Mayor Steinberg: Sacramento must eradicate racial and gender bias from budget process

To the residents of Sacramento:

Last week, I received a city flyer advertising STEAM science and engineering summer camps to be held in Natomas, East Sacramento, the Pocket and Land Park.

The STEAM offering is well-intended. The people leading the effort are excellent public servants who care about all our communities. There are undoubtedly a dozen logistical and practical reasons why only these pristine parks and neighborhoods were chosen to host its summer programs.

Yet this simple flyer represents an important learning moment for our city and broader community. For the overall decision and impact from this small decision on where to hold summer camps is an unknowing example of implicit bias. I call it out not to embarrass or castigate anyone, but to ask us to confront our own reflexive bias.

This flyer helped crystalize my thoughts, and today I am presenting my city colleagues with requests both small and large.

I request that the city find a way to expand its STEAM camps to at least four disadvantaged neighborhoods, to match the number of such camps planned for Natomas, East Sacramento, the Pocket and Land Park.

Second, I propose a fundamental change in city budget and program policy and ask for your input and support.

Going forward, I will propose that all budget and programmatic decisions require a racial and gender impact analysis for the City Council to consider in making its decisions.

I have asked myself these past days why, at the beginning of the Coronavirus epidemic, I readily accepted the necessity of using Measure U funds temporarily to preserve the core city public safety budget. I defended that decision by pointing out that I successfully insisted that the vast majority of our $89 million of federal COVID-19 relief dollars be spent on the same inclusive and equity-focused priorities that we started with Measure U.

My critics are asking why not use both COVID-19 and the second half of Measure U for the city’s equity agenda and instead cut the core budget? Whether I ultimately agree with all my critics’ budget ideas, the fact that we as a city do not even ask the questions they raise troubles me.

I have asked myself these past days why I opposed Measure G, last year’s children’s funding measure. My motive was to protect the other Measure U investments like an affordable housing bond and direct investments in our minority owned small businesses. There were flaws in the structure of the well-intended youth measure, but it gnaws at me. Why can’t our progressive city have both a permanent youth fund and the other crucial housing and small business investments?

There are legitimate answers to both questions as our city grapples with complex and difficult choices, especially in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic. After all, we have a balanced budget and $89 million of new resources to invest in youth, workforce, and neighborhoods. But I must question my own reflexive acceptance of the status quo as untouchable without even considering other ways to do even more for communities and people too often left behind.

For decades, California law has required us to analyze the environmental impact of all major growth and land use decisions. We have stated as a matter of high public priority that understanding how our decisions affect the environment is essential to public health, air quality, water quality, and our overall quality of life. When it matters for us to pay attention, we require our process and deliberations to include what we say matters.

I am proud that our city has started to define its core mission to include economic equity and investing in all our neighborhoods. Spending $70 million over 20 months is a good start. But I acknowledge that despite my very public fight with the fire and police stakeholders in 2019 to commit to $200 million over five years for inclusion and equity, my strategy has really been an aggressive workaround to co-exist with the accepted status quo.

That status quo says clearly that a city’s primary role is to fund traditional public safety. The remaining loose change in good times funds some youth, parks and recreation efforts. When budgets are cut, the youth and the neighborhoods are the first to go.

The aggressive workarounds are no longer enough. That is the message I am hearing loud and clear from frustrated members of our community.

There is no quick answer. I represent the entire city. I believe that public safety, our police and fire services are an essential part of a city’s obligations to its residents. I believe that investing in youth and underserved neighborhoods is an equally important city obligation.

I do not know ultimately how I would have balanced the difficult questions I raised above if presented to me today. But I know I would have answered them with a very different lens and urgency to not assume that the status quo is immovable. And I do know that the current balance leans too far towards one end of the spectrum.

I recommit to ensuring that at a bare minimum, 80 percent of Measure U’s second half-cent be invested in youth, neighborhoods, and economic equity for the remainder of my terms.

I cannot do any of it alone. I will need the support of my Council colleagues and the city family.

If it is important enough to consider the climate and our environment as an essential lens in our public decision making, then it is equally important to consider the impact on people and neighborhoods that have been systematically disenfranchised and left behind.

A racial and gender equity lens for all major public policy decisions in our city is the beginning of real change. If we do not ask the equity question before we make key decisions, we will never have the opportunity to answer the question presented differently than the way we always have.

Every staff report, every budget document, every key decision should force us to grapple with our obligations to people and communities who have been victims of systemic racism and bias. The resources must follow.

Sometimes it is the little things that reveal a larger truth. Let’s fund summer STEAM programs in all our neighborhoods and parks, not just the few attached to our wealthier neighborhoods. Let our decisions going forward include the voices of those young people who are pleading with us to listen. Let us work intentionally to create a more just city.

Let us start with a single summer program.

This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.