S.J. mayor apologizes to top black city director
He showed ‘subtle form of microaggression ... as a phenomenon of displaced blame,’ NAACP letter says
After minority leaders called him out on his behavior, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo offered a formal apology to a top black city administrator whom he had publicly reprimanded during a tense exchange about the growing backlog of building inspections.
The mayor’s apology Tuesday came just one day after the Rev. Jeff Moore, president of the San Jose/Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP, submitted a letter to Liccardo and council members demanding a public apology to City Planning Director Rosalynn Hughey.
“It’s my job to communicate effectively, and if my tone ever interferes with the substance that I’m saying, then I haven’t done my job,” Liccardo said during the council meeting Tuesday night. “So if my tone was too directed at you (Hughey), then I apologize.”
During a discussion last week, Liccardo raised his voice in visible frustration about a backlog of thousands of building inspections and construction permits within the city — operations that Hughey oversees as the head of the city’s Planning Department.
In his letter, Moore said that the mayor displayed “aggressive behavior” that “deflected attention from the real issue” and showed a “subtle form of microaggression … as a phenomenon of displaced blame.”
“Ms. Hughey, because she is black and female, should not have to experience at the hands of a white male, an aggressive encounter that appears to me to be no more than a bias-filled interaction,” Moore wrote in the letter. “… I question if it’s the impaired trust and chronic stress that African Americans feel might be contributing to the difficulty of retaining Black employees at the City of San Jose.”
The topic of discussion during the April 28 City Council meeting revolved around whether the city had the authority under the Santa Clara County shelterat-home order to continue to conduct building inspections for construction projects that were shuttered under the order.
For the first six weeks of the county public health order, San Jose halted its inspections, which created a backlog of more than 2,000 inspections. Liccardo argued that the backlog could prevent thousands of construction workers from getting back to work when the county decided to allow projects to resume again.
Hughey told Liccardo at the April 28 meeting that her department wanted to make sure they were “adhering to the county order,” which had prohibited most construction at that time.
“It’s our understanding that because construction is supposed to be ceased, except for those few exceptions, that we should not be sending inspectors to those sites unless the site is completely done,” she said.
But Liccardo fired back, arguing that the city’s duty on conducting inspections was “regulatory,” not “construction,” and therefore was permitted as an essential governmental function under the county order.
“We don’t build stuff; we inspect it,” he said. “Cities throughout the Bay Area are believing that inspections and permitting are essential because they’re going to know as soon as this green light is on that they’ve got thousands of construction workers who need to get back to work in the worst recession.”
Later on in the discussion, Liccardo singled out Hughey.
“What I’m routinely hearing from folks who are trying to build is we can’t even get an inspection because the county is telling us no, and that’s what I’ve heard four or five times now from Rosalynn,” Liccardo said.
On Tuesday, the mayor said that during that sixweek span he had repeatedly asked for clarification on whether inspections were permitted to take place under the county order. And that even after he received affirmation from the county executive that the city could resume inspections, top city administrators still did not act.
“The frustration was really directed at the entire decision-making chain — that is the top management all the way down — that we have not been effectively communicating what the rules are and that our inability to communicate well in this organization about those rules is impairing people from getting back to work,” Liccardo said during Tuesday’s meeting.
Following the mayor’s statements, City Manager David Sykes stepped up to receive the blame for the miscommunication that led to the city’s inspection backlog.
“Ultimately, communication within this organization is my responsibility,” Sykes said. “I take responsibility for that and apologize that we were not able to translate that within the organization.”
The new extended county order, which went into effect Monday, allowed all types of construction projects to resume. San Jose is working through the backlog and hopes to have it resolved within two weeks, Hughey said.