Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg Head Fake: Calls for Gaza Cease-Fire with $66 Million Budget Deficit

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg thinks he’s doing a clever head fake – he announced last week that he will bring a resolution to the city council calling for a Israel-Hamas cease-fire in Gaza – 7,365 miles away from California’s Capitol city.

How will Mayor Steinberg’s resolution calling for a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza improve the lives of the people of Sacramento?

Quick answer – it won’t, and Mayor Steinberg knows that it won’t.

Sacramento California is a mess.

Since 2015, under Steinberg’s lordship Sacramento has achieved a $66 million budget deficit – even after taking in millions and millions of state and federal Covid funds (still trying to locate that funding). Businesses are still closed after being forced to under Covid lockdown orders. Too many city streets look like third world hellscapes. Homeless drug addicts are living pretty much wherever they desire – sidewalks, parks, in front of businesses, next to schools, on bus stop benches, on private home owners’ driveways, in alleys, under freeways…

And Mayor Steinberg is calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Steinberg is angling for a shot as California Attorney General.

Um, no.

Predictably, Steinberg got the local Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Sacramento Valley/Central California Executive Director to comment positively on his resolution.

However, missing from the original press release is a statement from a local Rabbi or Jewish Community leader. Steinberg instead used a statement from former City Councilman Jay Schenirer, calling him a “Jewish community leader.”

Notably, since our report Friday:

“Some leaders in the Jewish community tell KCRA 3 they have concerns about the resolution, including the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region,” KCRA reported. “The organization’s board voted to officially oppose the resolution.”

Ouch. That stings.

“It’s been an issue that has been difficult both personally for me and also for our community,” co-president Robert Layne said. “Ultimately, we decided that we are not able to support something that isn’t factually true.”

When elaborating on that, Layne said in part, “We do have concerns about false equivalencies between an attack by a genocidal terrorist group, which is Hamas, and Israel’s justified defensive response.”

Layne said he doesn’t know if the Federation would support any sort of resolution due to the issue not being “germane to city business.”

“I am concerned about Islamophobia and antisemitism,” Layne said. “I am concerned about our general community’s safety. I do know that this resolution is something that’s been discussed at city council multiple weeks over many, many days. We had members of the federation at the last city council and they had to leave because they felt unsafe.”

It appears Mayor Steinberg really stepped in it this time, while attempting to cover his own tush.

Steinberg’s office claims: “This resolution recognizes the importance of a safe and secure Israel and an independent Palestinian state.”

“We may not be able to create peace in the Middle East, but we can model what we want to see throughout the world here in our own city,” Steinberg added.

How about modeling a city with a balanced budget and safe, clean streets?