May 11 - MAY 10 – The city council’s first meeting to discuss Mayor Libby Schaaf’s proposed FY 2021-2022 budget was less about the budget document than about why it was one week late -- and in a new online format that stymied council members.
Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan said she and her colleagues favored paper budget documents and could not figure out how to read the online version.
Kaplan said not one word about the substance of the proposed spending plan, but is plainly out to bust the mayor “for the process.” For the second meeting in a row she demanded that the city attorney tell her what the council could do to punish Schaaf for being late on the May 1 deadline. And for the second meeting in a row, the city attorney refused to answer.
But Kaplan had a very process-obsessed council behind her. Council Member Sheng Thao (D-4) said she liked the old days when “the budget came in binders.” Like most of her colleagues, Thao showed anger that the new format, called Open Gov, made them look bad. “It makes us look messy, and that’s not appropriate.”
A staff member from the Department of Finance put on an impressive tutorial for both the council and the public on how to use the much more informative Open Gov platform. It provides users, both council members and the public, graphic displays, comparisons and analyses never before possible. But the council members were not enthralled by more contemporary ways of viewing information.
“This is what fascism looks like,” shouted Council Member Carroll Fife (D-3). “I won’t dignify this by calling out the details of what is wrong with it. It is resonant with the history of this country.”
Fife denounced Mayor Schaaf for listening to a five-person minority faction of the Reimagining Public Safety task force representing the highest crime neighborhoods in the city, rather than the 12 other members who urged a “dramatic” 50% cut in the Oakland Police Department budget – approximately $150 million a year that they urged be reallocated to programs for the poor, such as public housing, rent subsidies and care for people who had suffered trauma.
The minority faction had also been keen to help the poor, but argued that crime was a very large contributor to trauma in their neighborhoods. Their proposal, which was given short shrift by the majority, called for having proven alternatives to conventional policing already in place before any reduction in OPD presence.
Mayor Schaaf explicitly acknowledged that she had sided with the more cautious view from the bloodiest neighborhoods, triggering outrage among committed Reimagineers.
Fife pointed out that since 12 task force members is a larger group than five, Mayor Schaaf’s decision had been “undemocratic.”
“Hypocritical,” Council Member Treva Reid (D7) said. “I believe our Council team is aligned against this.”
Not necessarily. A close reading of the council member remarks suggests several may be inching toward the exits on the 50% OPD budget cut and the $150 million windfall for social services it was supposed to represent.
Council Member Dan Kalb (D1) said “the first chunk of money, possibly $20 million” – not the advertised $150 million – should go to violent crime reduction. “There should be no cuts to investigating violent crime,” he added.
Council Member Loren Taylor (D6) said, “First and foremost, increase safety. That means better 911 response times and reduction in gun violence.”
Taylor stuck with the task force recommendation capping OPD overtime, but was squishy on what that meant. He urged that the council “not over-budget overtime, and not under-budget overtime,” admitting by the end of that discussion that “we have never been honest about overtime.”
Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said overtime is used to cover situations that can’t be easily predicted -- mainly sideshows, protest marches, multiple shootings and back filling for injured officers. He noted that Oakland’s ten homicide investigators have juggled 49 murders in the first third of the year. A full 85% of OPD’s budget goes for people, both sworn officers and civilian employees, such as 911 dispatchers who are also now on mandatory overtime.
Mayor Schaaf, who appeared at the Zoom council meeting to defend her budget, ignored the brickbat of insults, proudly announcing that this was that first budget to be an equal-partners collaboration between the Budget Bureau and the Department of Race and Equity. Each decision, whether an increase or cut, was individually vetted on what the impact would be on people of color, she said.
If council members were flummoxed by the new online format, advocates for gutting the police budget kept their eyes on the prize and once again out-organized the 78% of Oaklanders who told the city’s scientifically sound poll that they wanted “the same or more police presence.”
Forty-two speakers entered the Zoom call, 40 of them blasting the mayor for side-stepping draconian police cuts. Most of the public callers demanded the full 50% police budget cut. They were in no mood for compromise. Many said they represented “communities of faith” and insisted that theirs was the only “moral budget.”
Most of the speakers recited identical talking points, lambasting Schaaf for taking an extra seven days to finish the more powerful budget analytics.
Council members, doubtless mindful that city employees make up a powerful voting bloc, put all their frustration over their own marginal internet skills on Schaaf, unanimously bending over backwards to praise the city staff that had created the modernized system that mystified them.
In defending her budget, the mayor pointed out that the city budget is “only a small part” of government spending on social services in Oakland, with much larger contributions coming from federal, state and county programs. Measure W, a county initiative, will channel $150 million to Oakland homeless services “each and every year,” Schaaf said.
For the moment, Measure W is mired in litigation.
Schaaf told the council that just minutes before their meeting, Governor Gavin Newsom had announced a surprising $76.7 billion state budget surplus that she expected Oakland would share in.
Council members will hold their own Zoom calls in the next few weeks to hear from their constituents. If you don’t want OPD gutted, speak up.
The Cfabo.org site will publicize the dates of all coming budget sessions, providing instructions on how to make your views known. The process must be finalized by June 30.
While emails to City Hall are easy and convenient, it appears they are less persuasive than public testimony. Please call in to city council Zoom meetings and calmly express your views. It’s an easy format, no more intimidating than leaving a voicemail. Nobody will heckle you. Just say what you think. Watch this site for times and details.