SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Two Sacramento County Supervisors are now calling for the resignation of the County Chief Executive Officer Nav Gill.
This comes less than a week after one of his department heads tested positive for coronavirus after one of Gill's meetings.
The Sacramento County Probation headquarters is where Gill apparently held a five-hour planning meeting in one of their indoor conference rooms on October 15.
According to a spokesperson for the county, some people took their masks off during the meeting, and later that night, one of the department heads who attended that meeting tested positive for coronavirus.
The Tuesday after that meeting, Supervisors Phil Serna and Patrick Kennedy sent out a memo to Gill's office, calling his "patterned behavior, questionable leadership and decision making" into question.
"Realizing the weight of this situation, and the effect this continues to have on our constituents, the people of Sacramento County, we no longer have confidence in you as the Chief Executive Officer of the County of Sacramento and call for your resignation," Serna and Kennedy wrote in the memo.
Ted Somera, executive director of the United Public Employees Union that includes just less than 3,600 county employees across nearly every department, said this has actually been a long time coming.
"It's been a failure, I believe, of the county exec's office on down since the beginning of this. He has failed his employees, he has failed the communities and those families. He shouldn't have to be asked to resign, he should just do it as a goodwill gesture," Somera said.
And Somera said, Gill is failing to set a good example for the rest of the county.
"If he's not going to enforce it at the top, then we see why these departments below him and these department heads aren't enforcing it in those departments," Somera said.
Gregg Fishman, a candidate for the Board of Supervisors District 3 race currently serving on the SMUD Board of Directors, agreed with Serna and Kennedy's memo.
"His actions really put the whole county senior staff at risk of this disease that they're supposed to be protecting us from," Fishman said. "But at some point you have to say, look, this is not working and we need somebody in that seat who is going to take this seriously."
Fishman's opponent in the District 3 race, Rich Desmond, a retired CHP Commander, said he'd like to see an investigation happen first.
"I think we need to do a little bit deeper dive into exactly what happened, get more of the facts, and confirm what has been reported. And if it confirms what has been reported, then I think stepping down and resigning is the appropriate action and I would join the call for that," Desmond said.
Gill declined to comment on this matter.
Kennedy and Serna were unavailable for interviews to explain in better detail why they're calling for this resignation.
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