The site of a proposed indoor soccer arena in Rancho Cordova, as seen from a drone on Oct. 9, 2025. The project will be one of many stories The Bee’s new Local Accountability Team will be following closely in 2026.
HECTOR AMEZCUA
hamezcua@sacbee.com
A large indoor sports arena is planned in Rancho Cordova. Who’s footing the bill?
The city of Davis paid $18 million to settle a sidewalk slip-and-fall lawsuit. What does that eye-popping sum mean for taxpayers?
Elk Grove school board members recently gave themselves raises at the same time they laid off dozens of staffers. Why did this happen?
Stories that revealed these news developments — and answered those questions — all appeared recently in The Sacramento Bee. You’ll soon see a lot more of them … online … on our app … in print … and in five weekly “Bee Connected” email newsletters you can get for free by signing up at sacbee.com/newsletters.
Why? We’re launching a new regional reporting team to better serve you.
We’ve long blanketed the city of Sacramento, recently promoting Ishani Desai to tell you everything you need to know about city government and neighboring West Sacramento. It’s the heart of our region, what we call “Bee City.” But that central core is home to only about a quarter of the capital region’s population.
So we’re going to fan out more widely, returning to our reporting roots and, in a way, to my own personal journey to Sacramento.
Long before I became editor of this 169-year-old institution, I cut my journalistic teeth running from suburban Chicago city halls to schools to disaster scenes to local businesses. The more I wrote, the more people reached out to me with tips and feedback. Elected officials weren’t always thrilled with my reporting. But subscribers were, so those officials always returned my calls.
Fast-forward 30-plus years, and that need for reliable information hasn’t changed in communities across America, including in the capital region. Your property taxes and other costs of living are likely increasing, so you need a watchdog. You’ll have five of them in our Local Accountability Team, which will fan out across Yolo County, Placer County, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, Folsom and all points in between. We’ll cover the news of the day with urgency and meet your demand for real-time information about topics that shape your daily life.
We’ll curate the team’s best work in several new Bee Connected newsletters, which are free. Subscribers will be able to read every story in each newsletter. But non-subscribers will have access to only select stories in hopes that they’ll become part of our subscriber community so they can read them all.
Besides Sacramento/West Sac, Bee City will have four other flagship regions, each with a weekly newsletter:
• Yolo County, including Davis and Woodland. Daniel Lempres is our lead reporter here. Besides covering Davis, he’ll continue to keep a close eye on developments related to the Esparto fireworks explosion, for which he and fellow reporter Joe Rubin recently won a statewide James Madison Freedom of Information Award for their investigative reporting spotlighting the litany of problems that preceded the deadly blast. Lempres will be joined by Jake Goodrick, who also will continue covering Sutter and Yuba counties, broadening our regional reach. The first edition of our Bee Connected Davis/Yolo County newsletter will be sent at noon on Monday, March 2, and will continue at that time every Monday thereafter. Reach out to Lempres at dlempres@sacbee.com and Goodrick at jgoodrick@sacbee.com.
• Placer County, where Nicole Buss is anchoring coverage of Roseville and surrounding communities. We’ve had a Bee Connected newsletter here for years. We only expect it to get better under Buss, who joined our team this month and has delivered some strong reads, including one about the prospect of people being allowed to sip beer or wine while strolling downtown Loomis. Bee Connected Roseville/Placer County will continue to be sent every Thursday at 11 a.m. Reach Buss at nicole.buss@sacbee.com.
• Southeast Sacramento County, including Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova. Camryn Dadey, an Elk Grove native, is our lead reporter for these communities, and in a short time she’s become a fixture at school board and city council meetings. She’ll showcase her content in two newsletters: Bee Connected Elk Grove, which will debut at noon on Thursday, Feb. 26, and Bee Connected Rancho Cordova, will launch at noon on Tuesday, March 3. Reach Dadey at cdadey@sacbee.com.
• Folsom, El Dorado Hills and our eastern suburbs, including Arden Arcade, Carmichael, Fair Oaks and Citrus Heights. Bee veteran Theresa Clift is keeping watch on this region as we await the arrival of a soon-to-be-named watchdog reporter. Clift’s full-time role will be “regional watchdog,” working alongside everyone on the team to mine court, payroll and other public records for stories that hold power to account and keep watch over your tax dollars. She also will continue focusing on public policy and spending on homelessness, especially in the suburbs. Bee Connected Folsom/El Dorado Hills will debut at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Reach Clift at tclift@sacbee.com.
Leading the team will be editor Daniel Hunt, a 13-year Bee journalist who’s led our coverage of every big regional story in recent months, including the Lake Tahoe-area avalanche, the mass shooting in Stockton and the Highway 50 helicopter crash. Hunt also has been a leader in our newsroom’s development of graphics, maps and new technologies, making our reporters more efficient and making our work more useful to you. Reach Hunt at dhunt@sacbee.com.
All the aforementioned journalists will join forces with Bee reporters specializing in state and federal politics, business, transportation, the environment, sports and more. Our service journalism team will continue to produce stories that answer readers’ questions, while also expanding coverage of residential real estate trends and community history.
In previous newsletters and columns, we’ve told you about our efforts to speak to community groups through our Sacramento Bee Road Show and establish one-day “pop-up offices” at businesses in Sacramento and beyond. If you’re interested in either of these opportunities, write me at cfusco@sacbee.com.
In the meantime, our journalists will be hitting the streets, listening to you and creating coverage that reflects real concerns. We hope you’ll support them by going to sacbee.com/newsletters and signing up to read their work.
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Chris Fusco is executive editor of The Sacramento Bee and regional editor for all McClatchy newsrooms in California. Before joining McClatchy in September 2025, he worked as executive editor of the Press Democrat News Group in Santa Rosa, managing editor of the Houston Chronicle and executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. A suburban Chicago native, he is a 1994 graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University.