Sacramento Regional Transit District (PERB 2871P)

STATE OF CALIFORNIA
DECISION OF THE
PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BOARD
SACRAMENTO REGIONAL TRANSIT
DISTRICT,
Employer,
and
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE,
COUNTY & MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES
LOCAL 146,
Petitioner.
SMCS Case No. 21-2-287
Case No. SA-PC-23-P
PERB Decision No. 2871-P
August 31, 2023
Appearances: Beeson, Tayer & Bodine by Peter McEntee, Attorney, for American
Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 146; Jackson Lewis by Gina
Roccanova, Attorney, for Sacramento Regional Transit District.
Before Banks, Chair; Krantz and Paulson, Members.
DECISION
KRANTZ, Member: This case is before the Public Employment Relations Board
(PERB or Board) on exceptions to a proposed decision of a hearing officer appointed
by the State Mediation and Conciliation Service (SMCS). At issue is a petition for
certification filed by American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees
Local 146 (AFSCME). Specifically, while AFSCME already represents two bargaining
units at Sacramento Regional Transit District (Sac RTD or District)—a supervisory unit
and a rank-and-file unit—the union has petitioned to represent a third unit, consisting
of 13 unrepresented District Superintendents.

2
The parties have stipulated that the Superintendents’ duties are sufficient to
qualify them as “supervisors and/or managers.” But the parties are at odds over the
ramifications of that fact. The District claims Superintendents have no collective
bargaining rights under the District’s enabling statute, the Sacramento Regional
Transit District Act (Sacramento RTD Act).1 AFSCME disagrees.
SMCS appointed a hearing officer to address the parties’ dispute. After the
hearing officer ruled in AFSCME’s favor, the District filed exceptions. In its response
and cross-exceptions, AFSCME supports the hearing officer’s conclusion that
Superintendents have collective bargaining rights, but AFSCME also asks us to find
that the hearing officer should have resolved an alternative argument AFSCME
asserted: that judicial estoppel applies because the District has long recognized
AFSCME as the exclusive representative of a separate supervisory unit.
We find no cause to sustain either party’s exceptions. As we proceed to
explain, Superintendents have collective bargaining rights under the Sacramento RTD
Act, and the hearing officer reasonably declined to reach AFSCME’s alternative
argument. Accordingly, we direct SMCS to continue processing AFSCME’s petition.2
1 The Sacramento RTD Act is codified at Public Utilities Code (PUC) section
102000 et seq. The statute’s labor relations provisions are found at sections
102398-102418.
2 There is no dispute that AFSCME submitted adequate proof of support with its
petition. Moreover, the parties stipulated that if the Board determines Superintendents
have collective bargaining rights, then a unit of Superintendents would be appropriate
and SMCS should hold an election.

3
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The District operates bus and light rail services in Sacramento County. It is one
of more than 15 public transit districts with enabling statutes found in Divisions 10 and
11.5 of the PUC. The District recognizes AFSCME as the exclusive representative of a
supervisory bargaining unit as well as an administrative and technical unit.
On January 4, 2022, AFSCME filed its petition for certification seeking to
represent Superintendents. AFSCME subsequently amended the petition to remove
one position that the District had reclassified from Superintendent to a Director-level
position reporting to a District Vice President. As amended, the petition covers 13
positions in the following classifications:
a. Transportation Superintendent – Bus (five positions)
b. Transportation Superintendent – Light Rail (two positions)
c. Maintenance Superintendent – Bus (one position)
d. Maintenance Superintendent - Light Rail (two positions)
e. Maintenance Superintendent – Wayside (one position)
f. Materials Management Superintendent (two positions)
On October 10, 2022, the parties agreed that there was no need for an
evidentiary hearing and that the hearing officer could issue a proposed decision based
on a stipulated record and closing briefs. One of the parties’ stipulations is that the
classifications at issue “meet the federal definition of supervisors and/or managers
under federal law.”
On December 16, 2022, the hearing officer issued a proposed decision finding
the petitioned-for Superintendent classifications have collective bargaining rights. As

4
noted, the hearing officer declined to reach AFSCME’s alternative argument that
judicial estoppel bars the District from denying the Superintendents’ collective
bargaining rights.
DISCUSSION
The Sacramento RTD Act directs SMCS to address representation questions at
the District. (PUC, § 102403.) Since 2012, when the Legislature transferred SMCS
from the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) to PERB, the Board has had
jurisdiction to resolve appeals from SMCS decisions.3 (San Joaquin Regional Transit
District (2019) PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 5 (San Joaquin).)
To resolve representation matters at PUC transit districts, the most important
sources of law are: (1) the transit district enabling acts; (2) decisions interpreting the
transit district enabling acts, which include appellate court decisions, PERB decisions
issued since 2012, and DIR decisions from prior to 2012; and (3) federal private sector
labor law and administrative practice to the extent they are “relevant,” as indicated in
PERB Regulation 93080.4 (San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, pp. 5-9.)
3 After SMCS became part of PERB, the Board adopted pre-existing regulations
that DIR had promulgated on transit representation matters, without making any
material changes. (San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 5.) On July 7,
2023, the Board issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding potential updates
to these regulations, but the proposed revisions are not currently in effect.
4 PERB Regulations are codified at California Code of Regulations, title 8,
section 31001 et seq. The Sacramento RTD Act is in accord, stating that “relevant”
federal law and practice should guide unit determinations. (PUC, § 102403).

5
The parties’ central dispute concerns the relevance of federal labor law and
administrative practice.5 Both parties acknowledge the settled principle that federal
law and practice are generally relevant to unit determinations under the PUC transit
enabling acts, except where: “(1) the question presented is governed by an explicit
provision of the applicable transit district statute or (2) considerations unique to public
sector labor relations require a deviation from federal law.” (San Joaquin, supra,
PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 8.) The parties further acknowledge that, pursuant to
this standard, “whether federal law is relevant will depend upon the particular
circumstances of each case.” (Ibid.) However, the parties disagree as to how the
above principles apply to this dispute over employees who are supervisory and/or
managerial, and the parties also dispute the relevance of supervisory and managerial
provisions found in California’s other public sector labor relations statutes. We analyze
those issues below, together with precedent from DIR, PERB, and the appellate
courts.
I. 	Federal Law Differs from the Sacramento RTD Act in Its Language and
Legislative History on Supervisory and Managerial Issues.
The NLRA, since the 1947 amendments thereto, has explicitly excluded
supervisors from its definition of covered employees. (29 U.S.C. § 152(3) & (11).) The
NLRA does not explicitly exclude managerial employees from the definition of covered
5 In this decision, we refer to federal private sector labor law as the National
Labor Relations Act (NLRA; 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.), which Congress first enacted in
1935. PERB Regulation 93080 and the Sacramento RTD Act refer to the same law as
the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), which is the name of the law Congress
enacted when it modified the NLRA in 1947. No difference is intended by these
disparate references. (San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 7, fn. 8.)

6
employees. However, the United States Supreme Court has held that the legislative
history of Congress’s 1947 NLRA amendments—which added the exclusion for
supervisors—shows that Congress assumed the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) would exclude managerial employees. (NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co. Div. of
Textron, Inc. (1974) 416 U.S. 267, 283 (Bell Aerospace).)
The Sacramento RTD Act of 1971 neither contains the NLRA’s explicit
exclusion nor has a similar legislative history. Rather, because the Sacramento RTD
Act extends the right of organization and representation to employees without
restriction (PUC, § 102400), it is akin to the NLRA prior to the 1947 amendments.
(See, e.g., Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB (1947) 330 U.S. 485 (Packard), overruled
by 29 U.S.C. § 152(3) & (11), as recognized in NLRB v. Town & Country Elec., Inc.
(1995) 516 U.S. 85, 92.) Indeed, in Packard, the Supreme Court found that it was for
Congress, not the Court, to exempt supervisors if it wished to do so. (330 U.S. at
p. 490.) Congress promptly did so later that year, in large part responding to Packard.
(Bell Aerospace, supra, 416 U.S. at p. 279 [“The Packard decision was a major factor
in bringing about the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947”].)
In assessing the import of the differences between federal law and a PUC
transit enabling act, we do not write on a blank slate. Rather, as discussed post at
pages 10-13, since 1993 DIR and PERB have held that federal law and practice on
supervisory and managerial issues are not relevant to interpreting a transit district
enabling act that lacks the NLRA’s statutory language and legislative history.
However, before turning to DIR and PERB precedent in transit representation matters,
we round out the statutory picture by reviewing the range of California public sector

7
labor relations laws, their provisions on supervisory and managerial issues or lack
thereof, and the controlling interpretations thereof.
II. 	Under Other California Public Sector Labor Relations Laws, the Absence of
Supervisory or Managerial Exclusions Means Such Employees are Covered.
Interpreting the Sacramento RTD Act requires that we compare it not only to
the NLRA, but also to multiple other public sector labor relations acts enacted by the
California Legislature. Some of these laws contain explicit provisions about
supervisors, managerial employees, or both, while others are silent, as follows.
In 1968, three years before the Legislature enacted the Sacramento RTD Act, it
enacted the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act. (MMBA; Gov. Code, §§ 3500-3511.) The
MMBA covers labor relations at local public agencies, including at least 20 transit
agencies, though the MMBA does not cover local agencies whose PUC enabling acts
include their own labor relations provisions, such as Sac RTD. The MMBA contains no
exclusion for supervisors or managerial employees, and appellate courts have found
that the MMBA therefore affords collective bargaining rights to supervisors and
managers. We explain.
In Organization of Deputy Sheriffs v. County of San Mateo (1975) 48
Cal.App.3d 331 (Deputy Sheriffs), the court found that because the MMBA differs from
federal law in that it “excludes only elected officials and those appointed by the
Governor,” it “extends organizational and representation rights to supervisory and
managerial employees without regard to their position in the administrative hierarchy.”
(Id. at p. 338.) The court explained that the “California Legislature thus minimized the
potential or actual conflict of interest that, as mentioned in [Bell Aerospace, supra, 416
U.S. 267] was the basis for the total exclusion of management employees that obtains

8
under federal law.” (Deputy Sheriffs, supra, 48 Cal.App.3d at p. 338.) Two years after
Deputy Sheriffs, the Court of Appeal reaffirmed this MMBA interpretation in Public
Employees of Riverside County, Inc. v. County of Riverside (1977) 75 Cal.App.3d 882,
888.
The MMBA is an important landmark in our analysis for two distinct reasons.
First, it is the most important example of how courts and PERB interpret a labor
relations statute that does not share the NLRA’s statutory language and legislative
history on supervisory and managerial issues. Second, it is the main labor relations
statute covering transit employees other than the PUC enabling acts, and it is
therefore unsurprising that, as discussed post, DIR long ago harmonized its
interpretation of the PUC enabling acts by adopting the MMBA approach toward
supervisors and managers.
While the Legislature was silent on supervisory and managerial exclusions both
when it enacted the MMBA in 1968 and the Sacramento RTD Act in 1971, by 1975 the
Legislature began experimenting with other variations, showing that it was cognizant
of the supervisory/managerial issues and knew how to craft various alternatives. First
came the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA; Gov. Code, § 3540 et seq.),
enacted in 1975, which explicitly excludes managerial employees, but not supervisors.
(Gov. Code, § 3540.1, subd. (j).)6
6 EERA does restrict the unit placement of supervisors. (Gov. Code, § 3545,
subd. (b)(2).)

9
The Ralph C. Dills Act (Dills Act; Gov. Code, § 3512 et seq.), enacted in 1977
to cover state employees, explicitly excludes supervisory and managerial employees.7
(Gov. Code, § 3513, subd. (c).) The Judicial Council Employer-Employee Relations
Act (Gov. Code, § 3524.50 et seq.), enacted in 2017, similarly excludes supervisory
and managerial employees. (Gov. Code, § 3524.52. subd. (g).)
The Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (Gov. Code, § 3560 et
seq.), enacted in 1978, explicitly excludes managerial employees, while limiting the
rights of supervisors. (Gov. Code, §§ 3562, subd. (e), 3580.)
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Transit
Employer-Employee Relations Act (TEERA; PUC, § 99560 et seq.), enacted in 2003,
explicitly states that it “shall only apply to supervisory employees of the Los Angeles
County Metropolitan Transportation Authority [LACMTA].” (PUC, § 99560.3.) TEERA
defines the term “Managerial employee” (PUC, § 99560.1, subd. (k)), but it does not
use the term. Thus, it contains neither an explicit inclusion nor an explicit exclusion for
those supervisors who also qualify as managerial employees. TEERA’s legislative
history sheds some light on this ambiguity, showing the Legislature’s intent to cover
certain supervisors who are also low-level managerial employees. Specifically, all
eight of the bill analyses noted the sponsoring union’s goal of assuring continued
collective bargaining rights for a group of Senior Supervisors who had been
7 The Excluded Employees Bill of Rights (EEBR) covers state employees
excluded from coverage under the Dills Act, including managerial and supervisory
employees. EEBR provides state supervisory employees with certain representational
rights and employee organizations the right to represent their excluded members in
their employment relations with the state. (Gov. Code, §§ 3530, 3531.)

10
union-represented but had been reclassified out of the bargaining unit to Assistant
Manager positions. (See, e.g., Assem. Floor Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 199
(2003-2004 Reg. Sess.) as amended June 2, 2003, p. 2.) These analyses further
show the sponsor’s goal of creating an efficient means for the supervisors’ union to
regain its recently promoted members without forcing the union “to go to the courts,”
which the union deemed to be “an economic hardship.” (Ibid.) While this history does
not entirely resolve all ambiguities in TEERA’s treatment of managerial employees, it
indicates that LACMTA supervisors had collective bargaining rights under the PUC
enabling act in effect prior to TEERA, and the Legislature acted to assure they would
maintain those rights as low-level managers, without forcing their union to go to court
to establish such rights.8
III. 	The District Disregarded DIR and PERB Precedent Noting that Federal Law
and Practice are Irrelevant to Supervisory/Managerial Issues under the PUC
Transit Enabling Acts.
As we noted in San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 7,
precedent from the period before the Legislature transferred SMCS from DIR to PERB
includes DIR’s decision in San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (1993) DIR
Final Decision, adopting April 2, 1993 tentative decision (SFBART).9 In that case, the
8 TEERA’s coverage of supervisors and managers is further clarified by
reference to the law’s one explicit exclusion. Specifically, TEERA excludes
“confidential” employees, defined as “any employee who is required to develop or
present management positions with respect to meeting and conferring or whose duties
normally require access to confidential information that contributes significantly to the
development of those management positions.” (PUC, § 99560.1, subds. (d) & (e).)
9 Certain representation and unit determination decisions for PUC transit
districts issued by DIR prior to 2012 are available at https://perb.ca.gov/state-

11
Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) filed a petition seeking to remove putative
supervisors from a rank-and-file bargaining unit. BART cited DIR’s regulation requiring
SMCS to apply relevant federal law, which was identical to PERB’s current Regulation
93080. (Id., adopting tentative decision at p. 7.) DIR rejected BART’s argument,
finding that federal law regarding supervisors and managers was simply not relevant.
(Id., adopting tentative decision at pp. 12-13.) DIR explained its reasoning, first, by
noting that BART’s enabling act differs from federal law on a central issue: it does not
explicitly exclude supervisors. (Id., adopting tentative decision at p. 12.)
DIR then noted that the California Legislature has taken varied approaches to
such issues, including by failing to mention supervisors and managers in the MMBA.
(SFBART, supra, adopting tentative decision at p. 12.) DIR explained that the MMBA’s
silence means that it covers supervisors and managers, and that one reason for this
difference from federal law is the fact that the California Legislature was less
concerned than Congress about any “potential or actual conflict of interest.” (Id.,
adopting tentative decision at p. 12 [citing Deputy Sheriffs, supra, 48 Cal.App.3d at
p. 338].) DIR expounded further on these issues, again relying on Deputy Sheriffs to
explain three reasons why there are lesser conflict of interest concerns in the public
sector, warranting “more liberal treatment” of supervisors in California’s public sector
labor relations statutes as compared to federal law:
“[I]n the public sector, conflict of interest between
management and supervisory employees is not as clear-cut
as it is in the private sector because (a) supervisorial
powers are ordinarily qualified or limited by civil service and
merit systems in a manner that takes supervisorial
mediation/representation-and-unit-determination-decisions-for-puc-transit-districts.

12
employees out of LMRA's definition; (b) all ranks of public
employees share common goals and have a community of
interest in the functioning of their common employer—the
public as represented by the particular agency; and (c) the
high proportion of professionals in both supervisory and
rank-and-file positions ‘reinforces the cohesiveness that
inheres in public employment.’ [Also] the private sector
unions do not ordinarily accord membership to such
employees—thus preserving historic Them vs. Us (!)
separations between labor and management.”
(SFBART, supra, adopting tentative decision at p. 13 [quoting Deputy Sheriffs, supra,
48 Cal.App.3d at p. 338, fn. 5, internal citation and italics omitted].)
Finally, noting that BART’s enabling statute also did not explicitly exclude
supervisors, DIR found it more like the MMBA than federal law. (SFBART, supra,
adopting tentative decision at p. 13.)10
The fundamental principle at the core of this case has been clear since DIR
issued SFBART in 1993. The District has not addressed or cited SFBART, even
though it cited San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, which summarized
SFBART’s holding that federal law “was not relevant to the issue of whether certain
purported supervisors should be removed from the bargaining unit, given that
California law provides supervisors with relevant protected rights not available under
federal law.” (San Joaquin, supra, PERB Decision No. 2650-P, p. 8 [citing SFBART,
supra, adopting tentative decision at pp. 12-13].) Thus, to the extent the District might
10 Although DIR also noted that BART’s enabling act differed from other similar
acts in that it did not reference federal law (SFBART, supra, adopting tentative
decision at p. 11), that difference had little import given that DIR’s operative
regulation, like PERB’s current regulation, required DIR to apply “relevant” federal law
in all representation matters under the PUC transit enabling acts.

13
have asked us to reverse SFBART, it has waived that argument by not citing the
decision or making such an argument. But even were we to read the District’s
exceptions generously to include an implicit request to reverse SFBART, we would
find no cause to do so for all the reasons set forth herein.
IV. 	Precedent After SFBART, While Less Directly on Point, Similarly Rejects
“Slavish Adherence” to Federal Law on Supervisory/Managerial Issues.
In Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (2004) DIR Final Decision,
adopting December 15, 2003 decision of Acting Director (SCVTA I), the Santa Clara
Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) sought to exclude supervisors and managers
from a mixed Supervisory-Administrative unit. VTA primarily relied on the fact that its
PUC enabling act directed that relevant federal law shall apply. DIR considered two
potential counterarguments: (1) that federal law regarding supervisors and managers
was not relevant; and (2) that there was no need to decide if federal law regarding
supervisors and managers was relevant, because a separate provision of the enabling
act required VTA to recognize bargaining units as they had existed under the MMBA,
before VTA took over all operations from Santa Clara County. DIR sustained the
second counterargument, thereby largely mooting the first. (Id. at p. 5.)
VTA sought a writ against DIR, which the superior court granted. On appeal
from this writ, the Court of Appeal recounted that the superior court had ruled that
“DIR acted in excess of its jurisdiction by failing to apply relevant federal law.” (Santa
Clara Valley Transportation Authority v. Rea (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 1303, 1311
(SCVTA II).) The Court of Appeal reversed, endorsing DIR’s legal analysis. (Id. at
p. 1313.) SCVTA II thus mirrored SCVTA I in declining to speculate about the
collective bargaining rights of any supervisors or managers who had not been

14
previously represented as county employees. However, SCVTA II firmly rejected
VTA's position that federal law is “always relevant to questions of representation at
VTA,” labelling that position “a mistake.” (SCVTA II, supra, at p. 1319.) Analogizing to
a Labor Code provision requiring the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) to
follow “applicable” federal precedent, SCVTA II noted that the ALRB must follow “only
those federal precedents which are relevant to the particular problems of labor
relations on the California agricultural scene.” (Ibid. [quoting ALRB v. Superior Court
(1976) 16 Cal.3d 392, 413].) Accordingly, SCVTA II warned that the requirement to
follow “relevant” federal law “does not demand slavish adherence” to it. (SCVTA II,
supra, 140 Cal.App.4th at p. 1320.)11
V. 	Past Practice Further Confirms that Federal Law and Practice on Supervisory
and Managerial Issues are Not Relevant Here.
We affirm the hearing officer’s decision not only based on the above-discussed
statutory language, legislative history, precedent, and differing policy concerns in the
private and public sectors, but also based on decades of practice at Sac RTD and
other California transit districts, including BART, VTA, and LACMTA, as noted ante.
Indeed, the District fails to grapple with the destabilizing impacts that would flow were
11 The lengthy history of SCTVA I and SCVTA II illustrates a point that arose in
TEERA’s legislative history: a law’s silence on supervisory or managerial rights can
lead to time-consuming, expensive litigation. As discussed ante at pages 9-10,
TEERA’s legislative history indicates an intent to minimize litigation burdens by
moving dispute resolution to the less costly PERB process. Moreover, during this
legislative history, the Legislature was informed that LACMTA supervisors had long
held collective bargaining rights. (See ante at pages 9-10.) Accordingly, TEERA’s
enactment does not suggest that LACMTA’s enabling act followed federal law on
supervisory and managerial issues before 2003 (when it was silent on such issues).
Indeed, Sac RTD has made no such argument.

15
we to reverse course and find that federal law and practice necessarily govern
whether transit district supervisors and managers have collective bargaining rights.
Thus, while we reaffirm that federal law and practice were not relevant even as of
1993, at this point they are not merely irrelevant; they are antithetical to public sector
transit labor relations law in California.
While many supervisory and managerial transit district units in California would
be destabilized were we to reverse SFBART, we need look no further than the District
to find one such unit: a supervisory unit that AFSCME exclusively represents.
AFSCME points out that Sac RTD has in the past refrained from arguing that federal
law was relevant, or otherwise challenging supervisors’ collective bargaining rights,
including when the District entered into election agreements for the supervisory unit
and when it recognized AFSCME as the unit’s bargaining agent. This past practice
further demonstrates that federal law and practice are not relevant.12
VI. 	The Issues in Dispute Here Are Narrow in Scope.
The above conclusions are sufficient for us to affirm the hearing officer’s
conclusion that the District’s Superintendents have collective bargaining rights under
the Sacramento RTD Act. We note in passing that while the parties stipulated that the
District’s Superintendents “meet the federal definition of supervisors and/or managers
under federal law” (emphasis supplied), the parties did not specify whether the
Superintendents’ duties make them supervisors, managerial employees, or both. The
12 The parties’ past practice also undergirds AFSCME’s alternative argument—
that estoppel bars the District from asserting that federal law and practice are relevant.
However, like the hearing officer, we find no need to reach this alternative argument.

16
job descriptions and organizational charts in the record make it more likely that the
Superintendents are supervisors rather than managerial employees. (See, e.g., Santa
Barbara Community College District (2011) PERB Decision No. 2212, adopting
proposed decision at p. 18 [management employees must have both “discretionary
authority to develop or modify institutional goals and priorities” and “authority to
implement programs through the exercise of discretion”].) However, we make no such
finding, first, because we put limited reliance on written job descriptions unless they
comport to actual job duties (id., adopting proposed decision at p. 18 & p. 25, fn. 10),
and we do not know if that is true here since the parties opted to forego witness
testimony.
Nor is there cause to remand this case to the hearing officer to create a more
complete record, as the outcome would be the same whether the District’s
Superintendents are supervisors or managerial employees. Indeed, even assuming for
the sake of argument that the Superintendents’ duties are sufficient to make them
managerial employees, there is no doubt that they are civil service employees who are
low enough in the hierarchy that they fall well within the policy rationales described
ante at page 11, which constitute supplementary bases for the reasoning in SFBART,
supra, adopting tentative decision at p. 13. And as discussed at length above, the
Sacramento RTD Act’s language and legislative history are closer to the MMBA than
to the NLRA or to the various California public sector labor relations statutes
containing explicit language on supervisors, managerial employees, or both.
Notably, the narrow issues in dispute here do not require us to determine if the
Sacramento RTD Act precisely mirrors the MMBA in covering all managerial

17
employees other than elected officials and gubernatorial appointees. Indeed, while
AFSCME specifically amended its petition to exclude a position that the District had
reclassified to a Director-level position, we express no opinion as to the rights of
District employees at the Director level, Vice President level, or higher.
ORDER
Based on the foregoing and on the entire record in this case, the hearing
officer’s decision that the petitioned-for Superintendents have collective bargaining
rights is AFFIRMED. This matter is REMANDED to the State Mediation and
Conciliation Service for further processing consistent with this decision.
Chair Banks and Member Paulson joined in this Decision.