A political cartoon in a smalltown Rio Vista newspaper takes a shot at Rio Vista city manager Hector De La Rosa for “ducking” questions from a reporter of the Sacramento CBS news affiliate.

The cartoon by Robert Light was in response to a report done by CBS13 about the high salaries of city managers. It shows the reporter trying to ask De La Rosa about his salary of $130,000.


Apparently, De La Rosa never returned calls, emails or reponded to a personal visit.

Depicted on the left side of the cartoon is Isleton’s City Manager Bruce Pope. CBS13 reported that Pope made $108,000 as City Manager of the city with a population of 840.

Isleton told the reporter then: “It’s a legitimate question I think for the taxpayers, the voters, to ask. ‘What do we pay them? What does a city manager do?'”

Here’s the question I will pose to our PublicCEO audience and post answers at a later time:

Is this cartoon fair?

Why couldn’t De La Rosa address the matter and defend his salary? On the other hand, is this more witch hunting over city managers’ compensation? The $130,000 a year figure is not unreasonable.

Send your thoughts to jspencer@publicceo.com. Read some of the responses here.