MOBN! is beginning the early endorsement process for the 2012 City Attorney’s race. To view our official announcement, click here to be directed to our website. To read about MOBN!’s…
Today's post is by Catherine B., a lifelong Oaklander, a second year political science student at Wellesley College and MOBN!'s summer intern. On June 18th, the Oakland City Council held…
Like most cities, Oakland operates on a two-year budget cycle, adopted to cover two fiscal years running from July 1 through June 30 two years later. The current cycle runs through June of 2013, which means we are half way through it.
As is typical, the city is about to start looking at its fiscal performance to date and changes in its projections in order to determine what changes should be made in the second year of the budget. Council will begin considering mid-cycle adjustments on Monday, June 4 at 6:30 p.m. The agenda is here.
The reports containing the City Administrator’s and Mayor’s recommendations are here and here. For the first time in recent memory, there are no recommended layoffs, closures or reductions of city services. While there are budget overruns (the largest is in the OPD — either $8.6 million or $9.6 million), there are also some positive revenue developments.
The Administration’s proposal addresses a number of important issues MOBN! has been stressing for quite some time: increased civilianization of police department functions, increased police academies, and possibly a new approach to NSA compliance. The Administration also indicates it has looked seriously at the Los Angeles Police Department (as MOBN! did here) and hopes to bring in a civilian inspector general, which LAPD has had for more than ten years.
The administration is also recommending implementation of an “unanticipated expenditures fund,” which looks like the first, small step toward a rainy day fund, a practice MOBN! and the City’s Budget Advisory Committee have long advocated.
We have a number of questions about some issues, including the City’s use of one-time sources of income to counter unexpected expenses, the potential shrinkage of its reserve and the reasons for a number of the budget overruns. We have raised these in our letter to Mayor Quan, City Administrator Santana and the City Council, which is available here (full text also available after the jump). We will also plan to present those questions at the meeting Monday night and future meetings considering these changes.
To read the full text of our letter, click “Continue Reading,” below.
Local newspaper coverage of the Monitor’s Ninth Report on Oakland’s ongoing efforts to comply with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement contain multiple reports that compliance “has stagnated,” that the Oakland Police Department is that much closer to receivership, and that compliance efforts are moving backward. Indeed, some of the Monitor’s language supports this reporting.
But not surprisingly, things are not all that simple. In some ways they are much worse than reported, in others they aren’t nearly as bad. Part of the problem results directly from ongoing City and OPD malfunctions. Part of it is caused by overreach by the monitor and problems unrelated to the NSA.
But when all is said and done, it looks as though we are getting close either to receivership or to some other level of Federal Court supervision that is unprecedented in modern American history. The Court has set a hearing on the receivership question for this December. Oakland and its citizens may be facing the biggest challenge ever: figuring out how to operate in a new, more costly and tougher environment while getting themselves past the NSA and making the City a safer place.
We’ve looked carefully at the latest report, and undertaken a detailed analysis (see tables after the jump). But, put simply, there seems to be a combination of the following factors: (1) a major problem with OPD’s Personnel Assessment System, barely touched on in the report but posing serious, long-term compliance problems; (2) a collapse of the City’s review of complaints arising out of Occupy Oakland police actions; (3) multiple violations of Oakland’s crowd control policy, which are cause for serious concern but are not violations of the NSA; (4) at least two instances where the monitor declared the OPD to be out of compliance in the fourth quarter of 2011 while admitting there was no supporting evidence; and (5) continued mission creep, in cases where OPD follows the letter of the NSA, but the monitors find non-compliance because they disagree with judgment calls made by the department in individual cases.
The citizens of Oakland are entitled to Constitutional policing. They are entitled to a reformed police department and an end to the millions of dollars paid out in police misconduct suits. City leadership needs to ensure that the promises made more than nine years ago are kept, that the City brings itself into compliance, and that Oakland moves beyond the NSA. But the citizens of Oakland are also entitled to live in a safe community. And so far, no party in the Allen case (the Federal case in which the NSA was issued) is representing the citizens of Oakland and speaking for their right to be safe.
For those who would like more details, we have a task-by-task discussion, and a chart comparing the 8th and 9th reports, after the jump.
In the coming months, MOBN! will be publishing its endorsement protocols for the non-partisan November, 2012 Oakland Election, which are still in development. At this time, however, the MOBN! Board…
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