Sonoma County officials grapple with loss of department heads of color

The pending departure of Sonoma County’s top economic development official and the withdrawal of its would-be health services director over the treatment of directors of color has magnified the county’s struggle to address racism.

Economic Development Board Executive Director Sheba Person-Whitley, who is Black, told her fellow department heads in an email Wednesday that she had accepted an appointment at the U.S. Department of Commerce and called out daily microaggressions and racial bias that made working at the county “untenable.”

“My time here has been fraught with me doing my very best to perform my duties as Executive Director while managing the stresses and harm caused as a result of racial bias and microaggression,” Person-Whitley wrote.

Alegría De La Cruz, director of the county’s Office of Equity, said the departure of a Black leader like Person-Whitley, after citing racial bias, sends a dire message to the county’s small Black population, including De La Cruz’s neighbor, a 14-year-old Black Latina.

“She suddenly doesn’t have somebody like Sheba that she sees in her community,” she said. “That’s what we lose. Our future in this county, if you look at our kids, they’re Black and brown; they’re Asian.”

Microaggressions are everyday comments and actions that make a person feel marginalized and “othered,” for their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or other elements of identity.

Person-Whitley’s decision to leave came to light just as Derrick Neal, the county’s choice to take over the $275 million health services department, backed out of the appointment citing concerns about the treatment of department heads of color.

De La Cruz called Person-Whitley’s departure demoralizing and unacceptable. De La Cruz highlighted that Person-Whitley was instrumental in drafting a Board-approved, five-year strategic plan aimed at achieving greater racial equity and social justice in local government institutions.

Losing Person-Whitley’s leadership is a blow to the county’s efforts toward greater racial equity.

“It illuminates our path to the work that we have to do as an institution and as a community, because it’s unacceptable,” De La Cruz said.

The loss of Person-Whitley and Neal has raised broader concerns about Sonoma County’s struggle to welcome people of color, particularly African Americans, and has prompted an internal look at how the county supports its department heads of color.

“If all we do is have good intentions, but we don’t change the way we do business to support our diverse leaders in this county, then that’s not enough,” Supervisor James Gore said in an interview Friday.

The demands on county department heads are high by nature, and the recent years spent responding to fires and the pandemic have only worsened the strain.

“It’s very challenging to deliver on all the programs and services and meet the expectations of supervisors,” said General Services Director Caroline Judy.

Judy, who is retiring next year in part because of “disaster fatigue,” noted that budget cuts have also made the job more challenging.

District Attorney Jill Ravitch, who plans to retire next year and overcame a recall election in September, said she was “saddened to see the exodus of talented department heads,” and questioned whether the Board of Supervisors is providing adequate leadership for them.

She recalled that at the start of her time as DA 11 years ago, supervisors would interact with department heads and there was a culture of mentorship.

“Do they even bother to pick up the phone and see how a department head is doing?” Ravitch said.

Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins said in an interview she has been having conversations with department heads about how to improve performance evaluations and transparency, and create “fair systems of accountability.”

Throughout their tenures with the county, prominent officials of color including former Health Services Director Barbie Robinson, a Black woman, and Person-Whitley, have described encountering double standards not applied to their white, male predecessors. Person-Whitley has said she has felt excluded from county initiatives and both have experienced direct, aggressive racism when engaging with the public.

Each cited instances of racial bias but also microaggressions. While neither gave a specific example of a microaggression they experienced, the slights can take many forms, such as mistaking people of color for service workers or calling someone a “credit to their race.”

Racism in Sonoma County has gotten so severe the county has had to take security precautions to protect its leaders of color, Hopkins said in an interview Thursday.

Person-Whitley brought her concerns directly to the Board of Supervisors about a month ago.

The board had a “series of consultations” with Person-Whitley and developed a “battle plan to come out of it,” Gore said.

On Thursday, supervisors indicated they had not expected Person-Whitley to take another job.

“I was shocked at the departure of some of these people and you have to wonder whether the board even realized it was coming and if it didn’t, the question is ‘why didn’t they?’” Ravitch said.

The board is expected to address the concerns Tuesday during its weekly meeting, Supervisor David Rabbitt and Hopkins said Friday. Because the issue is not a formal agenda item, the supervisors will not be able to speak about specific policy but Hopkins said she plans to call for a report from the office of equity on the department’s progress and how county employees are feeling.

“At some point there will be continue calls to make sure we can address these issues holistically,” Rabbitt said.

Sources on Friday said someone in the county was instructing department heads not to speak directly with The Press Democrat.

Gore, Hopkins and Rabbitt, who responded to requests for comment Friday, said they were unaware of any such direction.

"Absolutely no edict or direction was given to department heads — it was their decision to talk to the press or not and the (communications) crew was there to help,“ Rabbitt later confirmed via text.

Supervisors Susan Gorin and Chris Coursey did not respond to requests for further comment on Friday.

You can reach Staff Writers Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com and Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.