The Observer Corps Report

May, 2018

Welcome to the third installment of the League of Women Voters of Oakland Observer Corps Report! [Read last month’s installment]

The goal of the League of Women Voters Observer Corps is to monitor local government and report our findings to the Action Committee, which uses the information to develop advocacy positions and plan for direct action. Members of the Observer Corps attend public council, commission, and committee meetings and submit reports.

In each installment of the Corps Report, we’ll summarize the previous months’ reports from Observers to help keep you in the loop about local government activities that may affect and/or interest you. If you’d like to join the Observer Corps, contact us at observers@lwvoakland.org.

Observer Report Summary, April 2018

The following summaries are my interpretation of reports filed by the cited Observers. Any errors or misrepresentations are my own.

New Oakland City website needs work.

The new City of Oakland website is not yet quite working well (although I am super into the banner image of Fantastic Negrito!).

As part of my research for this blog, I try to review the agendas/minutes/other linked documentation for each meeting and I’m finding a great many broken links and unplayable videos when everything was working well on the old site. Right now I’m getting a lot of DNS errors. There’s also no obvious place to report problems. I can appreciate the need for a new design and better support for mobile use, but I’m not super thrilled with the new site. The city should have done more research and QA before switching over. There seems to be a lot missing.

Public Ethics Commission

Tom Dooner, a volunteer with the OpenOakland civic innovation brigade that is part of the Code for America organization presented on the expansion of Open Disclosure, a web-based project to visualize the Commission’s campaign data, for the 2018 election season. He showed mockups of the website that will provide end-to-end visibility into sources of campaign funding and spending for all candidates and ballot measures.

Almost the entire rest of the meeting was taken up by discussion of the commissions recommendations on two campaign finance law violations. Deputy Director/Chief of Enforcement Dalju reported on two cases:

• the Matter of Kaplan for Oakland City Council 2012, Kaplan for Oakland Mayor 2014, and Campaign for Safe Streets and Local Jobs and
• the Matter of Michael Colbruno

In the former, the commission staff “….found insufficient evidence to conclude that funds from Coalition for Safe Streets and Local Jobs (for Alameda County, Organized by Rebecca Kaplan) were used to pay for expenses related to Councilmember Kaplan’s 2012 re-election campaign or 2014 mayoral campaign and recommends that the Commission close this matter with an advisory letter to Councilmember Kaplan.”

After Mr. Dalju’s presentation about the outcome and recommendation for the case of Councilmember Kaplan’s commingling of funds, there was some pointed discussion about difficulties around volunteers vs paid contractors — it’s unconstitutional to prevent someone from volunteering on one campaign even if they work for the candidate as part of another campaign.

Commissioners Crowfoot and Nishioka in particular asserted that the commission should make it completely clear in the advisory letter that this case is complex, and the optics are bad, and that even if there was not enough evidence to determine that there was a violation, candidates and campaigns should work harder to not do this kind of thing, it’s a slap in the face of Oakland taxpayers.

In the latter case, the commission staff “… found that Mr. Colbruno failed to timely register as a lobbyist in 2014 and failed to timely file quarterly lobbyist reports for 2012, 2014, and 2015, in violation of the Oakland Lobbyist Registration Act (LRA). Staff recommends that the Commission adopt the proposed stipulation, which includes a $2,500 penalty.”

After Mr. Dalju’s presentation on the outcome and recommendation for the case of Mr. Colbruno’s violations of the LRA, commissioners Crowfoot and Smith both asserted that the proposed fine ($2500) was much too low, given the requirements in the law for recordkeeping on the part of lobbyists.

(Aside: this isn’t the first time both of these commissioners have recommended a higher fine for a violation, and Stein is also on board with a higher fine — and Stein revealed that during their recent offsite, the commission discussed revising the penalty guidelines. Stein, however, recommended not increasing the fine in this situation because it would undermine the perceived power to negotiate of the PEC staff (aka Mr. Dalju).)

There was some fire from new commissioner Jackson about how this kind of thing is just an opportunity cost for lobbyists, that it should be more than a slap on the wrist when they do get caught and that the time in between
they are making hay while the sun shines.

Ultimately, the commission moved to reject the stipulated settlement and direct their staff to renegotiate using the mainline penalty framework for determining the fine.

Thanks to me for my report ;).

Privacy Advisory Commission

Students from the UC Berkeley School of Information presented the results of their study “An Assessment of Potential Privacy Problems of the Consolidated Records Information Management System”(CRIMS).” CRIMS is a data portal for law enforcement and criminal justice agencies within Alameda County, managed by the Alameda County Sheriff’s office. Members of the commission are concerned that using CRIMS violates the standards necessary to maintain Oakland’s status as a Sanctuary City, as well as the City’s policy that the OPD not collect or maintain any information regarding a person’s immigration status.

An Oakland resident and landlord came to the commission to report a concern regarding an invasion of privacy: as part of a tax audit of their business, they were asked to provide a list of the tenants occupying their property and considered this to be an overreach.

Thanks to G. Katz for their report.

BART Board meetings

This summary covers both April meetings.

The Public Comment period at the beginning of the first meeting was
dominated by family, friends and community members excoriating
BART police and the Chief of Police and officer involved, personally, for both the killing and their subsequent actions after the killing of Shaleem Tindle on January 3. The Board President allowed many of the speakers more than the allotted 3 minutes per speaker.
There was quite a bit of discussion among Board members on the recommendations that came from a BART commissioned Independent Review of their Police Oversight Structure.

BART Board members and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) representatives discussed the legislature’s consideration of a bill that AFSCME sponsored and that would benefit their members who work for BART (BART station agents, train operators, maintenance workers and others are represented by other unions). Supervisors in those departments, a relatively small number, 278, are represented by AFSCME. Some of the board members seemed sympathetic to the union’s position but the board was given so little time to consider and respond that the board ultimately unanimously opposed the legislation (rather than taking no position or even supporting it).

The first two hours of the second meeting were spent discussing the BART to Livermore project; with many people including Livermore residents, property development companies, Livermore’s Mayor, and representatives from the Lawrence Livermore Lab speaking in favor of beginning the work as soon as possible (which would still be years away). Going by BART director statements, there is definitely a split opinion among the Board members themselves.

BART’s budget is not encouraging: passenger revenue is down and there is a fear that, if a proposed initiative to repeal SB1, the gas tax, passes in November, then BART would take a big hit. Staff said that they are already doing contingency planning.

Thanks to D. Barki for their reports.

Life Enrichment Committee

This summary covers both April meetings.

The committee passed motions to fund Head Start, Child and Adult Food Program, and the California State Preschool Program Expansion Grant from the General Purpose fund.

During discussion of the Oakland Children’s Initiative ballot measure, which proposes a parcel tax on to fund the Oakland Promise program, the committee raised questions about tax exemptions for low income home owners, the level of administrative support needed, oversight, structure, governance, cost overruns, designation of facilities, and the fact that the measure does not currently provide a full fiscal analysis. The concerns were largely centered on whether the measure will be ready for for the June ballot, Chair McElhaney also reiterated her concern that the city has already made too many promises made to African American community without the means to deliver the promised services.

Both meetings were largely taken up with reports and frustrated, angry statements from many Oakland residents about homelessness and related issues. In particular, members of the public spoke about fires, lack of hygiene facilities, the fact that manufactured housing and supplies are ready to deploy but no sites have been designated. When the large, sanctioned encampment named The Village was razed by city officials, 70 people had to find somewhere to move, and at least 2 of those people have since died on the street. This report from the City Administrator describes the status of all the sites originally under consideration for city-sanctioned homeless camps; it’s pretty depressing.

The City has already exhausted its funding for homelessness programs for this fiscal and applied for funding from Alameda County, which yielded $630K. Oakland has also requested $1.5B (yes, BILLION) from the state to address the homelessness crisis.

Thanks to K. McLennan for their report.

Oakland Police Commission

As was the case last month, the many folks making statements during the Public Comment period spoke extensively about the overall perception that the commission (and in particular the commission chair) is not impartial and does not represent the interests of the public (and is instead “parroting” lines in support of the OPD). Concerns were also raised again about the March appearance by the commission chair in media interview at a police-involved shooting. Members of the NAACP and Coalition for Police Accountability spoke relatively supportively of the Chair and Commissioners, noting that they’re unpaid volunteers who are still coming up to speed and need to have more non-OPD training regarding how to function as a unified board. Statements included:

“You don’t want citizens to become apathetic, or you’ll lose their trust.”
— Coalition for Police Accountability member

[Directed to the Chair] “Your words in March weren’t the words of an independent chair seeking to investigate the cops. It sounded like you were giving them cover, and it’s not what we’re looking for.”
— Member of the Anti Police-Terror Project

“My concern is that if we continue to take our own personal aggression about OPD and put it on the Commission, it distracts them. Let’s come here with positive attitudes, quit blaming them, and talk about things to make things better. Criticism doesn’t get us anywhere.”
NAACP, Oakland chapter member

The commission worked on revising some language in its Enabling Ordinance, including changes that allow it to authorize its own major investigations, conduct annual performance reviews of the Chief of Police, Inspector General and the Agency Director, specify more explicitly the workload, supervision, and nature of the Office of Inspector General position.

James Chanin, one of the two civil rights attorneys who represented the 119 plaintiffs in the “Allen v. City of Oakland” civil rights lawsuit (also referred-to as the prosecution of the “Oakland Riders”, OPD officers who were alleged to have kidnapped, planted evidence, and beaten citizens) presented a detailed report on the status of the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) under which the OPD is required to make significant reforms to its operations and relationship with the public. The report goes into detail about the Stop data and associated race and other metadata, asserting that improvements are being made:

“ Command Staff is examining Stop Data statistics on regular basis in detailed
sessions with highest ranking officers in each district. There is specific emphasis on an intelligence-led and precision-based policing model. An intelligence-led stop is a stop in which officers possess knowledge that can be linked to an articulable source of criminal intelligence, which then leads to the initiation of a stop. Precision-based policing is the designed communication and evaluation of strategies to reduce the footprint the department has on the community. There is an effort to limit unproductive and often racially disparate stops. In addition, the OPD has drastically reduced saturation patrols or hot-spot policing, adjusted handcuff policies, and search practices where citizens were routinely asked if they were on probation or parole. Not surprisingly, all these efforts have resulted in a decline in the number of African-Americans stopped by the OPD, and an increase in the yield — or tangible results — of those who are stopped.”

Out of the 51 original NSA tasks, OPD remains out of compliance with three:
1) Task 5: internal affairs and consistency of discipline
2) Stop data & racial profiling
3) PRIME computer system

The NSA was originally expected to be completed by 2015, but Chanin now believes 2019 is likely. He is teaching courses in crowd control and civil rights, and presenting the history and current state of implementation of the NSA to each incoming class of police cadets, which is helping to drive the importance of this behavioral change through the OPD.

Thanks to T. G. for their report.

Check back next month for summaries of Observer reports from May.

Further Reading: Official agendas and minutes for all city government meetings are available on the relevant committee/commission/council page listed at https://www.oaklandca.gov/boards-and-commissions and at https://oakland.legistar.com/calendar.aspx
Some meetings are broadcast via public access cable and the recordings are made available in the same location as the associated meeting documentation.