this one day in October and have a meeting on this issue.

And so I did.

I shelfed the bill.

It's a two year bill now, which means I can bring it back as soon as this month or next month and talk about it.

But I did give them that opportunity to have the meeting in October.

And I sent my staff, they took careful notes, we watched, we paid attention, and the meeting was really a discussion, but there was no agenda for something on the horizon.

They took no votes.

There was no decision to do something different than what has been done before.

There were varying opinions on whether or not they think we're doing enough now or we're not doing enough now.

So it's very clear to me that 802 does need to proceed because there does need to be a dialogue.

- So you will be moving the bill forward?

- Oh, absolutely.

I will be bringing the bill back and the bill will be responsive to the things we heard in that meeting.

But it'll be responsive to what the community is saying really, which is we want you to be working together and we wanna be able to point to one group of elected officials who are accountable and responsible for the decisions around homelessness in this region.

So yes.

- So this actually 802 and the experience that you just described in many ways for those of us who've observed you for years is indicative of your leadership style, which is straight to the point.

You're willing to actually run into the burning building, so to speak sometimes.

- Yeah.

- And take on really tough issues.

Where does that come from?

- That's a good question.

I don't take a whole lot of time for self-reflection.

So I haven't really thought a lot about where, I think it's grit.

For me, my grit comes from being a young single mom.

I went to Sac High, as most people know here.

I actually grew up in Roseville, but by the time I was in high school, I lived in Sacramento proper, went to Sac High, which is a gritty school, and certainly was in the nineties when I was there.

- The Dragons.

- The Dragons proudly.

And I had a baby right after high school.

So I learned to navigate really tough things like affordable housing and food stamps and subsidized childcare.

And during that time, I worked full time.

I raised my young son on my own, and I put myself through UC Davis and McGeorge Law School.

And so I think the grit that propelled me through those challenges as a young adult is the same sort of urgency I bring to being a leader in this region.

I think the people of the Greater Sacramento area are owed a stronger and better effort on homelessness.

I don't think the outcomes are within reason, and I don't think they illustrate the amount of investment that's being put forward.

- Well, let's go there on that because in you describing your observation and perspective on that.

- Yeah.

- Give us a sense of how Sacramento really works, because the fact of the matter is, is that we have a lot of smart people elected- - We do- - To a lot of smart, you know.

- Yes.

- Powerful bodies, but it's always to be hurry up and wait.

Is this like the political culture of Sacramento where it is that- - Yeah.

- Basically we go along to get along and kind of move the peas around the edge of the plate?

- I think a lot of people think that, yeah, but I don't quite agree with that analysis.

- Okay.

- Because we have some incredible leaders.

Sacramento does a good job of electing people who deeply care, who really want to see a change.

I point to Pat Hume, he's a wonderful supervisor, a new addition to the county board of Sups.

He's been there for a couple of years now, but he's works really hard and his heart is pure and true.

We have difference of opinion on how to proceed.

I wouldn't say anything negative about him.

I don't think he's trying to skirt the issue.

I think he's facing it head on.

The problem we have in Sacramento is silos.

We've created these silos where the city's doing one thing and Elk Groves doing another, and Folsom is way out there doing something on their own.

And then the county is this amorphous entity that should sort of be bringing us all together.

But it doesn't feel that way.

And so there have been incredible leaders like Mayor Steinberg, who was former pro tem of the state senate for goodness sake, who came in and tried very hard to bring us all together and really struggled to be able to do that.

If he were sitting at this table, he would say, yeah, I couldn't get him to do it.

And he went and testified in front of the county multiple times as mayor of the city asking about funding and resources that he as senator had allocated to the county.

We still couldn't get to the other side.

I watched Mayor Kevin Johnson, a homegrown hero here from Oak Park, who grew up in one of the most difficult neighborhoods.

I watched him do the same thing, host meeting after meeting with accounting, begging them to be partners on a joint powers authority so that we could work together so that we could have different kinds of outcomes.

And in the absence of that collaboration, every individual member just does the best they can in their region or area where they have influence.

And quite frankly, that quilt work is not working.

- But don't we deserve, as citizens don't we deserve better?

- Yes, of course we do.

Of course you do.

Every person who lives in this region deserves a bigger and better outcome.

And the resources are there, but the collaborative spirit is not, and they're not even on the same page in terms of the direction they wanna go, which is what we learned at the big October meeting.

- So forecast into the future.

- Yeah.

- Other than the reactivation of your bill.

- Yeah.

- What should we expect in the next year?

- I think over the next few months, you can expect to see my team raising this flag and saying, hold on.

You gotta work together.

I think you can expect to see a lot of resistance from local leaders, much like you experienced when you sat at this table with me a month or so ago.

I don't know what will win out that local resistance and the status quo or if me, you know, pushing the envelope hard enough, at least moves us somewhat forward.

I have said this many times, but SB802 doesn't make me very popular with my local regional colleagues.

But I didn't run to be popular.

I ran to be effective.

And the people of this region ask routinely, what are we doing about the unhoused population in our region?

And they are all dissatisfied with the answer.

- Do you think, let let me ask you this.

We're talking about the homeless, or as you call them, the unhoused, and we we're talking about all of these efforts and $400 million that's been spent.

How do you respond to some in our community who say, we spend too much time on this?

We've got issues of affordability in other aspects of housing.

- Yeah.

- Keeping our young people able to live in the region.

We've got healthcare issues, we've got economic development issues.

- Yep.

- And all we, all the electeds ever do is talk about homelessness.

Do we spend too much time on this subject?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely do.

But when you're inefficient, you waste a lot of time.

I could spend an hour in water treading, but I'm not getting anywhere.

I'm still exerting a lot of energy.

And that's the homeless issue for this region.

We spend a ton of time and energy and resources on it, but we are treading water.

We are not making progress on the issue.

So the first thing I would say is we have to make a decision to do things differently than we have done them for the last 20 years.

As you know, one of the grand jury reports says that Sacramento has been an a never ending loop of failure as it relates to homelessness.

Thus the grand jury's analysis of our progress on this issue.

So are we wasting time?

Yeah, for 20 years we've been wasting time.

It is well past time for us to do things differently than what we have been doing this far.

And you are right.

The issues that families are dealing with in their own home right now are affordability.

Where will our kids live?

Only 56% of Californians even own their home.

The funding source at the state level that helps people with down payments has been unfunded for this budget cycle.

How do we address that?

As you know, we've had a crisis around food stamps and food inequity and access to food for the last month.

We have so many priorities to work on right now that we can no longer afford to waste time and precious resources and dollars on failed solutions around homelessness.

We can't keep failing on that issue.

We need to be far better in our approach because we don't have the time to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

- So you've done a lot of work since you've been in the state legislature.

- Yeah.

- On a whole host of issues, particularly a number of the ones that you raised.

- Yeah.

- But I wanna ask you, of all of the issues that you've dealt with, which have been the most important to you?

Where's your, which one is your proudest achievement?

- Yeah, this is a very easy answer for me.

It's a bill I did when I first came in SB307.

It's about foster youth.

And this one's special to me.

I did it for my dad.

My dad's my hero.

- Really?

- Passed away a few years ago.

But my dad spent his lifetime working in and around foster care and how to help young people who are coming out of that system.

And SB307 is a new law that we put in place that says that if you are a former foster youth in the state of California and you do the heavy lifting it takes to get yourself to college, that the state of California will meet you there and college will be debt free for you.

- Really?

- It's a big deal.

It's a big deal.

I was, it's what I call the idea I came through the door with.

It was the number one thing I wanted to achieve while I was there.

Really fortunate was able to do it in my first year.

And what it means is young people who are former foster youth who get into college, can get their college paid for in terms of tuition, but also books, housing, food, all the things that it takes to be successful in school.

And you and I both know this 'cause we have kids that college is extremely expensive.

And at this point, you know, parents have to take out loans and you have to co-sign all these things for your kids.

But foster youth don't have that sometimes.

- [Scott] No.

- So we need to meet them where they're at and give them alternatives for the trajectory of their life.

This links directly back to our previous conversation.

50% of the people who are experiencing homelessness on our streets identify as former foster youth.

- You're kidding.

- 50%.

- But you know it, that doesn't surprise me.

I grew up with foster cousins and members of my family, members of my family to this day.

And the the fear that your 18th birthday brought was- - Yes.

- Incredible.

Now, I happen to have an aunt and uncle that allowed them to continue living.

They loved them so much, they just stayed with them and they stayed with family.

- But they would have to pay.

Your aunt and uncle had to take on the cost.

- [Scott] No, they took on the financial burden themselves.

- Yes.

- But what I'm saying is the 18th birthday was a terrifying moment.

- Terrifying, mm-hmm.

And how sad is that?

Think about your own kids, 18 such as celebration, graduation, launch into adulthood.

But for young people with no safety net, where are they supposed to go?

They know.

You think they don't know that their odds are 50/50 that they'll end up street homeless.

I mean, you wanna change homelessness.

You wanna change the trajectory of the people who are currently on the streets.

Go upstream and talk about things like literacy and foster youth and education.

Talk about those things and you'll change forever.

Maybe not the people who are out there right now, but you're gonna change the people who are out there 10 years, 20 years from now.

And so I'm extremely passionate about this topic.

My grandma, much like your aunt also ran a foster home.

And my dad was not a foster youth, but all of his sisters were.

And so this has also permeated my family, which just puts a special spot right in your heart where, you know, if we can help these people while they're young, we can help these young foster youth, man, we can give them agency when they're even in third grade to know, you know what?

I can't tell you how many homes you're gonna live in.

I don't know.

I don't know how many schools you'll go to between now and the time you graduate from high school.

But I do know this, if you do your very best and you get yourself into college, the state of California will meet you there.

And you can go to college and you'll have a dorm and you'll have books and you'll have a laptop just like everybody else in that school.

So work as hard as you can for that goal no matter how many schools you walk into or how many homes you have to cycle through to get there, you give them agency.

- That's, that is an important, important aspiration for people to have and to give people hope and help.

It's a big deal.

I want to tie that though to something else that you've been doing.

And that is, is that talking about higher education?

- Yeah.

- There's a kind of confluence of miseries going on downtown Sacramento.

- [Angelique] That's the truest statement ever.

- Yeah.

- That's the truest statement.

- A confluence of miseries, I just made that one up.

- Yeah, that is, we need shirts.

- Downtown Sacramento in some ways has never recovered from COVID.

- Yeah.

- We have the state of California, which continues to do its thing moving around populations of workers or workers who have not come completely back to work and all that.

And we have a higher education system where our forebearers in this city didn't do it so many other cities did and bring our colleges into- - Connect, yeah.

- This central city.

You've been working on that issue as well.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Yeah, so you know, there's all these hideously ugly state buildings downtown that we all see.

And the state in some ways being the capital is wonderful because we're at the center of all decision making.

The fourth largest economy in the world is right here in our city.

But they're also kind of a terrible tenant in some ways because they don't pay taxes.

- No, they're not sort of a terrible, they are a terrible tenant.

- [Angelique] They do not pull their weight.

- As the founder of the original downtown partnership, I can tell you the state of California, general services, this is for you.

You are a terrible town.

- Well, they're trying to be better and I'm trying to help them be better.

Is really the goal here and the goal of the legislation that you're talking about.

So my plan is this, take some of those buildings, start with a couple of them and work with Sac State on bringing not only portions of the university that makes sense.

Like the policy arm.

Sac State has a huge policy division of young people that actually work in the capital and work in the state government in a variety of agencies right downtown what if we gave them housing, young people housing attached to their college in our urban core, a couple blocks from the Golden One Center, a couple blocks from Midtown and right there walkable to work at the capital in the swing space and all of the other state agencies that are located right down there on Capitol Mall.

So I'm pushing very hard for this.

I've been pushing very hard for this.

I think it is a wonderful marriage between education, academia, advancement of people in the profession of politics and policy work and housing young people in our urban core.

Which by the way, I agree that the issue around state workers is really challenging.

It's challenging both for the state workers, but it's also challenging for our urban core and for the businesses.

But I would trade all of that to have more young people living in our urban core.

It would make a much bigger difference.

- It it would bring a vibrancy that we just don't have.

- [Angelique] It would bring it to life.

Yeah.

- And so right now, this legislation that that was passed and enacted.

- Yeah.

- What will it allow the city and private development to do?

- [Angelique] Yeah.

- That wasn't available before.

- It creates an economic opportunity that didn't exist, wasn't legal before without specific legislation.

So now it's a little more blanket and we don't have to go do a one particular bill for each project.

Instead the city would be able to work with a private, public, private partnership on properties in downtown Sacramento and put underlying funding mechanisms in place.

Now you have to fill that funding mechanism.

So if you were gonna do, for example, an EIFD, which is an- - Oh yeah, what is that?

- An enhanced infrastructure facility district.

- Okay.

- An EIFD is where you take the resources that are sort of built from the ground up that would normally go to the city as tax dollars and instead you reinvest them in the project.

We did this for example, on the Golden One Center.

- Oh, so this is sort of like a way of kind of creating a private or a local redevelopment.

- Correct.

We have another one that I started actually when I was on the city council, the Downtown Revitalization Corps where we take dollars, we invest them, like we invested them in K Street, we invested them in the B Street theater.

We invested them in Hyatt Centric, but the developer ultimately pays them back to that entity and then they get reinvested again in another project.

And this all, that one all started when we moved the Greyhound station and we took the revenue from that.

It's a lease and we put it into a downtown revitalization core and used it as a revolving fund to invest in properties downtown.

And it has worked really well, especially for gap funding.

So this is me taking what I learned at the local level and trying to apply it at a state level.

But on a broader, you know.

- I actually want to talk to you a little bit about your journey from local level to state level.

- Sure.

- You're the first woman to represent Sacramento and state senate in over two decades.

- Yeah.

- And I wanna know, how has gender and representation shown up in terms of both how it is that you view the work, but also how it is that you kind of leave a path for other women to follow as they look at you and what you've done aspirationally for themselves?

- Yeah, there was a actually a moment in my life and I was on the Sacramento City Council when it happened that I thought to myself, what is going on?

There are nine seats here, nine people that represent the city of Sacramento.

And you're telling me that I'm the only woman here.

For most of the time that I was on the city council, I was there for 12 years.

For over half of that time, I was the only woman serving with eight men.

All different men, they all changed, but they were always men.

And I just kept thinking to myself, this can't be right.

And it's really not about gender so much as it is about equity.

- Hmm.

- Over half of this population in our region is female.

How is it possible that only one of nine is a female up here representing our community?

We had diversity across other socioeconomic.

- [Scott] What's your answer?

- Well, I think they didn't have opportunity.

Women in politics is a very different beast.

It's a lot like the C-suite.

A woman has to be asked on average seven times to run for office before she sees it for herself.

That is not true for men.

I sometimes say women need to work more on having the courage of a 4-year-old in a Batman shirt.

We need that.

We need to feel invincible so that we know we can do it.

So what I did was start building a bench and I did a study on women in politics and I brought in the McKinsey Corporation and we did an audit.

And that audit received national significant awards.

And ultimately what it turned into is the Sacramento City Council now, which has at least three of my mentees on it, young females is for the first time since the 1980s led by women.

- Nice.

I gotta ask you about yourself.

- Yeah.

- There's been a lot of talk about your future yourself.

Some has been in leadership in the legislature, others has been about running for Congress.

What are your plans?

- First of all, let me just say something to every elected official or anybody who ever wants to be an elected official.

I hope that you love your community so much and that they love you back as much as Natomas and I love each other because the only reason I'm involved in that conversation is because someone circled Natomas on a map.

And because if I was in NASCAR, it would say Natomas on my hood.

That led everyone back to me.

Will I run for Congress?

I actually, as I sit here with you today on whatever day this is, I do not know.

I've thought about it.

I continue to think about it.

I talk to my family and friends about it.

Yes, there's a ton of encouragement out there for me to do it, but I don't know the answer.

- [Scott] When will you make a decision?

- Well, the filing deadline is March so.

- [Scott] So you have a little bit of room.

- I have a little bit of room, but somebody would need to probably decide prior to that.

As to the other half of your question, which is leadership in the state senate.

I've been very proud to step into a leadership role so early in my career there.

I've only been there for three years, not even quite three, which is huge.

I got to be the assistant majority leader for the last couple of years, which is awesome.

Today is actually the first day of our new pro tem, Monique Limon being sworn in the first female Latina and the first mom to ever serve as president pro tem of the California State Senate.

I'm super happy for her, excited, look forward to supporting her in any way that she should choose to utilize me.

I hope to be on her leadership team, should I stay in the Senate and choose not to run for something else.

But either way, my cup runneth over.

I feel really proud and honored to be considered or have my name whispered in any of these circles.

And the only thing I can promise you right here today is that no matter what my title is, dog catcher, community person, senator or congressional member, I will give this region everything I've got.

- And I think we'll leave it there.

Senator Angelique Ashby, thank you so much.

- Thanks for having me.

- All right.

And that's our show.

Thanks to our guests and thanks to you for watching "Studio Sacramento".

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] All episodes of "Studio Sacramento", along with other KVIE programs are available to watch online at kvi.org/video.