Sacramento Bee Editorial: Who is Jerry Simmons?

Tsakopoulos Dems drift to GOP's right
Published 12:01 am PDT Thursday, June 1, 2006

Jerry Simmons is a 32-year-old attorney, a member of the Placer County Republican Central Committee and a candidate for the Placer County Board of Supervisors. His help in high places? The Tsakopoulos family, the region's most prominent developers and largest donors to Democratic candidates and causes.

Through mailers, television spots and campaign contributions, the family is supporting Simmons and opposing Robert Weygandt, a three-term incumbent who doesn't deserve to be ousted.

The family puts the focus on higher education. So let's talk about higher education in Placer County.

Simmons is part of a bloc that took over the Sierra Joint Community College District board of trustees. Key faculty and staff are in open revolt against Simmons, the trustees' president. Trustees have drastically scaled back the system's previous vision for expansion, ousted a popular president and earned the wrath of the Placer County grand jury.

The board under Simmons' leadership has been disastrous; Simmons is now one of the subjects of a recall campaign. If advancing higher education is the family's goal here, why pick Simmons? We tried to ask Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, the family's leader of Placer County projects, but his spokesman didn't provide an on-the-record answer.

So that leaves us wondering what is wrong with Weygandt. As we noted the other day, his goal of preserving open spaces and defining the future path of growth collides with the Tsakopoulos family agenda.

The family has long held an interest in about 3,000 acres of farmland outside Roseville. In 2003, the family proposed building a university on 600 acres and developing another 500 acres, with profits going to underwrite the campus. But a huge planning question -- the fate of the remaining acreage -- was left unanswered. Simmons led a campaign for a "build-a-university" advisory measure. Weygandt opposed it, because it ignored broader questions about the proposed university's impact on such things as traffic and farmland preservation. Now, Weygandt is being tarred as anti-university.

As for Simmons, the grand jury blasted the board's leadership in handling the departure of former Sierra College President Kevin Ramirez. A board member falsely accused Ramirez of illegally shifting funds to a university foundation to promote a bond for desperately needed university expansions. It was a self-inflicted wound. Voters rejected that ambitious bond, and now the board proposes only a conservative bond, mainly to finance repairs.

Ramirez's treatment and the dismantling of the system's expansion program have outraged faculty and staff. As Joe Medeiros, a 16-year professor, put it, trustees have "brought us to our knees in terms of morale and in terms of respect for the board."

Simmons' response? "We're less than 30 days from an election," he told The Bee's Kim Minugh "I have great confidence the public will see through their publicity stunt."

In one respect, Simmons is right. This is a stunt -- a deceptive campaign ginned up to to unseat a hard-working supervisor who had the guts to stand up to a powerful family accustomed to getting its way. This kind of election can tip the balance of power for a long time to come.

Power in Placer County belongs in the hands of independent leaders. A vote for Weygandt would send a powerful message that developers, be they Democrats or Republicans, be they from Sacramento or Sun City, can't buy elections in Placer County.