Reclaiming our Money: Community Budget Advocacy Strategies

Transcript

welcome everybody to reclaiming our money community budget advocacy strategies um thanks to everyone who is joining us um encourage everyone to introduce themselves in the chat to each other i think to kick us off um i'll first be turning it over to our first presenter stephanie campos bowie with the uc berkeley policy advocacy clinic um she will be walking us through our first agenda item of the day which is to talk about av 1869 what that is um what it did and the impacts for our counties so stephanie you want to take it away yes and everybody can see the slides we're good cool okay all right so thank you adriana as adrena said i'm going to give a quick overview of some of the recent changes in state law that no longer allow counties and courts to charge certain fees in the criminal legal system and then describe some of the funding that was set aside as backfill for counties and courts so to start with um the kind of new laws that are in place um there was ab 1869 and 177 i'm going to start with ab1869 so it went into effect last year july 1 of 2021 and it ended the assessment so the charging of all new fees um ended the collection of all um outstanding fees and then also required the discharge or writing off of all associated debt which we estimate to be about 15.9 billion dollars across the state of california the bill impacted 23 fees in particular which are broadly described on the slide so arrest and booking related fees fees related to probation and parole supervision uh pre-trial and all on other alternatives like work release and work furlough programs and then a lot of the fees associated with representation by public defenders or quarter-pointed council as part of the budget um deal in getting this bill passed the legislature did set aside 65 million dollars each year um as backfill for counties starting in 2021 and going all the way until 2026. um so to describe that a little bit more in detail the 65 million dollars um again the idea that this is going to backfill revenues allegedly lost from the repeal of these 23 fees um starting last year until 2026. the first disbursement of that 65 million dollars went out late last year in 2021 and there is a particular funding methodology in deciding how much each county was going to get our coalition the debt free justice california coalition tried our best to get the legislation to actually um be explicit about where the money should be going because we obviously want the money to go back to communities who have been had their wealth extracted unfortunately we did not um get that um into the bill language and so obviously we're here today to learn from each other about ways to influence that but there was a methodology that was included in the bill that theoretically um was meant to help um not reward counties essentially that were over policing some of its residents and so you'll see that 50 of the money is based on population and then 25 each based on arrest rates um and and misdemeanor or felony and misdemeanor filings again with the idea that we don't want to be rewarding counties for um over policing and overresting people um that methodology was uh finalized in october of last year and again the money was sent out um late um november and december of 2021. um but to give you a snapshot of what this looks like in practice what does this 50 25 look like um there is um a sheet that i'm happy to to send out in the materials after that gives you a sense of how much money each county got um so you'll see alameda through los angeles on this slide alameda getting 2.3 million compared to los angeles which got about 16.5 million um i'm gonna go to the next slide which covers madeira and shasta if you're interested in your particular county um feel free to drop in the chat on what county you're in and i'm happy to to put the associated dollar amount because i know i'm going through this a little quickly and then lastly sierra through yuba so collectively again all the money that went out across all 58 counties amounts to 65 million dollars based on this methodology another thing to keep in mind about assemblyville 1869 is that it did come with some i think helpful reporting requirements so by may 1 of this year each county is going to have to report on the actual revenue loss from these 23 fees that were repealed so for each individual fee each county is going to have to report for the last three years that they were collecting how much were they actually collecting and if for whatever reason they don't have the data they're going to have to describe how it's calculating its revenue loss so again i think it'll be interesting to see what counties come up with on this point the other piece related to backfill in our conversation today about budget and funding by january 10th of 2023 counties are going to have to report on how they use the backfill funding so they're going to have to provide the total annual budget of the departments that end up receiving the funding so for example if the money were to go to the sheriff's department they're going to have to give the total annual budget for the sheriff's department what share of the funding that department received in an accounting of the expenses aka how much of the how the money is being used and so particularly it describes a description of the program services etc that the funding is being utilized for um i think we're all very interested in seeing how counties are actually going to meet this requirement um but again hopefully it'll it'll help us in our advocacy at the local and state level so that was ap ab-1869 um ab-177 is the newest bill that went into effect earlier this year and addressed an additional additional 17 fees broadly related to incarceration diversion programs and some of the fees and costs associated with restitution and restitution fines similar to 1869 it ended the assessment so no new fees going forward and um ended the collection as well as required the writing off of all of the debt uh 50 million dollars was set aside annually for counties is backfill associated with this bill unfortunately it does not sunset and in other words it does not end in a particular year it's going to be ongoing um so we'll see kind of how that plays out in the budget processes going forward but again this 50 million dollars is ongoing as opposed to the 65 million with 1869 that is capped after 2026. um the methodology for how the money is going to be dispersed is still being worked out i think we should be finding out that fairly soon later this year so we can definitely update you all as we learn more about that and then the last thing i'll just flag is we are actively tracking implementation to make sure counties and courts are in compliance and so we've sent letters to all the counties and courts about their responsibilities under 1869 and 177.

um we've also now sent record act requests to all counties and courts related to ab1869 to get an understanding of how much money that they're actually writing off for people and if they're actually doing that so if you're interested in understanding what your county is doing in particular what documentation that we've received definitely feel free to email me at the email addresses listed on the side ab1869 at clinical.law.berkeleyadu or ab177 i'll also drop those in the chat for people to look at in case that's of interest and with that i will turn it back to adriana thank you stephanie um so what stephanie just described is quite a bit of money coming from the state to our counties so the next question is how are our counties going to receive that money um what are they going to do with it and what are some ways that we can get involved in that process so to tell us a little bit more about the county budget processes and how they receive and handle funds like the ab 1869 and 177 backfill funds i'm going to turn it over to myanna khalfani king who's with advancement project she's a budget expert and she's going to let us know what's what you and can we all see the slides i think we're good okay awesome okay so going a little bit into our local budgets and advocacy and taking a special look at ab 1869 and 177 and how that impacts the budget um so advancement project i'm with the equity and community investments teams and we really look at budget and budget advocacy and helping communities really transform neighborhoods and really look at invest reinvesting and divesting from public safety and historical harms to communities so a little bit about how the presentation is going to go we really want participants to understand the budget basics and give advocacy tips but also look at how the budget process in a b 1869 and 177 impacts that so we'll go over the budget the budget process what is budget advocacy how we can engage in budget advocacy and then a special look at the supplemental budget in the governor's budget for ab 1869 and 177 so what are local budgets budgets are forward-looking financial plans they really tell you like what's going to happen and where investments are going to go they're also supposed to respect risk reflect the priorities and values of communities but often that's not the case um budgets traditionally follow a timeline so they start july 1st of a giving year and in june 30th of the next year but decisions that impact the budget really can happen year-round and then even after a budget is adopted there's still opportunities to make modifications and influence the budget throughout so some key budget terms before we really get started is a fiscal year um so before when i talk about the time period between july 1st and june 30th that's what describes as a fiscal year so a budget begins on july 1st and ends june 30th of the following year right now we're in fiscal year 2022 um and that ends on june 30th and then on july 1st of this year starts fiscal year 2023 revenue you want to think of it as money that's coming in so that's cash and credits that a jurisdiction receives to really fund uh all the operations that they're going to have that year so that can include taxes and fees but also one-time funding from the state so ab 1869 and ab-177 are revenues coming from the state that are going to help backfill those lost revenues that stephanie talked about earlier and expenditures are if revenues is money coming in expenditures is money that's going out and that's really payment for costs and services materials equipment capital improvements so some additional key terms are the recommended budget so that is the first draft if we're talking about a city it's the mayor's message or the mayor's budget if we're talking about a county um we're talking about the ceo the chief executive officer like that's their first draft that they put out to present to the board it usually comes out around mid-april and the budget hearings and deliberations are based off that draft and this year for la county it's on the board calendar to be presented on april 19th an adopted budget are the modifications that happen to the recommended budget so the recommended budget comes out you have public deliberations public hearings there's modifications and changes that are made and then the adopted budget is what the board approves on january in june of that fiscal year and then later in the year you have the supplemental budget and this is where you're going to have mid-year adjustments so even though the budget is adopted in late june like there's still money that's coming from the state and federal and other entities that comes down and so you'll see mid-year adjustments that happen in september and october um so this will be how last year when we saw the money come down later in the year that's where ab 1869 and 177 was actually hitting the counties and it's reflected in the supplemental budget this year it's on the board calendar for october 4th so when we're thinking about local budgets we're thinking about logo budgets there's three true buckets that we're talking about we have the general fund which is our most flexible dollars and they're unrestricted meaning that there's no real rules to how this money can be spent so when we're talking about budget advocacy like that is the bucket that we really want to focus on and sometimes you might hear general fund or net county costs those are our most flexible dollars next we have special revenue funds those are dollars that are restricted like they have a specific purpose and use for how they can be spent usually these are federal and state dollars and the difference between special revenue and enterprise funds is that those are also restricted dollars but usually they don't have any connection to government entities the state or federal so those are the three buckets that really go into our local budget oh geez okay um so thinking about what happens with our local budgets we have different types of revenues and expenditures so for types of revenues we have taxes which are our most flexible sources we have property taxes which are really important for counties and then sales taxes we have funding from government entities federal dollars we really think about public assistance programs or arpa our american rescue plan act that's the federal dollars state dollars you can attribute to ab 1869 and ab177 funding we also have charges for services and also miscellaneous so that's the money coming in money coming out you have personnel labor services contracts equipment capital improvements but when we're thinking about expenditures uh personnel in labor is really important especially in defund and divesting from public safety a lot of the money when we think about departments and public safety and policing is really tied up in labor and staffing so when we want to call for true divestment and true removing of dollars we have to think about staffing and answer those types of questions like what is going to happen to the staff because we're really asking for layoffs so going into our budget timeline we're going to divide this into two sections this is basically how the budget timeline works and then we're going to look at it from the lens of how to really have a budget advocacy calendar that aligns with this budget timeline so between october and march there's really the development of the proposed budget um the ceo or the mayor is really looking at developing the budget guidelines and giving that to the department and then from there the departments are developing their own budget seeing what they need what they did last year what programs they want to implement and so all this is happening really cooking in the pot when we get to april and may there's more budget development um really getting the proposed budget out this is where the city manager is really talking to the departments getting their requests and they're making the proposed budget to then present to the board of supervisors or to the city council from may to june we have the proposed budget is released so it's released to the public it's presented to the board or presented to the council and we have our public hearings we have all the changes and modifications that's going to happen and then the budget is adopted and then from september and october we have the supplemental budget so that's where we have the mid-year adjustments and all the changes to the budget that are going to happen later in the year after the budget is adopted but the good thing is going back to may to june even though there are public hearings that are happening like you can still go to your city council meetings or your border supervisor meetings and still in general comment talk about the budget and talk about really what you want to see so moving into budget advocacy in practice so how that really works how we can use it as a tool so in our budget advocacy uh this year uh it's really organizing to change the way public resources are aligned to meet community needs but we want to note that it's only effective when paired with intentional community power building and political education we want to make sure we understand how local jurisdictions finance programs and services and also really having advocates being able to mobilize community and push for equity and spending decisions and then when we're thinking about like how can we really get structural wins when we talk about budget advocacy within the budget process we're looking at how we can like eliminate and restructure and create permanent positions we want to create new departments and new revenue when we talk about creating and accessing new revenue we really want to talk about how we can dedicate revenue to a particular program or service that we advocated for in that process so lining this up when i talk about the how the budget calendar works how a sample budget advocacy calendar can work so when we have the development of the proposed budget and how we prepare for that we can talk about how advocates and community members can really talk to the department staff you can talk to your council members really get a champion really engage in your budget research and identify the demands and really get that conversation going so when we look at the proposed budget you can see some of your demands already being pushed through uh we have the budget proposed budget being finalized so that's still continuing to meet with your champion and decision maker finalizing your demands when the budget is released like really reviewing the budget reviewing the proposal seeing what demands are in there what are left out you can roll out an advocacy and media strategy once the budget is released public hearings and amendments that's again more mobilization more turnout and then hoping that things can be changed uh between the modifications once the proposed budget is released and then when the final budget is adopted but then from the final budget is adopted in june to the supplemental budget like there's still advocacy opportunities where you can influence a supplemental budget so this is an example of a budget advocacy calendar that really lines up with our normal budget process so some steps in building a budget advocacy campaign you want to understand community priorities have a clear vision for success but also understand the budget timeline you want to be able to conduct a budget analysis so either you getting the tools to analyze the budget or having to having a group or someone come in to help see like what are you really looking for what happened last year what areas can we start to advocate to push our demands for this year you want to work with community to develop demands identify advocacy targets and engage with key decision makers and then also build power to make your voices heard throughout the budget process so here this is a budget advocacy impact so we really think this as circular and really moving from the top all the way around the circle so you have annual budget advocacy campaigns and that's our year to year fights which may be easier but they're difficult to maintain and difficult to really see like true uh systematic and structural change we're moving to deep in community capacity and how budgets are structure so that's really uh teaching the tools and really understanding how to understand a buzz budget and really move your demands forward achieve immediate and implementable wins build political power and relationships tackle larger structural funding this is where we really want to move inequities and then defund law enforcement and invest in holistic community wealth and well-being and we see this is really important because a lot of counties and cities have our money tied up in law enforcement and we see that in our over policing and in our mass incarceration so really moving those funds away from a punitive system and moving them into a reinvestment in community health and well-being so our next side is really going to see an example of how to tackle larger structural fundings and we're going to look at that through the example of the la county's american rescue plan motion and how a equity formula was built in so for our american rescue plan uh is allocating a total of 1.9 billion dollars into la county to address the hardships that communities face during the pandemic and data's shown that the most negative negatively impacted communities where our black indigenous people uh populations of color are women and then low income so knowing that a large amount of funds were coming into the county and that you know we had communities that were hit the hardest there were uh advocates uh and different organizations that really pushed for equity to be prioritized in the spending of the arpa dollars so in this push it resulted in supervisor mitchell and barger uh making a motion that dedicated an equity formula for how these dollars should be spent and how departments uh can advocate for these dollars and with that that motion was passed and they're now in the implementation part of that so there is an arpa equity dashboard so departments have to go through uh different equity offices within the county for approval and review before they can receive any of these dollars and also they have uh they're using equity tools to show like if this program is reaching the most targeted areas that we want to have the highest need there's also different contracting barriers that they have um worked on to really uh make sure that aren't barriers uh for cbo's and small businesses to really access these funds as well so really getting into ab 1869 and 177 and its impact on the budget and some of these slides i'm gonna pass through because stephanie did a great job at describing what ab 1869 and 177 are um so the impact on these bills uh they will relieve more than 16 billion in outstanding criminal fees uh we talked about that there's going to be around 65 billion for ab 1869 that's already built into legislation and then around 50 million for ap 177 and the goal is to offset lost revenues that would have been received because of those fines and we see those investments happening in fiscal year 2022 so that's this year and they'll uh keep an eye out for this upcoming budget to see how these dollars really drop and where they're going so the research question really is like what budget adjustments occurred in fiscal year 2022 that dealt with the impacts of assembly bill 1869 and 177 so here we have the adopted budget so this is the budget that passed in june um and in this square this is where the budget tells you like what did the county do um so we found out that it was described so that means that the county knew that money was coming down uh and they decided that they were they were going to delete banking positions within the probations department and that's how they were going to uh attribute for some of the loss of revenue in addition to the one-time backfield that was coming from the state so we see that in a vacant position is money that's tied up within staffing so there were positions within probation that uh were vacant so nobody was feeling that so the money is tied up into that labor job so they were going to delete that so that's money that is now freed up for them and we see later in this next slide that probation loss of revenue was around 6.6 million but the state came in with over a little bit over 8 million to set aside uh to offset that loss of revenue and then here this tells you in more detail about where the probation office saw the losses um from that 6.6 and so we see probation saw the influx of funds from ab 1869 but also the trial court saw influx so we see that they would have lost around uh 940 000 but then they saw influx from the state to offset so that was a direct offset of those funds probation saw a little bit more and trial court saw about the same um in this tracks with the amount of funds that were coming down from stephanie's presentation from the state and then looking into fiscal year 23 like we see ab 177 mentioned in the governor's budget and really towards the trial court uh backfield so we see that the state is saying that 13.4 million of ongoing funds is going to go to counties to backfill the estimated loss of revenue and then for future when we're doing our budget advocacy and looking at the budget we know that 92 10 is the criminal justice feedback field and they're estimating for this year which is in this last column about 50 million to go out but to note that there's also a line item above that has criminal justice feedback feel um for about 65 million so the 65 million so there may be a total of 110 million going out for this fiscal year to be estimated but this latter one for 50 million is where we see a direct ab-177 line item so just to note that um so some big takeaways is that the state is going to allocate about 13 four point million of ongoing uh to at the trial courts uh so really keep a look out for when we're looking at the budget to look at a trial court but also probation since we've seen at least in la county that fund or trickle down to probation department so some overall takeaways is really understanding your local budget priorities and your timeline that helps you build up your advocacy demands there's multiple opportunities to engage in the budget process that helps move the change that you want to see so make sure you're working with your community to build up power and move already existing systems and then also noting uh that we saw some of ab 1869 ab177 come down in fiscal year 2022 but to keep a lookout for [Music] how our local budgets and governments are really projecting that to happen um in this fiscal year uh fy23 to really use that to track how many is being spent and also to help an advocacy for where that money should be going um and with that i can pass it back to adriana thank you mayana that was an incredible breakdown and i hope that everybody else is doing what i'm doing which is trying to plot out a budget advocacy timeline in their head um one of the things i really appreciated that you said was about the importance of community power building and political education in this in this process and so next we are actually going to hear from some experts on um exactly that um so i'd love to introduce our speakers um who are paul hook from the youth justice coalition and let's get free la i'm a coalition working on fines and fees in la county um fidel chagola and avalon edwards who are out of the inland region working with riverside all of us are none and starting over inc um paul briley and michelle lau out of san francisco working with lspc and all of us are none in the san francisco financial justice project um so we're going to hear from them about their experiences doing budget advocacy um generally and specifically relating to ab-1869 um so with that i will turn it over to you paul for sure so i'm paul's helping with the youth justice coalition based here in la um a lot of us at the ygc have been impacted by fines and fees and so this has been um pretty important for us to deal with um and kind of take on but um for us you know here in the county you know a lot of our advocacy has always been to how can we move from these structures how can we move from these systems of oppression um and bring back to your community and bring that bring that money and that resource back um because these are our ultimate and they are tax dollars these are the things that we we've put for um as you know we've done a lot of kind of that work on the ground um and being plugged in with communities etc with counties um unfortunately you know there's a lot of obstacles in that but um a lot of stuff that we have worked on um in terms of pushing forward you know us here in l.a we have a coalition let's get free la um that we've been tracking this for quite a while we started you know we have something no fines no fees no bail no jail um and you know we've moved on for that for the past you know about four or five years now um and so we've been continuing to advocate through that time whether it's been through direct actions or whether we've gone to the board when you know things were a little more open and we've had actions inside the board and you know we had like this grinch thing we had a young person just kind of like taking stuff from people to kind of emulate um like what is really happening um through these these fees and it's taking stuff away from folks like food and et cetera things that they need for their families um so a lot of the advocacy on our end has looked like um you know has been engaging where you know where those opportunities are whether it's through public processes whether it's through budgets board hearings um whatever the case may be right whatever opportunities are and a lot of times you know it's also good communications on folks that are working inside the government whether it's agencies or staffers or whatever wherever they may be um and we've been able to engage and you know so we continue to have these conversations and move things forward but part of it also is um you know unfortunately the counties you know ella county is sometimes seen as this progressive place and sometimes it's really not and these are the conversations that we encounter so sometimes what we found um not just necessarily with with money in particular through fees but just in general it's like sometimes we actually have to go to the state to go make things happen um you know here in la fortunate enough we were able to get some start on feeds here in the county and the county decided to let go of what it could but you know with those limitations and so you know we have to go forward and go to the state and obviously get involved with um maybe 1869 and you know maybe 177 et cetera to get things moving forward but um you know it's been important to move those things through and to get those things out um because we have to actually make them do something sometimes um but speaking to that it's kind of like these are the obstacles these are the challenges that we faced these are the things that we've had to deal with um and oftentimes you know there's and anytime that we've gone through we've tried to do something in general it has been this blanket policy that they tend to put around that's like not written but we find out to be in practice this really happened so we say it's a blanket policy where the ceo um is essentially buffered and has like a really large insulated blanket around them in terms of making the choices that they can make and you know the board just kind of goes with it and goes with the flow and so you know there's been some challenges around that you know sometimes we know something is coming um like for us we knew that the funding was coming so we've been targeting we've been hitting we've been asking we've been reaching out we've been checking in like hey man can we get to this can we get this you know we know this money's coming down can we move this you know sometimes it's like hey you know you also got to do this you got to do that you know there's obstacles where they just don't get back at us i'm going to be real with children sometimes you just don't communicate with us in return right so that lack of reciprocity or lack of answers and sometimes um what i've learned is that sometimes an obstacle is their own ignorance of what's really happening in many ways right so we as community have to go and put pressure enough to let them know that these things are happening sometimes they don't even know what's going on with the money that's coming down you're like oh we didn't know and we were like hey we know it's here we've already confirmed it like can you just go check on it and so you know it has been a lot of that has been a lot of communication back and forth um but there's definitely a lot of different obstacles and sometimes we're trying to move things forward um and we just hit we just hit some walls and it's been hard and so you know those things you know we think strategically about those things and how can we get around it how can we what are our avenues that we can um collaborate with or try to like access and get into you know l.a county has you know various different meetings they're public meetings public hearings and you know we go and be strategic where we can provide public comment we provide you know we mobilize folks in the community provide you know information on what's going on so you know communities can be well informed to know what they got to do or what they got to say or what they need and you know express on what it is that they really need but i mean at the end of the day you know county is the county it's the government um you know it's five supervisors here in la and all the places is different but in italy in particular we have five supervisors um right now we have five women um you know sometimes they're fortunate five queens but um some sometimes you would think that you know they would be the most progressive place you know being firewoman that's not always the case um and you know sometimes they may want to do something in particular but then there's always opposition uh whether it's coming from like law enforcement etc um you know one thing i have seen i can say too is an obstacle is you know when it's time to move money um like we could go to a herring and ask for money and we try to do whatever we need to do so folks on the ground can be supported and it's like oh you gotta go all this red tape you gotta get on this agreement you gotta get on this list you got to become a vendor et cetera et cetera et cetera um and so there's all this stuff that we have to do but you know i saw like literally a sheriff asking for something and it was like okay bam here you got it it was like a single line item transfer you know it's so much easier for them to just do stuff and pay themselves and move things but it's some it's like really really hard to get out to the community so that's why you know we use the strategies that we do um whether it's submitting letters whether it's finding who it is that we need to talk to uh whether it's finding somebody to author a motion and put it up for us um whatever it is and you know we get together and try to figure that out where do we really want to move to um adrian i'm gonna take over the screen for a second i'm going to show some slides and we just want to remind folks why we do what we do so all right in california when they took this land when they stole the land um and created california all the way up until like 1980 these all the prisons that were here 12 prisons and then we got into the 80s right it really started extracting from our communities and it's where it gets really really wild building prison after prison after prison gang databases that's another prison another prison another prison for women another prison right these are the things that they've done another prison another prison and another prison another prison and another prison and another prison and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one and another one that's all they built in terms of student desk to go get your graduate education pretty crazy huh but that's why we do what we do you know these systems these structures that have been built using taxpayer dollars etc um that's what they've created for us for our communities and everybody's gone to that prison let's face some type of fine some type of fee something through the court system somehow some way um so you know we really need to kind of pull back on that we need to get our wealth back we need to get stuff back for our communities so you can see they built more prison beds and it's student desks and it speaks for itself and so it's very important that we continue to engage on this and continue to go forward um but man i know i hate running those slides because i'm always like another one another one and another one and another so anyways hopefully you know we can get to somewhere better and we can move on forward with that i'm going to go ahead and pass it along thanks for grounding us in that paul um now i'm going to turn it over to um fidel and avalon who actually had some experience fighting their counties attempt to take money that was meant to support communities and pumping that money right back into jails so fidel navalny um please let us know about your experience working on budget advocacy for sure thanks adriana and thank you paul i always appreciate hearing you speak um and seeing those graphics you know is a reminder that taxpayers are paying for that right and so um all of the money that's coming from impacted families impacted individuals being funneled back into that prison system um so i guess i could talk briefly about some of the cares act funding uh and then i'll pass it to fidel to talk a little bit more about um the advocacy he's been working on with the ie fair chance coalition that has been leading the work in both riverside and san bernardino counties in terms of um getting a hold of that that backfill funding and hopefully redirecting it to the folks who have been most impacted by harmful criminal justice system fines and fees in the first place but um yeah i can just touch on you know when cares act funding started coming down from the federal government um departments can choose how aggressive they want to be about applying for that funding and as always law enforcement was the most aggressive um in terms of applying for that and so our sheriff's department and riverside county applied for i think it totaled around eight million dollars of cares act funding for facilities um renovations so buying new office materials um upgrading the key system for the buildings to be a touchless keypad or something rather than physical keys um my favorite was making the windows in some of their buildings bulletproof um and so we're seeing money that is explicitly for a coronavirus relief for those most impacted in our communities by covid um being grabbed by law enforcement at the the first opportunity to just funnel it right back into a system that these are a things that they should be paying for and they clearly things that they don't even need in the first place they saw this funding as extra that was up for grabs and they grabbed it uh and what we saw on the county level um was we had public comment we saw this coming down the line we saw it on the board agenda we had dozens of people call in saying you know we want curious act funding if the sheriff's department is going to get it it has to go at the very least to making sure that the coveted conditions inside the jails that they run the five jails that they run um are going to be better because we had huge coveted outbreaks in the riverside county jails right um at the very least if not outreach through a different department right just not even having this go to law enforcement in the first place um and the board ignored it um five out of five passed uh voted to pass these three different votes um and it was unanimously approved from all three supervisors and what we learned from that and we're thankful for the aclu in in filing a complaint to the federal government that i believe is still underway um but saying look this is blatantly an inappropriate use of funds um because when you see that that level of county government is not going to hold a sheriff accountable or a da accountable then you have to go to the source of the funding and so the obstacles in that is the entire local political sphere right you're looking at five supervisors who are scared to go against the sheriff or fully support him and his agenda of law law and order tough on crime and so it looks like working with other community members bringing folks to those meetings to to feel that outrage about how their taxpayer dollars are being spent um and complaining to a higher body if that's ever possible so i'll pass it to fidel to talk a little bit about the work that he's been doing with the inland empire fair chance coalition on this backfill funding well thank you for that avalon my name is fidel trigoya i'm with uh riverside officer none san marino um yeah why do we do what we do like like paul said uh uh a lot of the times uh it's been people impacted as well like knowing how it feels um when you come home and you only get those 200 or you got to pay for that bus right back you know it's it's going through things like that and then going into the community and not even wanting to access any of the resources that uh they may be offering because pros offering them probation's offering them but when you try to access them they're not even welcoming uh they really don't care so so so the thing is is like that's where community-based organizations uh come into place because we build that community we help uh uh our people that are returning home uh want to access these resources so how did we uh come about with the ab 1869 funding um well by building relationships within the communities uh and staying consistent um reaching out seeing what events are going on what are they working on and uh that's how um started being we started being a part of the inland empire fair chance coalition which originally started from ab-1008 which is a fair chance act and what it is is coalition of community-based service providers advocates researchers and returning citizens working closely with state and local government agencies so that's how we came about knowing about the funds the backfield funds and we started being a part of it um so then we started collaborating among different organizations such as uh rethink public safety san bernardino coalition the inland empire fair chance coalition uh congregations organized for profit engagement cult project rebound operation new hope and uh all of us riverside always remain and then we started uh reaching out getting letters ready um editing them um continuing the conversations and then reaching out to our supervisors uh the board of supervisors which the first one we reached out to was uh joe baca jr to have the conversation about where we would like to see these funds being allocated um with community-based organizations being at the table um and the conversations were seeming like we were getting somewhere uh they were listening he was listening seemed supportive however uh what i was noticing about being a part of those meetings was that uh we were being referred to like the sheriff uh which is sheriff shannon diggus uh about like well maybe you should reach out to the sheriff so that kind of made me think like okay well why do we need to reach out to the sheriff well because of public safety uh so that's where our challenges are coming because that was the first meeting we had with bacca jr and then the second one we had with uh hagman which we were recommended the same thing as wow is to reach out to the sheriff uh to see about how we could collaborate um with the sheriff's because they're already trying to have meetings set up um before us to talk about this funding this backfill money um and we also were able to uh attend one of the um community corrections partnership subcommittees uh about some other funding and when we got there that the sheriff was there uh but we came at the end of it when they're already making the decisions so it's like uh it's very important for us to be at these tables it's very important for us to advocate as community organizations whether we're in la riverside or san bernardino our relationship building uh is the power of getting our people involved staying up to date as things are unfold so that way we will be at the table and um we're ready just to add to something you said fidel like i think that's you know both supervisors saying well you got to talk to the sheriff right like the the default and the automatic is anything related to public safety falls in the sheriff's lap and that means a ton of extra funding falls in the sheriff's lap in in both riverside san bernadino counties and so it's an issue of changing that narrative too like more than just with this particular funding but like changing the narrative that anything regarding public safety falls under the wheelhouse of the sheriff rather than community-based organizations or public health and other departments that that do have play a huge role in public safety i just think is is key because i'm sure that's going to happen when we start meeting with riverside county supervisors too well you know you got to talk to the chair if you got to work with the sheriff and um i think it's just a sign of where these two counties in particular are oriented in terms of public safety for sure thank you avalon fidel um thank you so much for sharing that experience um i'm now going to turn it over to paul and michelle to talk about their experience i'm trying to get a seat at that table and get the funds to go back to communities so paul michelle please take it away hey thanks for having me um [Music] what was very unique about san francisco was that many of the criminal justice administrative fees including 1869 were already repealed in san francisco in may of 2018 the san francisco board of supervisors voted unanimously to eliminate all of our local criminal administrative fees san francisco was the first county in the nation to eliminate these unjust fees which strip resources from the communities most impacted by our criminal legal system and particularly our black community in san francisco the black community the native black san franciscans make up less than three percent of the population however they're roughly around 70 of the jails um so we had that in mind but given that san francisco already repealed these fees as a result 1.2 million per year for five years will be coming to the city and county of san francisco as part of ab169 1869 to backfill the cost to eliminate um the criminal administrative fees to ensure the money wouldn't get swept under the rug or rather go to the general fund and the police we got ahead of the ball before the board of supervisors we're even talking about it and we actually wrote a letter to the mayor i specifically wrote a letter to the mayor um in camaraderie with all of our allies and community-based organizations in san francisco letting them know that we had our eyes on this money and that it was on our radar we were adamant that the backfield funds not go to a law enforcement agency and instead be reinvested in the black community which has been the hardest hit by these fees we have requested that the funds go to provide stabilization housing for justice involved individuals and explore the idea of a guaranteed income for justice involved individuals community groups in our coalition remain committed to addressing the critical unmet need of providing stabilization housing for justice involved individuals who are unstably housed or at the highest risk of homelessness these individuals are people coming out of jail homeless or at risk of homelessness be that as it may housing is just the first step to re-entry there is an opportunity to continue to support formerly incarcerated people with financial resources to ensure strong re-entry outcomes through a guaranteed income guaranteed income has been shown to be effective by ensuring individuals could meet their basic needs of housing and food improve their physical and mental well-being and allow people to seek employment or other opportunities such as education and training we believe that stabilization housing and guaranteed income for justice involved individuals would significantly impact the outcomes of reentry recidivism and community safety um we're currently back and forth with the mayor's office just making these proposals and just letting them know that you know our eye is very much on you know the uh the backfield funding we have over 20 community based organizations alongside with us making sure that you know the money doesn't go to law enforcement and me being from san francisco i wholeheartedly represent the black community of san francisco and i realize how much we are in need i realize how much we are penalized by these fines and fees and just um the mayor she's from the black community in san francisco as well so i know she can relate um and that's just what we're pushing as far as proposals and what we think should uh the money should go to thanks paul um and hi everyone i'm michelle lau i'm with the san francisco financial justice project um we're housed in the treasurer's office um so we're within the city and county of san francisco government and our team was set up to look at our city's fines and fees so we've been working pretty closely with paul and other community groups to kind of facilitate this proposal behind the scenes so you know after paul kind of sent that initial letter you know we followed up with the mayor's office we also sort of reached out to the state department of finance to kind of track down the funds as soon as we could so as paul said we've been working with the mayor's office on the two proposals so the stabilization housing for people who are just as involved and the guaranteed income for people who are just as involved so our kind of where we are right now is that the mayor's office has committed to ensuring the funds do not go back into a law enforcement agency but they you know we're interested in hearing kind of ideas about how those funds should be used so as paul said we've had a few meetings with the mayor's office we are definitely in budget season right now so this is kind of the time of year where the mayor is weighing different priorities and these proposals are being considered as part of the budget for fiscal year 22-23 so the next fiscal year um yeah just to wrap up i think some of the the key things that we really tried to do in san francisco are are one just to get in front of the funding as soon as we knew it was coming to san francisco so it wasn't being swept you know into a law enforcement agency or back into the sheriff or probation um for the police and then kind of worked with community groups um and paul to develop pretty detailed proposals about you know how we wanted to see the funds being spent [Music] um so adrienne i'll pass it back to you thank you for sharing all of that and it's really inspiring to hear about all of your ideas for where this money could go instead of law enforcement to support our communities so i'm now actually going to turn that question um to our audience um so we're going to be distributing a poll in just a second we want to hear where you think that these funds should be used in your county so some of these things are things that you heard some of our panelists speak to today like housing for system-impacted people and and services community-based services um if you don't see your answer here we welcome you to put it in the chat um i've already heard one today that i don't think is on the list which is a guaranteed income but yeah we'd love to hear what you think should be prioritized and then the next question we have is do you have government allies so we we heard about a few different political contexts right we heard about l.a county where there are people that we can approach supervisors we can approach but sometimes they don't always get back at us and sometimes they defer to the county ceo right so and then we heard about um you know the experience in riverside where there's not a lot of um persuadable government officials in in county government and then we heard about san francisco where there was an government ally in the form of the financial justice project in the form of the treasurer's office that could help behind the scenes and potentially a persuadable mayor um and then the last question we'd love to hear from you about is are there partners in your community that you can see yourself working with um i think one thing that we heard all of our panelists talk about was the importance of coalition partners of community partners to ground us and and to go with us to to show our elected officials that there really is power behind our ask so um go ahead and answer the poll and we look forward to seeing what you think and while we are all doing that um i'm going to turn it over to our panelists to kick off our q and a so paul wondering um paul from la wondering if you have uh any questions for the rest of our panelists yeah for sure um actually to fidel and avalon i i want to reflect on something i'll talk about like they defer to policing um they defer it to them to like automatically um so my question to y'all is how frustrating is that to you and what can folks do out there to like support y'all because in l.a man it's frustrating to see that so just just want to hear from your side over in ie where it's probably worse in l.a just to be honest like that's the nature of i.e so if y'all got something to say on that um fidel you go ahead oh okay uh you know it is very frustrating when you're attending these meetings and you're seeing how they're they're headed and then at the end it sounds like yeah yeah oh yeah we're for you before you and then at the end of it it's like but you have to reach out to this person it's like uh and and the way that that we could be supported i think we definitely have to strategize more um with these or the organizations as well um and develop relationships uh where it's gonna be a uh like like i think in san francisco they have relationship with the mayor so we're gonna have to start reaching out to like um other elected officials as well and we could definitely use some support from folks out in la i think y'all are incredibly well organized between a few different really amazing organizations out there like it's not that long of a drive um i think we often you know this isn't budget specific but we often need like bodies in the room you know and just to let folks know in la county what's going on in riverside is huge because um we don't have you know we we have tons of engaged community members but like the numbers aren't there we have never packed the room at us at a supervisor's meeting to talk about our budget asks right we we get a few dozen people at the best showing of the year right so um i think especially with la that kind of supportive sharing when we're having you know events or calls to action um and getting the word out to folks there um would be would be huge but yeah totally agree with everything fidel said thanks and um now i'd just like to invite the audience um to drop any questions they might have for our panelists in the chat um yeah not to put you all on the spot um avalon and fidel but if you have a question before any of our other panelists um please we'd love to continue the discussion uh yeah i guess i'm curious about how things have worked in the san francisco context right because it's so different and then hearing like having an ally in the mayor's office and having the mayor already commit to not putting that money towards public safety like i feel like we can't even envision that step what do you do then right like when you have that political ally when you have somebody who said on paper or in a meeting or whatever that like yes i'm with you what comes after that like how do you make sure that they they stay with their word do you then like invest yourselves in them as a political candidate and say hey this person backed us up when we needed them we're going to back them up because you know that's not a compromise that we can make right because the people who who throw us a crumb sometimes are never going to be there with us on another issue and so i guess that's where i'm coming from from the riverside context paul do you want to start sure i'll give a half at it um i would say just constantly um try to set up meetings with them um and also when leaving those meetings have next steps um like some of the meetings that we had with a staffer in the mayor's office um like they wanted there were next steps like we agreed that within a couple days you know we we'd have a meeting with them again before they had their meeting with the mayor and we provide them some of the talking points on our behalf um and just you know never dropping the ball um you know uh we're very fortunate in san francisco you know a lot of stuff does happen here first um but yeah i guess you know just continuing to just stay in contact with them um and having more than one contact as well um you know in the event that you can't get through who you want to yeah and i'll just add i think as paul said being very persistent so we've continued to follow up with our our mayor's office um we also you know have a pretty good relationship with our sheriff which i know is is unique to san francisco so paul and other community groups we all meet kind of quarterly with the sheriff himself and his kind of top staff so i think that's yeah also a unique relationship that we've we've been able to develop um yeah and move forward things like gel phone calls and tablets for free i'm curious in riverside do you feel as if there's greater opposition than allies the opposition is really loud and they have a lot of money and a lot of political power that's what i'll say i don't know fidel if you want to answer that yeah i agree with you avalon numbers-wise no it's like kind of a purple county um but in terms of who's the loudest in the room it's always going to be tough on crime folks yeah right now we're going to change it but right now that's how it is so we have a couple questions in the chat which i think are along the same lines which is how do we find or cultivate government allies that are willing to go to bat for us and work behind the scenes for us um particularly in kind of more conservative places right um so curious about um i guess the processes you all went through to figure out who it was that you could actually maybe get a foot in the door with i can take that on um i think when i started at the county just in terms in general just not on any like finds or feeding anything but any type of push at the county um it was like always showing up to whatever meetings they had and then i would start to see faces start to see how staff were doing so let's see how they responded and i just started talking and like hey let me get your number it's hard you know just to stay in touch and like build in that rapport and over a period of time you know we started building you know a lot of allyship and it got to a place where i could reach out to somebody like hey let's get a meeting they're like cool what day you got these are the ones i got and so you know once you start opening those doors you'll start to find out who they are and i think the challenges i think in a lot of places what i've heard from people too is that they're like oh man i can't be sucks our jurisdiction sucks and nobody goes nobody tries to talk to somebody right nobody goes looking and so i think it's incumbent upon us to go find those people they're there they're somewhere they're somewhere it may just be one person though unfortunately and so you know it's kind of like a needle in a haystack type piece and so that's the challenge like how do you find that person but i think for me i would say it's just being attended um going with folks and just being observant and trying to find and you know just trying to keep an eye out for like who is that person not just going to get public comment but go to get public comment and find your ally like go with that eye to look for who is this person um and you can see you know and just sometimes your gut will lead you to that right person you just never know just got to be there and be persistent so that's how i got in and i'll just chime in um in our case in san francisco as i mentioned all of the administrative fees um were already repealed but that was actually legislation that was put forward by mayor london breed herself when she was the president of the board of supervisors so she was already passionate you know about repealing these fees before she was the mayor which you know is another reason why she's so receptive of hearing art proposals and just advancing this even further any other thoughts or reflections on that question all right i think we have time for one more question and um i think i got one in the chat but if anyone else has anything please drop it in um but what can we do to support each other that's the question what can like our statewide debt free justice coalition do what can um our organizations working in all different counties and regions across the state what can we do to mutually support each other i can kick us off on that mutual support huh i think for us it's always been like coalition building um anytime we've tried to move something um at the state level or whatever it's always been building with people but the one thing that we tend to focus on in la that i've seen to be successful in any campaign has always been to put the leadership of direct impact people at the front um because there are always the folks that have the passion the drive they're the folks that have felt it you know like felt it directly and so there's one thing that you know like legislators or officials can say they can oh you're giving me false stats or you're skewing it but the thing is you can never tell somebody your experience isn't valued or your experience is a lie you can't tell somebody what they didn't experience you can't do that you know um so they just have to accept what what person says and it doesn't have to be um you know an impacted person doesn't have to come with a lot of data and stuff they can just be like look man this is what happened y'all did this to me that was your decision that was your choice um and this is how it hurt us you know to get this i did that whatever so um you know folks can really speak to that because at the end of the day moving stuff i've seen in successes it's not through logic with your reasoning a lot of times it's you've got to capture like a decision maker's heart let's just be honest about it you got to get them to move with their emotions like i didn't feel guilty sometimes that's the only thing that will make them move they literally have to feel guilty other than that they can brush it off and go to sleep at night right you got to make sure they lose some sleep but you know if impacted folks aren't there at the core at the front lines it's it's not going to happen because it's just going to be all logic and reasoning a lot unfortunately but to the other question how you can find somebody sometimes you got to send somebody in that's another thing sometimes you got to send someone in somebody's got to be willing to be that brave wolf and go inside and tear it down any other thoughts from our panelists how we can help support each other all right um i think then we're just going to wrap things up with some resources um stephanie you want to take it away yeah let me share my screen again really quick um so yeah just some quick things before we close out um we have a lot of resources for people um we have a sample county level resolution drafted by our friends at san francisco financial justice project no county has yet adopted this type of resolution but again hopefully it's a helpful starting point in conversations also encourage people to check out debt free justice california's website where we share a little bit about the updates to ongoing work to eliminate fees fines and starting now with restitution in california we also have flyers on that website about 80 1869 and 177 under the resources tab so encourage people to check that out we also have um kind of service providers that have um share their information to help people navigate fees and uh that are continuing to be charged to them so if you have people um that you know across california that are still facing fees that are no longer authorized or have questions definitely feel free to reach out to these folks all this information again is on the debt free justice california website um i'm sure that we'll share all of the panelists contact information um but the last thing i will plug is um again the coalition has a facebook twitter and instagram account definitely follow us we try to keep um updates there we also have a list serve and a monthly call so if you're interested in joining that um feel free to email me or adriana we can drop our emails in the chat always welcome more people i'm into the conversation and with that i will throw it back to adriana to officially close out yeah thank you to all of our panelists um for all the great information um and i think we just shared the results of the poll um my big takeaway from that is that there are a lot of places that we think it would be really valuable um for this money to go that's not probation and the sheriff and that there are some good opportunities for us to work with our community organizations with our people's budget coalitions um to get that done so thank you all again for joining us and thank you to our presenters have a great evening