By Jia H. Jung, California Local News Fellow
“What do we want?”
“Better pay!”
“When do we want it?”
“Yesterday!”
These were Sacramento County’s district attorneys, public defenders, and Department of Child Support Services attorneys of Sacramento County a little after 8 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 26 as they kicked off a strike that is set to enter its third week.
Sporting matching tee shirts, the public servants pumped signs in the air and circled the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse as trash trucks and commuters honked their horns. The crowd then filled the plaza for speeches to rally themselves through what has been an over two-year-long battle for equitable pay.
Members of the Sacramento County Attorneys’ Association (SCAA) union authorized the strike by a 94% vote. Provoking this was the county’s inaction after a third-party recommendation for a 5.5% wage increase plus retroactive pay tracing back to July 2022, when the last contract between the attorneys and their employer expired.
The protracted conflict has given an unusually public platform for the workers to speak out about the mental health impact of their occupation and working conditions.
Elected District Attorney Thien Ho said that his strident remarks for Chief Labor Negotiator Matt Connolly and especially CEO David Villanueva came from a place of real urgency that he does not see reciprocated by the county. He said that losing more attorneys would force him to roll back the clock 20 years on preventative public safety initiatives he has furthered while in office. He also called for switching out the county’s proposed no-strike clause for binding arbitration instead “so we never have to go through this again.” All images from Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Meeting, Sept. 4, 2024 
Public attorneys and other supporters gave DA Thien Ho a standing ovation as he left the floor. 
Sacramento County CEO David Villanueva. 
Chief Public Defender Amanda M. Benson shared that she has been working with only three other people while other PDs are on strike. 
Public Defender Quoc To, PD representative of SCAA’s executive board, shared that he had a new baby girl at home but was missing out on seeing her more in order to defend people so they do not have to suffer the lack of due process his father went through “under the yoke of Communism” in Vietnam. He said four senior attorneys have left his office during the past two weeks alone. 
Public Defender Kim Miller, who worked while sitting by her dying mother in hospice, addressed CEO David Villaneuva directly in a statement about why she and her colleagues were not “greedy attorneys.” 
Matt Chisholm, president of the Sacramento County Attorneys’ Association. 
Paul Gomez, Vice President of the SCAA, said that he was the first in his family to attain higher education. He explained why he took a $54K job instead of a $125K job fresh out of law school: because he wanted to serve the poor. 
Deputy DA Quirina Orozco, a child abuse prosecutor who has a 19-year history working for the county, said that she was now weighing whether she could afford the out-of-pocket expenses for her life-saving medications while on strike. 
Dr. Nicole Clavo, Psy.D., military veteran, founding president of Healing 5 Foundation, and director of the county’s office of violence protection, shared her experiences with DAs from when she was the victim of a crime nine years ago. She told supervisors to take a look in the mirror and do the right thing. 
Lorna Alejandro shared her story as the mother of a victim of sexual assault who turned into a survivor with the help of DAs. 
“I want the attorneys to know that the firefighters have their back,” said Trevor Jamison, president of Sacramento Area Firefighters Local 522. 
Dustin Smith, president of the Sacramento Police Officers’ Association, recommended binding arbitration to avoid these unnecessary delays in the future. 
Mervin Brookins, Sr., CEO of Brother 2 Brother Mentoring, told the county supervisors that public attorneys were “slowly but surely restoring the faith and confidence of the community of the system,” and to treat them fairly. 
Angela Webb, CEO and Executive Director of Arrive Alive California, Inc. said that the current DA’s office was the first one to actively help her combat DUI, alcohol, and Fentanyl abuse by working directly with the community during their lunchtime and after business hours. 
Emily Webb, a Richmond Grove resident, said that public attorneys were the only county officials who took her family’s security woes seriously when an encampment was outside their home for nearly a year. 
Former Sheriff John McGinness advocated for the attorneys as a retired taxpayer, saying that public attorneys had relentless responsibilities, especially when it came to trying to reduce the county’s overrepresentation in “terrible homicide trends” and the production of serial killers. 
Sergeant Nick Sareeram said, “The justice system is not in place in Sacramento right now and that’s a pretty polarizing thought when you really stop and think about it.” He called for the replacement of CEO David Villanueva and Chief Labor Negotiator Matt Connolly if they will not bargain with integrity and good faith. 
Rhonda Campbell, the California State Victim Services Manager of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), said that she felt like she was giving a victim impact statement on behalf of the attorneys, whom she could count on reaching at any time. 
District 5 supervisor Pat Hume said that, while he could not comment on the merits of the attorneys’ position, that DA Ho had gone “above and beyond” the demands of his role in handling the conflict. 
Board of Supervisors clerk Florence “Flo” Evans announced 30-plus additional off-agenda speakers who wanted to advocate for the attorneys. 
A quorum of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Sept. 4, 2024.
In a public Board of Supervisors’ meeting on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 4, more than 40 public attorneys, community leaders, former victims of crimes, law enforcement divisions, and taxpayers gave testimonies urging Chief Labor Negotiator Matt Connolly and county CEO David Villanueva to come back to the collective bargaining table.
The county remained unmoved, issuing an update in the form of a Q & A page explaining its refusal to capitulate, and later told the SCAA in closed discussions that it would share a new contract offer if the attorneys stopped their strike first. The attorneys said no.
A compelling nonbinding case for public attorneys’ raises
“We’re not picking facts out of the sky,” exclaimed Matt Chisholm, SCAA’s president. The prosecutor, who participated in the 2006 strike as a Level 1 DA long before his union leadership, emphasized that impartial evaluators issued a fact-finding report that determined how much compensation and benefits should increase for the attorneys.
The document, which deputy district attorney Sonia Martinez-Satchell provided to AsAmNews, was the result of arbitration proceedings that began in May of 2023. This means that the SCAA and the county brought neutral mediators into a formal and private process meant to enable resolution outside of court.
The third parties’ recommendations, however, were nonbinding, leading to the current struggle.
On Aug. 16, the county’s official statement responding to the attorneys’ association’s strike announcement declared that salaries for principal attorneys, topping out at $247,000 per year, were already high enough.
The county also conducted a “14-comparator” survey of the median wages of public attorneys at 14 other jurisdictions to claim that Sacramento attorneys were paid well above market rate.
The arbitration challenged this on the grounds that average salaries more fairly reflected market fluctuations in any county by taking increases in both low-end and high-end pay classes into account. But none of their conclusions were binding.
The SCAA maintains that their members’ wages and compensation are still lower than that the average of 15 other jurisdictions, including Alameda, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Placer, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Solano, Ventura, and Yolo counties, the City of Sacramento, and the state’s mean pay, causing an exodus of talent. Sometimes, these better benefits support specific areas of need, such as bilingual attorneys.
Solano County is one example of a rather large pay differential; public attorneys can earn up to 18% more there than they do in Sacramento.
The county has asserted that SCAA is seeking a raise on top of an agreement already promising 14-15% increases to compensation and benefits, applicable in different structures in several stages during the contract period from January 1, 2023 through June 30, 2025.
The SCAA fundamentally disagrees, telling AsAmNews that what its members agreed to was not a contract extension, but an addendum finalized six months after the expiration of the last contract back in July 2022. The document ensured cost of living adjustments (COLAs) that the county’s labor department had to enforce after the executive office tried to pressure the attorneys to drop their quest or live with a 0% raise.
“No one took this job to get rich,” Chisholm insisted. “It weighs heavy on me and the board because it’s a big sacrifice to go without work and pay,” he said.
He pointed out that both the DAs who file and prosecute cases and the public defenders who represent the accused poor, were seeking the same thing side by side even if their core functions theoretically oppose one another’s.
The essential work of a public defender
Sacramento Public Defender Quoc To joined the SCAA’s executive board in 2022.
He spoke with AsAmNews at a picnic table on the terrace of the courthouse, in front of which his colleagues, who would normally be working in a separate administration building, milled about. A beaded bracelet made by a younger attorney hung from his left wrist, spelling “solidarity 4 ever.”
The spark that led him to his current career happened when he was sitting through the trial of somebody who had stabbed his fraternity brother and friend to death in a drunken incident outside their house.
“He took away another life in a drunken moment, in a fight, and I just couldn’t help but feel empathy for him.” To said, of the defendant. He felt guilty about his deceased friend but could not stop seeing the similarities between his own working class background and that of the guy on trial.
To and his family fled to the U.S. in 1990 after his father was released from a decade of wrongful imprisonment after the Vietnam War. They resettled in the inner-city neighborhood of Little Saigon near Santa Ana in Southern California, where To grew up amid tough surroundings.
“I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I was to be where I was, like ten degrees removed from that situation,” he said.
To went on to law school, where mentors pointed him toward public work.
In 2013, after passing the bar, he was sending letters of interest to various PD’s offices when he received a call from Sacramento from Karen Flynn, the previous chief assistant he had worked with in Contra Costa. She asked if he wanted an interview in Sacramento.
“I never thought about coming to Sacramento. Growing up in L.A, Sacramento was a cow town to us folks, but I decided to take the risk. The rest is history,” smiled To.
He met his wife, had a child, and made a home and community in the capital city, which he said he and his colleagues love, and love to serve.
To became known as a social man in the office who mixed well with all the various groupings in his workplace and was always plugged in to employment contract conversations.
As 2021 came to a close, a spot became open in the new SCAA leadership and Paul Gomez, now SCAA’s vice president, asked To to fill the vacancy at the recommendation of several of their colleagues.
To weighed the proposition with his wife.
“My wife said, ‘You better join, or don’t come home.’ Basically, she said, ‘You talk about contract issues all the time. You’re involved, but you’re not involved enough, and do you want to talk about or be about it?” To remembered.
He joined the executive board of the attorneys’ association as PD representative last October – a young voice not just in terms of age at 36, but as somebody hired after a pension reform in 2012 and capable of advocating for the next generation of public attorneys.
To said that a pre-existing trend of experienced public defenders and prosecutors leaving the county for better pay became “supercharged” when the COVID pandemic realigned people’s priorities and values across all industries.
“We’ve seen a lot of colleagues move to the Bay Area to make twenty-seven, thirty-one, thirty-seven percent more, and the cost of living is not that much higher – it’s not thirty-six percent higher in Oakland than it is here. But we’ve seen a flight of experience and talent going to all these other counties,” he said.
To said, “Our job, I would argue, is one of the most stressful and traumatic jobs you can do.”
He acknowledged that the emotional rigor also existed “across the aisle” among district attorneys but made the distinction that public defenders had to interface with and then stand up for clients who had often been accused of the most heinous acts.
“The question we often get asked is, ‘How do you do that? How do you do this?’ And my answer is always: Do what? Ensure the dignity and rights of the accused? Because hurt people hurt people,” To said.
He said that a lot of public defenders dealt not only with crime and its suspected perpetrators, but with people who themselves have been victims of crimes, trauma, abuse – people who have been often voiceless and fallen through the cracks of not only the criminal justice system, but society overall.
“It’s easy to judge people without looking into the whole story. So that’s the job of public defenders. We’re here to tell the story of our clients and to advocate for them,” he said.
Photo by Jia H. Jung
The pricelessness of an experienced public prosecutor
As an elected official, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho was not able to join the picketers as he did 18 years ago as a deputy DA during the attorney union’s last protest in 2006.
Instead, he continued showing up in a full suit to his office catty-cornered from the courthouse to tend to the county’s public safety priorities, like combating homelessness, retail theft, violence, anti-Asian hate crimes, human trafficking, sexual abuse, and the Fentanyl crisis.
DA Ho’s office, seated in the capital of the state that alone is the fifth largest economy in the whole world, is the largest in Northern California after that of Santa Clara County and prosecuted 10,000 misdemeanors and 7,000 felonies and last year, the first of his six-year term.
“We have approximately 180 prosecutors. So I went from 180 to 12,” he said, in reference to the strike’s immediate effects upon his daily duties. “And when you look at it, this has had a severe impact on public safety when the attorneys have been out of contract for two years now.”
The day after the strike began, DA Ho and the 12 remaining attorneys on hand feverishly reviewed 137 custody police reports of potential felony cases. If they hadn’t, those in custody could have been released without further evaluation.
Despite having to pick up the slack of over 100 absent employees, he unequivocally supports the picketers’ cause, just as he did 18 years ago when he was an active part of the attorneys’ 2006 strike two years into his career as a deputy DA.
In his office on day four of the protest, he told AsAmNews that the unfavorable wages in his county made it hard to hire new talent and retain experienced attorneys. He shared that 7% of the county’s prosecutors have 11 to 14 years of experience to inform the 40% of the attorneys who have been on the job for fewer than five years.
DA Ho also said that public attorneys deserved better benefits and compensation not only for hefty workloads, but because of the secondary trauma that they incur in the course of their work.
“We are interviewing an eight-year-old child who’s molested. We’re looking at autopsy photos during lunch in the middle of a homicide trial. For the public defender, you’re defending a client who’s facing life in prison,” he said, adding that the demands of the job also bleed over to personal and family life.
“We miss recitals and soccer games. We miss dinners with our family. We have many sleepless nights,” he said.
He got into this tough field because he wanted to be a gatekeeper of the justice system after an early life of peril.
He started his career as a prosecutor in 1998 and relocated to Sacramento by 2004, where he became enchanted by the city and fell in love with the robust, diverse community. He went on to fight more than 100 cases, putting away notorious criminals.
When he was sworn into office in January 2023, he became the first person of color, first Asian American, and first Vietnamese refugee elected to the role. He remains one of 10 elected DAs of Asian or Pacific Islander descent among 2,400 in the country.
“When you walk out of here, you’ll see a wall with pictures of all the prior days. I’m the only person there who’s a minority,” said DA Ho. “That has particular significance for me, and has particular significance for our community, that oftentimes does not trust the police and the government.”
Public safety risks as the impasse drags on
DA Ho said he will have to heal the morale in his office, which he said has been plummeting during the strike.
“I have attorneys who are crying in the bathroom. I have attorneys who are fighting cancer, and they’re out on strike instead of doing the job that they love, because they are not getting compensated with their benefits in a way that is fair and competitive,” he said.
He said he had gone to Villanueva two years prior to try and work things out when the county CEO was still the deputy CEO, but to no avail.
“I’m not sure when it’s going to end,” DA Ho admitted. “We’re at a tipping point when you look at public safety.”
He said that, in order to keep the county safe, the county needs to make sure that the people that serve the community are being supported by the community and by the county. He concluded that the stalemate was threatening more than this objective.
“I think that the county CEOs inaction created a lot of emotional, mental damage to the justice system here in the county. And that needs to be fixed,” he said.
Off the clock but still on the case
Last week, Decarcerate Sacramento, committed to reducing incarceration in the county, reminded The People’s Vanguard of Davis that 81% of those held in custody in the county’s jail were Black and Brown people awaiting legal representation and trial.
The organization initially slammed the public defenders on strike, alleging that they were leaving the county’s poor in the lurch over their battle for higher pay and that private Conflict Criminal Defenders (CCD) were left to fill the vacuum.
To, made aware of these concerns, wrote to the organization on Friday, explaining that the strike was meant to make the county, not indigent clients, feel the pain of the public defenders.
If the Public Defender refuses appointment for an accused person who cannot afford a legal representative, California law requires the court to appoint the CCD Panel, and, next in line, a member of the private bar, increasing the county’s tab as a consequence of its refusal to negotiate fair compensation for its public attorneys.
“The court is not allowed to make an indigent accused continue on without counsel. Indeed, if it came to that, we would take legal action to stop it,” he vowed, in his email.
Both the Vanguard and Decarcerate Sacramento may be releasing recalibrated statements after the exchange.
Out in the plaza, SCAA’s Chisholm added that, out of concern for public clients, the work of both defenders and prosecutors is continuing on trials that were in process prior to the strike.
The county’s attorneys have also continued picking up “last day trials” – trials for cases approaching the constitutional (Amendment 6) and statutory time limits for the right to a speedy trial designed to keep defendants out of prolonged incarceration during the course of due process.
But, he said, “All the other cases that are churning and making their way through the system – they’re going to get pushed to next week and the week beyond on already totally overcrowded calendars, and that’s bad for everyone.”
A standing speaker behind Chisholm, blasting inspirational musical selections such as Hold On by Wilson Phillips and Working Class Hero by Green Day, shifted to the more downtempo, enigmatic With Or Without You by U2, leaving listeners to ponder what the ballad’s lyrics suggest in regard to the criminal justice system’s ongoing state of suspense.
A lot’s gone on, but nothing’s happened
Midway through the first week of the strike, the county’s executive office passed out printed proposals for a contract extension to SCAA members at a meeting.
To said that the SCAA is amenable to the 1-4% cost of living raise for 2025-2026 but nothing else. He pointed out that the county’s newest scheme presented a 3% raise while simultaneously taking 3% away, made no mention of back pay, and offered nothing for the time period attorneys have worked without a contract.
After Labor Day weekend Kimberly Nava, a spokesperson for Sacramento County, updated AsAmNews with an email stating that SCAA employees were, as of last Friday, asking for 7.5%, on top of other benefits through 2025.
To clarified that this means 5.5% for 2025-2026 and 2% for 2026-2027 – a half-percent stepdown from what the SCAA sought before, in hopes of avoiding yet another contract negotiation this fall.
On, Sept. 5, the day after the impassioned supervisors’ meeting, the Public Employment Relations Board denied a request for an injunction that could have forced a large number of the PDs back to work. The SCAA felt supported by this, and, in their meeting on that same day, committed to a third week of a strike with no pay or emergency fund.
The attorneys plan to protest at and around the courthouse from approximately 8:15 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every business day until the county presents terms of employment that they can accept.
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