Oakland Report examines the falsehoods people in government sometimes tell. This installment fact-checks a seemingly wild claim two school board incumbents are making in the final week of the campaign: that their opponents are backed by “billionaires” who want to turn schools into data centers. (Video clip sources: Instagram @pslbayarea, @valforoaklandschools. Montage by Oakland Report)

Bold claims in the final stretch of the campaign

With one week to go in the Oakland school board elections, school board president Jennifer Brouhard and vice president Valarie Bachelor are delivering a bold closing message: that their opponents are fronts for “billionaires” who want to close schools and sell the buildings for data centers.

Neither Brouhard (running for re-election in District 2) nor Bachelor (running for re-election in District 6) offered any evidence for their claims. It stands to reason that campaign claims this bold — made a week before election day — require unequivocal proof. We examined the record and found no evidence of such.

Key findings

• No challenger has proposed selling school property. The only candidates asked about it on the record, at a Sept. 29 forum, rejected the idea of selling school property, and we could find no statements by any candidate that suggest they intend to turn unused schools into data centers.

• State law makes a quick sale of school properties impossible, and data centers would be at the end of a very long line to buy them. Disposing of a closed school takes an advisory committee, a two-thirds board vote, priority offers to charter schools and multiple public agencies, and Surplus Land Act notices. The entire process would take at least nine to 18 months, and the chances of a data center winding up on a school property are practically nil.

• Oakland’s only data center proposal is for a private downtown office building that previously served as an advanced computing center. The Oakland city council temporarily paused development on all new data centers when it passed a moratorium on Oct. 6.

• OUSD’s own “7-11 committee” plan for its currently closed and unused schools is focused on developing housing. Bachelor, as facilities chair, wrote the resolutions. Brouhard, as board president, presided over the vote that created it.

Subscribe for free to Oakland Report

Subscribe now

Brouhard and Bachelor claimed “billionaires” and their political opponents want to turn schools into data centers

Brouhard appeared in an Instagram video posted on October 20 by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a self-described Marxist-Leninist party that has recently advocated against data centers.1

In the video, Brouhard states:

“Every community deserves an elementary, middle and high school, and I think the connection with data centers is with these billionaires… as buildings are emptied, as schools are emptied, I mean I think that’s one of the things behind school closures, is that these buildings are then used for things like data centers.”

— Jennifer Brouhard, OUSD board president

Bachelor posted an Instagram video to her campaign account on October 25 that echoed Brouhard’s theme.2

In the video, Bachelor states:

“Billionaires are trying to take over our school board… the Oakland Unified School District is one of the largest land owners in Oakland… and if you want to build more data centers, if you want to build more market rate housing that pushes out our Black and Brown community members, you want to buy those properties. And my opponents want to sell those properties to the highest bidders and create education deserts in the city of Oakland.”

— Valarie Bachelor, OUSD board vice president

What the challengers have said on the record

We could find no records, statements or evidence to support Brouhard’s and Bachelor’s claims about their opponents wanting to turn schools into data centers.

The challengers, Arielle Fleisher (District 2), Alexandra Williams (District 6) and LeAna Powell (District 6), as well as Kathryn Camp (District 4), have said school consolidation should be on the table for consideration, citing low enrollment and the principals’ letters asking for it.34 But none have mentioned selling school buildings. Nor have they suggested that schools be turned into data centers.

When an audience member at a recent District 4 candidate forum suggested selling two closed sites for $30 million, Camp answered that her recommendation “wouldn’t be to sell them.” She then proposed 99-year leases for low-income and teacher housing instead.5

Empower Oakland, the political advocacy group whose top funders have included one Forbes-listed billionaire,67 endorsed Fleisher and Williams in their bids to unseat Brouhard and Bachelor. It also backs incumbent Mike Hutchinson as its first choice in the District 4 race. (Oakland uses ranked choice voting; Empower Oakland endorsed Camp as its second choice in District 4 and LeAna Powell as its second choice in District 6.) Its voter guide says nothing about property.8

For his part, Hutchinson says he opposes ceding district land for longer than his own term.9

What state law allows school districts to do with surplus properties — and what it doesn’t

A school district cannot sell a school the way a private owner can sell a property, or even the way a city can. State law dictates stricter rules for the disposition of school sites. Per state law, school districts that wish to sell or lease a school property must seat a 7-to-11-member advisory committee, hold hearings and receive a report, then declare the property surplus by a two-thirds vote.10

The school district must then first offer the site, in order, to charter schools, then to park agencies under the Naylor Act, then to the city, county and housing nonprofits under the Surplus Land Act, with a 60-day response window and 90 days of negotiation. Only then may it take other bids. Then the proposal must undergo environmental review. Sale proceeds cannot be used to pay salaries or close an operating deficit.

Bachelor’s phrase “highest bidders” appears to come from that statute. It binds a district only after it has chosen to sell, and OUSD’s own policy prefers long-term leases.11

We found no California school that has become a data center. Oakland’s one current data center proposal is for a 20-megawatt facility in a former Lawrence Berkeley Lab building at 415 20th Street. The city council’s recent data center moratorium, which the council can extend, temporarily halted it.

What OUSD is actually doing with its closed school sites

Bachelor knows the process for the disposition of vacant school sites — or, at least, she should know the process — because she runs it.12

In 2019, OUSD convened a “7-11 committee,” then declared the former Edward Shands and Tilden school sites as surplus in 2020.13

In 2021, the board approved 65-year ground leases for housing, half of it reserved for district staff.1415 Those leases lapsed.

In September 2025, Bachelor sponsored a resolution that funded housing feasibility studies for three closed sites.16

In April, the board approved a new 7-11 committee with members to be seated by June 30.17 In September, all seven seats were still vacant.18

On Wednesday (today), the Shands item Bachelor sponsored is scheduled to return to the board. Her substitute resolution would create a “task force” and states it “does not authorize the sale, lease, or redevelopment” of the property.19

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to the incumbents and to OUSD, we offer these counterpoints for readers to consider.

• OUSD has leased closed sites to a private developer before: the 2021 ground leases that were approved before either incumbent joined the board. Both were for housing.

• The challengers do differ from the incumbents on closures. The challengers say closures and consolidation should be among the options the board considers, in light of enrollment trends and budget shortfalls; the incumbents have ruled out closures.

• The county office of education says OUSD operates 77 sites where as few as 46 would do20 — further bolstering potential closures as a legitimate campaign issue.

• Bachelor’s claim is about her opponents’ intentions. But her opponents have not said what Bachelor claims they said — in fact, they appear to have said the opposite.

Prediction, or fiction?

A school board member also is referred to as a school “trustee” because voters have entrusted her with the district’s assets and with telling them the truth about those assets.

Brouhard and Bachelor have described a “billionaire” plot to turn schools into data centers — something no candidate has proposed, that state law limits in several ways, and for which we could find no precedent in California.

The school board’s facilities chair, Valarie Bachelor, who wrote the district’s housing resolutions, and the board president, Jennifer Brouhard, who presided over the vote creating the district’s 7-11 committee, are better placed than anyone in Oakland to know that.

Why they made the apparently false claims they did is for Oaklanders to decide for themselves.

WE ARE 100% SUPPORTED BY YOU

Oakland Report provides accurate, unflinching, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. All contributions go directly to sustaining and growing our 501(c)(3) nonprofit work.

Donate now

BY ROD JACOMET

A government of city employees, by city employees, for city employees

Oakland has 24 city departments and thousands of employees.1 Residents may ask the question: what do they actually do for us?

The answer, increasingly, is that they extract. While neighbors navigate an obstacle course of permits, fines, and fees, the city’s own finances spiral toward projected annual deficits of $115 to $130 million through 20302 — not despite all this activity, but alongside it. Oakland has mastered the art of appearing busy while delivering nothing.

Our democracy is often defined as a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Oakland has achieved something different: a government of city employees, by city employees, for city employees. The resident — the customer, the taxpayer, the person paying for all of it — is an afterthought at best, and a revenue source at worst.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

The “permit trap” ensnares homeowners, renters, businesses and builders alike

In most functional cities, simple residential permits — and even the plan checks behind them — are issued over the counter, the same day. A qualified plan checker reviews your drawings, asks questions, marks up any issues, and either approves the project or hands you a redline sheet before you leave the building. You walk in with plans; you walk out with a permit or a clear list of what to fix.

For straightforward residential work — an addition, a remodel, an in-law unit (ADU) — this is standard practice in well-run jurisdictions. This level of service was once available in Oakland itself. But now no longer for many projects.

Oakland has expanded its same-day permit program — issuing over 8,000 such permits last year, with plans to add bathroom renovations and window replacement.3 That is genuine progress. But the program still covers painting, HVAC, solar, and trade work — not the projects that define whether one can actually improve their property. A kitchen or bathroom remodel that requires opening up walls, a home addition, a foundation repair, a seismic retrofit — all require full plan review with no guaranteed response time and no counter service.

The resident waits. The department does not.

Oakland’s own published turnaround estimates: new home plan checks, 80 days. Additions and alterations, 21 days. Simple kitchen or bathroom remodels with no wall changes, 3 days to 2 weeks. Planning approvals for anything more complex, often 6 to 8 months. These are targets, not guarantees, and they assume a complete, error-free application submitted to a department that has no enforceable deadline to respond.

The cost of this delay is real and largely invisible. Every month a project sits in queue is a month of carrying costs on unpermitted work, a contractor’s schedule in limbo, a family living in a construction zone. For small landlords trying to bring a unit up to code, the process is so punishing that many give up — leaving in place the very conditions the city claims to be correcting.

Then comes the enforcement. The same department that takes 80 days to approve a permit sets compliance deadlines that can be challenging for homeowners to meet — in some cases physically impossible without the permit the department hasn’t issued.4

The Alameda County Grand Jury in 2011 found Oakland’s inspectors created an “atmosphere of hostility and intimidation” toward property owners.5 One resident was fined $18,000 for debris that turned out to be children’s toys.6 The records system tracking violations is outdated and cannot efficiently process appeals as other cities do, in my experience. The city responded by reorganizing the department, and the appeals process was litigated in court.7 While that was some years ago, little has changed since then, in my experience.

Under Oakland’s municipal code, each day a violation goes unabated is a new and separate offense.8 Citations compound into thousands of dollars, with no obligation on the city to process the permit that would allow the property owner to comply. The customer is not a priority. But the revenue is.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

The lead paint mandate: a wave of costs coming for every neighborhood

Now consider what is coming. Oakland has adopted an ordinance declaring that any building built before January 1, 1978, is presumed to contain lead-based paint.9 According to U.S. Census housing data, three-quarters of Oakland’s housing stock was built before 198010 — meaning the vast majority of the city’s buildings fall under this presumption.

Under the ordinance, hiring anyone to disturb paint on such a building requires a permit, a state or EPA-certified contractor, and an approved lead hazard work plan — along with the requisite fees. Refusing or neglecting to remove known lead hazards when ordered is a misdemeanor under Oakland Municipal Code §15.08.560.

For owner-occupants, this is burdensome. For rental property owners, it is far worse. They cannot perform the work themselves. The ordinance requires state or EPA-certified contractors to perform the work at market rates, along with an approved work plan, mandatory permits, pre-work inspections, and final inspections. If tenants must be displaced during the work, a relocation plan is required. The city may recover all costs of abatement and prosecution from the property owner.

This is not a modest safety measure targeting documented hazards. It is a presumption applied wholesale to thousands of buildings, generating fees, inspections, certified-contractor billings, and city cost recovery revenue — all in the name of public health. The cause is real, and noble. The revenue extraction is equally real.

The garbage tax — and the mess it leaves behind

There are other ways the city burdens residents and businesses with excessive costs. Take for example waste removal. Oakland’s residential waste pickup rates are among the highest in the Bay Area — $113.53 per month for a 64-gallon cart, compared to $93.60 in Berkeley and $72.15 in San Leandro.111213

The predictable result is visible on every major corridor: illegal dumping. When the cost of legal disposal is punishing enough, residents and haulers make the rational calculation to avoid it.

The city responds with cleanup crews and fines — more extraction — rather than addressing the pricing structure that created the incentive in the first place. Oakland has effectively taxed its way into a blight problem, then monetized the blight.

The cannabis double standard

Some of us may remember, back when cannabis was first legalized and regulated, the projected windfall of new revenue the city said it would receive from the newly legal industry, which it would then invest into programs and services for its citizenry.

The reality has not fulfilled those lofty dreams.

In March 2025, California Highway Patrol and the state Department of Cannabis Control raided a West Oakland warehouse and seized 25,276 illegally cultivated cannabis plants valued at nearly $21 million — along with firearms and illegal pesticides.14 Oakland city enforcement was not substantively involved. The state had to do it.

Licensed cannabis businesses in Oakland pay a gross receipts tax ranging up to 5%, submit to state testing, carry insurance, and operate transparently.15 Their unlicensed competitors pay none of those costs, and by all appearances, the city’s enforcement has done little to discourage illegal operators from skirting the law and avoiding the taxes and fees promised to benefit Oaklanders.

The unlicensed market is estimated to account for about 60 percent of all cannabis sales in California, by the state’s own estimate — leaving licensed operators to compete for less than half the market they were promised.16 Oakland’s cannabis tax revenues have underperformed projections as taxable cannabis sales fell from a roughly $271 million peak to about $186 million.17

The city built its cannabis licensing program on a promise: regulate the market, collect the taxes, reinvest in the community. It delivered a system that burdens the compliant and ignores the non-compliant — destroying the incentive to be legal in the first place.

Urban campers and the two-tier city

The arguably most visible sign of Oakland’s upside-down approach to enforcement is its widespread encampments.

While property owners face compounding fines for code violations and rental owners face misdemeanor charges for failing to comply with abatement orders, urban campers occupy parks, sidewalks, and public spaces across Oakland with little to no consequence.

The results are measurable. For example, according to national crime data, Oakland ranks #1 in the nation in property crime among major reporting cities and has the highest violent crime rate in California.18

While not every property crime is committed by encampment dwellers, it stands to reason that long-standing unchecked misery, poverty and lawlessness on this scale is a contributing factor to Oakland’s high crime rate.

Another example: Businesses that had long invested in Oakland, such as In-N-Out, Denny’s, and other business operators along the Hegenberger corridor, have cited deteriorating safety conditions as reasons for leaving.1920 Kaiser Permanente moved about 1,200 jobs to Pleasanton, .citing hybrid work shifts; months later it issued a ‘stay inside’ advisory to its downtown employees, citing safety concerns.2122

A Bay Area Council Economic Institute survey found in June 2025 that six in ten East Bay respondents say they now visit downtown Oakland less, over half of them citing crime and public safety as a reason.23

A report by the same institute found a 14% decline in businesses filing taxes in Oakland between fiscal years 2021–22 and 2023–24; and that its sales tax revenue should be $15–16 million higher when tracking for inflation.24

Oakland’s approach to encampments is not compassion, as the term is commonly understood. It is abandonment — of the campers themselves, who receive no services or path forward, and of the taxpaying residents and businesses who are asked to pay more to fund a city that no longer functions for them.

A revenue crisis of the city’s own making

Here we turn to the city’s own financial practices. Oakland’s finance department projects that the city is facing structural budget deficits of $115 to $130 million annually through 2030. Despite this, Oakland voters rejected Measure E — a $192 parcel tax — in June 2026.25 The Coliseum sale has been delayed repeatedly and undergone multiple reconfigurations, including a “seller financing” loan for the stadium parcel.2627 Business tax revenue is declining as employers leave for greener pastures.

The city’s response to these warning signs has been to further intensify its revenue extraction from the people and businesses who remain — through more (selective) enforcement, higher fees, compounding fines, and new mandates with criminal penalties attached.

Meanwhile, the city offers little transparency about how those revenues are spent, no measurable outcomes tied to department budgets, and no accountability when departments miss their own published timelines.

Twenty-four departments. A $130 million annual deficit for years to come. Permit counters that take six months for applications other cities process promptly. Inspectors who fine residents for children’s toys. A misdemeanor charge for defying an abatement order on old buildings, unless the owner pays to test and disprove the presumption. Garbage rates that run the highest of any neighboring city. A $21 million cannabis warehouse the city never touched until the state stepped in. Public spaces where residents and business operators no longer feel safe.

Oakland doesn’t have a resource problem. It has a priority problem — and a governing philosophy that punishes the people building this city while looking the other way at those dismantling it.

— Rod Jacomet, licensed contractor and Oakland resident

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rod Jacomet is a California-licensed general contractor and International Code Council (ICC)-certified dwelling inspector with experience across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors in California. His educational background is in social anthropology and business administration. Over the course of his career, he has worked with multiple state and federal agencies in varying capacities, giving him a broad perspective on how municipal systems are designed to function — and where they break down. Jacomet has held roles at California municipal Building and Housing agencies, served as chair of the Emeryville housing commission, and served as president of the Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center in Berkeley. Earlier this year, he sought to run for Mayor of Oakland but ultimately did not qualify for the ballot. He lives and works in Oakland.

The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.

Read all the headlines

1. Oakland’s 911 system was completely offline for nearly 36 hours

The city’s 911 system went offline since 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night, according to mayor Barbara Lee and police. The city’s backup systems also were offline. Reports show large fiber optic and copper cables sliced away by an apparent “bad actor,” according to police chief James Beere.

The police department’s 911 call center was re-routed to the county’s system. The fire department’s call center was unaffected. During the outage, police said they were answering the phone and there were “no delays,” but added that they were only responding to “Priority One” calls.

The city’s 311 system also went down. During the outage, city officials encouraged people to send their 311 reports by email.

The system was offline until repairs were completed Friday morning. Read more

2. City council could get raises of up to $108,000 more per year (Measure EE)

An analysis of Oakland council member compensation found that Oakland already pays its council more per resident than other big cities. Measure EE, the “strong mayor” charter amendment on the November 3 ballot, could increase city council compensation by an estimated $36,000 to $108,000 more per member — with no upper limit.

The analysis found that Oakland already pays its council members the most per resident among other large cities — about 26 cents per resident, higher than San Francisco (21¢), Sacramento (19¢), San Diego (13¢), and Los Angeles (6¢).

Measure EE sets no specific dollar amount and no upper limit on council member pay. It would direct the city’s Public Ethics Commission (PEC) to reset council pay every two years to match “comparable” full-time California councils — but attaches no dollar amount, and no limit.

The analysis also found that neither mayor Barbara Lee’s “chater reform working group” that developed the measure, nor the Yes on EE campaign have mentioned that the measure would also give city council substantial raises. The mayor’s working group praised “market-appropriate” council pay, but offered no specific dollar amounts. The Yes on EE website, FAQ, and ballot argument don’t mention the potential pay increase at all, instead focusing on council working “full-time.” Read more

3. Oakland Education Association teachers union is a special interest — and its parent union has over half a billion dollars in net assets.

Oakland Education Association have been leaning into campaign claims that “billionaires” are opposing OEA-backed school board candidates, incumbents Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor. An Oakland Report analysis found that OEA and its school board candidates are backed by deep-pocketed organizations of their own: public sector unions. OEA runs on $1.2 million a year — and its parent union, California Teachers Association holds $574 million in net assets.

OEA’s political action committee has outspent every other committee in school board races since 2020. Four of the seven current Oakland school board members have deep ties to the union.

OEA’s money has bought a school board majority friendly to OEA’s interests, citing a “student-centered” platform. The result: only 34% of Oakland Unified’s students met the state English standard and only 27% met the math standard in 2024–25, compared to 49% and 37% statewide. And, OUSD’s Black and Hispanic students trail their statewide peers in these key academic achievement markers by 12 to 17 points. Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. Harold Duffey, former Oakland exec ensnared in texting scandal, resigns as Brentwood’s city manager.

Duffey had been under fire in the wake of a text messaging scandal from his time as Oakland’s assistant city administrator. Duffey and his then-boss, Oakland city administrator Jestin Johnson, exchanged text messages that appeared to demean and sexualize their female colleagues; Johnson resigned in May after the messages came to light.

Brentwood’s city council put Duffey on paid administrative leave in June, after employee unions in that city expressed concerns about “gender-based discrimination” under Duffey’s watch. Duffey resigned from Brentwood on October 16, less than a year after taking the city manager job; he reportedly will receive $124,000 severance and accrued leave on his way out the door.

Duffey also is a witness in the federal trial of former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, who is facing eight counts of bribery, corruption mail and wire fraud. Read more

5. Disgraced former mayor Sheng Thao was corrupt even before taking office, feds say

A sweeping FBI investigation began only two months into the former Oakland mayor’s term, according to trial testimony. A federal agent revealed that the FBI began investigating Thao in February 2023; Thao is now on trial for bribery and corruption in federal court. The FBI got involved after a tip from Oakland’s public ethics commission about political hit mailers that targeted Thao’s opponents in the 2022 mayoral campaign.

Other testimony revealed that Thao discussed closed-session deliberations about overcharges to waste pickup customers with co-defendant Andy Duong, an executive at the city’s recycling contractor, years before the alleged conspiracy. Text messages shown in court also reveal that Thao was having personal financial trouble, with difficulty paying rent, mounting utility bills and an electricity shut-off.

Other testimony featured photos, videos, text and email messages that feds say document an alleged pay-to-pay scheme in which the recycling contractor, California Waste Solutions, would help Thao win election as mayor and compensate her through her partner, Andre Jones, in exchange for favorable treatment with lucrative city contracts for recycling and a modular home business venture. Read more

Subscribe to Oakland Report. (It’s free.)

Subscribe now

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a free public service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. We review over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.

Go the Newsstand

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Contribute

Learn more

Oakland Report examines the influence behind the government decisions that affect Oaklanders’ lives. This installment follows the money behind the Oakland Education Association, the most consistent political spender in school board elections. Subsequent analyses will examine other entities that engage and spend heavily to influence Oakland politics.

Deep pockets, and a board majority to show for it

The Oakland Education Association (OEA) calls its platform and slate of school board candidates the path to “student-centered schools,” and warns of “billionaire-backed” challengers.1

Its financial and political records paint a more detailed picture: significant and growing financial reserves, a political arm whose largest checks come from other unions — California Teachers Association, National Education Association and, this year, Service Employees International Union — and a record of political spending on school board races that no entity or individual on the opposing side has matched.

Key findings

• OEA reported $1,245,310 in revenue in fiscal year 2025, mostly from dues. Its net assets nearly doubled to $667,170 that year.

• OEA political action committee (PAC) has spent $686,917 on OUSD board races since 2020. It spent more than any other committee over that period.

• OEA PAC has spent $81,969 so far this cycle. Its spending in past cycles suggests that it will spend more heavily in the upcoming final week of the campaign.

• About half of OEA’s political money has come from other unions in 2026, and most of its 2024 money did. This summer, OEA PAC took in $70,500 in small contributions from its members, and larger checks from other labor organizations: $50,000 from SEIU Local 1021, $10,000 from the Alameda Labor Council and $7,700 from California Teachers Association (CTA), which gave $97,000 in 2024.

• OEA’s parent union, CTA, is the deep pocket behind it: CTA reported $249.1 million in revenue and $574.2 million in net assets in 2025, up $158 million in four years.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

OEA: a small local union with a big parent, outsized influence on the school board, and a growing financial cushion

OEA represents roughly 3,000 teachers, counselors and nurses.2 Its financial disclosures show $997,235 in dues-type revenue; dues are typically withheld from workers’ paychecks.3 How much of that money OEA spends on direct representation of its members in the workplace, and how much it spends on political influence activities is unclear.

After a $419,720 loss in fiscal year 2023 — a year OEA went on strike — it rebuilt to $1.28 million in assets against $612,859 in liabilities.

The sources of OEA’s political money

OEA’s political action committee, a separate entity, has raised $1.9 million since it was created.4

Its member/workers’ small contributions provide a steady and consistent stream of revenue.

Additional, greater income comes from CTA’s political committee, the National Education Association (NEA) Advocacy Fund ($15,000 in 2022 and 2024) and, this year, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, which spends about $3.2 million a year on politics.56

OEA’s wealthy parent organization

Every OEA member/worker pays CTA about $858 a year on top of local dues, and pays around $234 to NEA.7

CTA’s $221.6 million in dues funds a headquarters in Burlingame. Its highest-paid employee, an assistant manager, earned $365,568 plus $198,711 in other compensation; its executive director earned $314,930 plus $235,518.8

A portion of CTA’s funding goes to its political committee, which collected $2.5 million this cycle for local teacher PACs, including Oakland’s, according to Transparency USA.9

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

OEA’s money has bought a school board majority friendly to OEA’s interests first and foremost

OEA-backed candidates in this election cycle (Jennifer Brouhard, and Valarie Bachelor) are incumbents who tend to vote as a bloc with the OUSD board’s union-backed 4–3 majority.10

President Jennifer Brouhard served three terms on OEA’s executive board; she is currently running for re-election.11

Vice president Valarie Bachelor, a former California Federation of Teachers organizer who now directs ACCE Oakland, a tenant-advocacy group, won in 2022 with about $51,000 in OEA PAC support; she also is running for re-election.12

OUSD board member VanCedric Williams is a member of the California Teachers Association board of directors.

OUSD board member Rachel Latta describes herself as being “raised in a union household,” lists “organizer” among her past jobs, and in 2024 was endorsed by the Alameda Labor Council, the Working Families Party, ACCE, Bay Rising Action and Oakland Rising Action.

The superintendent they appointed, Denise Saddler, led OEA as union president for six years.

OEA representatives bend the rules on electioneering, and the union-backed board majority has waved off conflicts of interest

The record also shows a willingness, by the union and the board majority it elected, to brush aside rules and warnings that stand in the way of the union’s goals. Recent examples in the public record include, but are not limited to:

• Electioneering on campus. Last month, an OEA site representative whose day job is a school librarian posted flyers attacking “wealthy elites” by the door of Skyline High’s main office, where 16- and 17-year-old voters attend school. District rules bar employees from posting campaign material on district property; state law makes using district resources for it a crime.13

• Undisclosed union pay. CTA’s tax filings report paying OUSD board member VanCedric Williams $4,877, $48,695 and $52,731 in 2022–24. Asked before the June vote on OEA’s contract whether CTA paid him, Williams called the question “misinformation” and voted yes. None of his four Form 700 statements lists CTA income.14

• A warning overridden. The OEA’s recent contract with OUSD adds $104.8 million in expenses to the school district over three years. The board approved it despite warnings from the county superintendent that the contract “endangers the District’s fiscal stability.”15

• District reserves drained. OUSD’s general fund cash fell from $267.9 million to $167.8 million in 2025–26, leaving $27.7 million locked in required reserves and only $4.2 million free to spend, against $30 million in additional budget cuts the board adopted but has not specified.16

• Fiscal officers out. Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell had steered OUSD to the final payment on its 2003 state loan, and an exit audit found the district running 30 more schools than it could afford. She was expected to bring the board a plan to reduce that number in June 2025.1718 On April 23, 2025, the board majority approved her separation 4–3 in closed session, on Bachelor’s motion, with no public reason given. The principals’ union president told the board members had been warned, “We control the board, we got Kyla fired, we can get you fired.” Brouhard later called the parting mutual. Eight months on, chief business officer Lisa Grant-Dawson recommended a “negative” budget certification. The board majority voted it “qualified,” and superintendent Denise Saddler, a former OEA president, substituted her own budget plan without telling Grant-Dawson. Grant-Dawson resigned two days later, saying she would not lead the district “back in” to receivership.19 The position appears not to have been refilled since.

The reality of OEA’s “student-centered” platform

OUSD spends $28,286 per student, more than any neighbor and among the highest of California’s 345 unified school districts. Yet only 34% of its students met the state English standard and only 27% met the math standard in 2024–25, compared to 49% and 37% statewide. OUSD’s Black and Hispanic students trail their statewide peers in these key academic achievement markers by 12 to 17 points.20

County superintendent Alysse Castro wrote this week that OUSD runs far more schools relative to enrollment than its peers and that “a budget can be balanced but not be good for kids.”21

The East Bay Times editorial board, urging an end to the union’s “chaotic control,” cited the district’s credit rating as one step above “junk” investments.2223

OEA struck in 2019 and 2023 and authorized a third strike in February 2026 before settling on the current contract.24

Whether union influence caused those outcomes is subject to debate. Castro credits the board with doing what it told voters it would do: keep every school open and cut elsewhere. The county says the district’s finances are “materially stronger.”25

On the other hand, the county’s Democratic Party notably declined to endorse the union-backed incumbents, Brouhard and Bachelor.26

What is not debatable on the facts is that OEA and its labor affiliates have had the money, the votes and the time to influence the district’s elected leadership and staff, and OUSD now spends more per student than nearly all of its neighbors and nearly 90% of California’s unified districts, for academic results well below the state average.

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to OEA and the candidates, we offer the following counterpoints for readers to consider.

• OEA’s ongoing stream of funding comes from thousands of members, indicating wide support that could be fairly characterized as “grassroots” in nature.

• OEA’s main political opponent in this election cycle, the advocacy group Empower Oakland, names a Forbes-listed billionaire among its top funders.27

• Williams’ pay is typical of CTA directors, and his vote on the OEA contract was not decisive (the vote was 5–0, out of seven possible votes).

• Johnson-Trammell, the former superintendent was already due to step back in late 2025, and Grant-Dawson’s dispute reportedly was with new superintendent Saddler, not the board.

A special interest by any measure

Unions exist to protect workers and to help them negotiate fair compensation and safe, supportive working conditions.

Teachers are held in high regard for dedicating their professional lives to furthering education and enlightenment.

That said, no organization is immune from the corrosive effects of outsized power, disproportionate wealth, and overwhelming influence over public affairs.

The record shows that powerful and influential organizations — including corporations, local governments, and public employee unions — have at times abused their power.

Public scrutiny, strong oversight and responsible regulation, and commitment to the highest ethical standards are the most reliable safeguards available.

Some organizations have guardrails to check that tendency. Public employee unions have fewer: they bargain with the elected officials they help elect.

By resources, persistence and conduct, OEA and CTA behave as any special interest group does: they accumulate, spend to elect allies — and the allies deliver.

Whether “student-centered” describes the result in Oakland is for each voter to consider and decide for themselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Charlene Price” is an Oakland resident who has extensive interactions with OUSD. The author’s name has been changed to protect their privacy and prevent personal and professional retaliation. Oakland Report has verified the identity of the writer and the accuracy of the facts in this report.

WE ARE 100% SUPPORTED BY YOU

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent, community-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Support our work

Learn more

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we look at a rarely-mentioned provision of Measure EE, the “strong mayor” charter amendment on the November 3 ballot.

Council members could get substantial raises with Measure EE

Oakland city council members currently receive about $148,500 in annual pay and benefits, each.1

Measure EE could raise each council member’s pay and benefits by up to $108,000 per year, if voters approve it on November 3. If council compensation is adjusted to the high end of the city auditor’s estimate, their total pay and benefits would increase to about $256,500 per year.2

Oakland already pays its council more per resident than any big city we examined.3

By comparison, Oakland’s median household income is $97,369 — which does not include benefits, and is household income, not individual income.4

None of the above is mentioned in the Yes on EE campaign’s materials.5

Key findings

• Measure EE could increase city council compensation by an estimated $36,000 to $108,000 more per member — with no upper limit. The city auditor’s estimate covers salary and benefits.

• Oakland already pays its council members the most per resident among other large cities — about 26 cents per resident, higher than San Francisco (21¢), Sacramento (19¢), San Diego (13¢), and Los Angeles (6¢).

• Measure EE sets no specific dollar amount and no upper limit on council member pay. It would direct the city’s Public Ethics Commission (PEC) to reset council pay every two years to match ‘comparable’ full-time California councils — but attaches no dollar amount, and no limit.

• The Yes on EE campaign doesn’t mention that its “strong mayor” measure would also give city council substantial raises. The mayor’s working group praised “market-appropriate” council pay, but offered no specific dollar amounts.6 The Yes on EE website, FAQ, and ballot argument don’t mention the potential pay increase at all, instead focusing on council working “full-time.”

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Oakland already pays its council members more per resident than other large California cities

Oakland Report divided each city’s latest published council salary by its Census population. Each Oakland council member’s current $114,243 annual salary (not including benefits) works out to about 25.8 cents per resident — more than San Francisco (21.2¢), Sacramento (19.2¢), or any other large California city we compared.

Measure EE could take that figure much higher. Converted to base salary, the city auditor’s estimated $36,000 to $108,000 in council pay raises works out to a new total between 32.0 and 44.5 cents of council pay per resident — roughly a quarter to three-quarters more than today, and well above every other city we examined, even at the low end.

There are several factors in this calculation for readers to consider. An Oakland councilmember represents about 55,000 residents, whereas a Los Angeles council member represents about 259,000 residents. However, cities with populations similar to Oakland’s — such as Long Beach (9¢), Fresno (17¢), and Sacramento (19¢) — all pay their councils less per resident.

If Measure EE passes and Oakland council pay is set to the San Diego benchmark — a city the mayor’s working group specifically cited in its final report while discussing council getting “full-time” pay — Oakland’s council pay per resident would be roughly triple San Diego’s rate.

Whether the PEC would go that high is unlikely. Nothing in the measure requires it to choose the top of the market — but nothing prevents it.

The working group showcased the best-paid councils — but named no number

Mayor Barbara Lee’s hand-picked “working group” — many of whose members had political or personal ties to the mayor, as Oakland Report previously reported — designed the measure.7 The group was co-facilitated by the League of Women Voters of Oakland and SPUR.

Its report called for “market-appropriate compensation” for full-time council work, and it specifically cited Los Angeles — the country’s best-paid council — and San Diego as examples. It named no specific dollar figure or limit for Oakland’s council.

Related article:

Why the mayor’s “working group” cited Los Angeles and San Diego — the state’s two best-paid councils — instead of, say, San Jose, Long Beach, or even San Francisco, isn’t clear. The report doesn’t say.

However, it is reasonable to consider the possibility that the working group cited those high-paying cities as a means to gain support from the Oakland council members whose votes were needed in order to place the measure on the ballot.

How the raises would be calculated if Measure EE passes

Under the current charter, the city’s public ethics commission (PEC) adjusts council pay for inflation every two years. Each raise is capped at 5%. Under that formula, council pay grew 81% over 22 years, to the current $114,243.

Measure EE would replace this with a new rule: starting in 2027, the PEC would reset council pay every two years to be “comparable to the salaries of full-time city councilmembers and full-time county supervisors in comparable California cities and counties selected by the Commission.”

How might the PEC choose those comparables? When setting the city attorney’s pay this April, the commission surveyed the four California cities above and the four below Oakland in population: San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, and Long Beach above; Bakersfield, Anaheim, Stockton, and Riverside below.8

Apply that same lens to council pay, and the highest-paid full-time legislative body among those peers is San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, at $175,370. Matching it would raise Oakland council pay about 54% — roughly $228,000 per year with benefits. Every other peer with a published council salary pays less than Oakland does today: Sacramento ($102,793), Fresno ($92,000), and Long Beach ($42,480).

There is also precedent for a bigger jump. In 2022, voters shifted the city attorney’s salary from a council decision to PEC benchmarking (Measure X). The commission’s first benchmarked adjustment, in 2023, raised that salary 26 percent. This year, the PEC raised the city attorney’s pay 5.4%, to $338,291 — and raised the council’s 5.0%, the most its inflation cap allows.

We rely on voluntary donations from readers like you. Donate to support our nonprofit work.

Support our work

More pay, arguably less responsibility

The council member pay raises are a rarely cited section within Measure EE’s proposed “strong mayor” governance restructuring. The measure would concentrate more power in the mayor’s office, and would reduce the council’s authority in several key areas. Opponents cite these provisions and others in the measure when they describe Measure EE as a “power grab.”9

If Measure EE is approved by voters, the mayor would take over the role of hiring, directing, and firing most department heads — currently the role of the city’s top professional executive, the city administrator. (The city administrator currently reports directly to and serves at the pleasure of the mayor.)

The mayor would also gain a veto over most legislation the council adopts — including a line-item veto over the city budget. Overriding the mayor’s veto would require six of eight council votes.10 A mayor with three allies could block most council actions.

On many key decisions — who runs departments, which budget lines survive — the council would shift from deciding to reacting. In exchange, it gains subpoena power and the ability to confirm some, but not all the department heads the mayor selects.

Read this related article:

City council didn’t actually approve Measure EE. Mayor Barbara Lee broke a deadlock to place it on the ballot

The council itself never approved the measure. On June 16, it deadlocked 4–4, and some yes votes came with reservations: for example, council member Charlene Wang voted yes only after her amendments adding checks on the mayor failed. Mayor Lee made a rare appearance at that council meeting and broke the tie herself.11 (Measure EE itself would eliminate that mayoral tie-breaking power, instead giving the mayoraa veto power).

Notably, the Yes on EE campaign says nothing about council pay raises. Its website and FAQ cover accountability and full-time service, and call EE “a government reform, not tax measure” — but never mention council salaries.

The ballot argument in favor of Measure EE, signed by mayor Lee and four co-authors, doesn’t mention council pay, either. The rebuttal argument defending Measure EE says it “Makes Council Service a Full-Time Job.”

The council’s resolution that placed Measure EE on the ballot says the reform “is not intended to automatically increase salaries.” The ballot question tells voters the PEC would set salaries “using similar formulas” — so it does provide a process, but not a number, nor an upper limit.

Other considerations and counterpoints

• Measure EE’s supporters offer a number of points in favor of the measure, which we present here for readers to consider:

• Full-time pay is framed as equity, on the premise that Oaklanders who have relatively less personal wealth or outside income can compete for council seats.

• Nothing is automatic — the PEC, not the council, sets pay in public session.

• The ballot question and city attorney’s analysis both disclose the “full-time” provision and that the PEC would set council salaries according to a new formula.

Conclusion

What the record shows: Measure EE would lift the cap on council pay during a declared fiscal emergency. It would enable potentially significant pay raises to a council already paid more per resident than any big-city peer. The measure was developed by a working group that highlighted the best-paid councils but named no number or upper limit for Oakland’s council before the council was set to vote on whether to place the measure on the ballot. After the measure passed council with the mayor’s tie-breaking vote, the Yes on EE campaign now says nothing about council pay. The facts are in the record. The description of them, mostly, is not.

Share this article

Share

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent, community-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Contribute

Learn more

By GAIL WALLACE and MICHAEL W. WALLACE

Editor’s note: Oakland Report’s charter reform series is exploring Oakland’s city charter and how it potentially could change — a question that Oakland voters are being asked on November’s ballot with Oakland’s Measure EE. We invited Gail Wallace, board member at League of Women Voters of Oakland, and Michael W. Wallace, senior pastor at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church to offer their commentary for our readers to consider. Earlier this week, we published a commentary from Measure EE opponents. Other installments in our charter reform series share counterpoint perspectives from prominent participants in the charter reform debate.

Measure EE would give the mayor clear responsibility for running city government.

“Make it clear who is responsible.” That is the call to action we heard again and again when asking Oaklanders how city government could work better.

For six months, the League of Women Voters of Oakland1 and SPUR2 organized citywide outreach to ask residents how changes to the city’s charter could better define the roles of elected officials, improve city financial planning, and increase government accountability and transparency. More than 1,150 Oaklanders weighed in through public meetings in every city council district and surveys. Current and former city staff and elected officials provided their perspectives in interviews.

Across our city, Oaklanders want services they can count on, clear answers when something goes wrong, and leaders who would take responsibility for fixing problems. People said they are confused about who is in charge. They want city hall to respond faster to urgent concerns on the issues impacting our neighborhoods, including public safety, homelessness and illegal dumping.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

A measure on the ballot on November 3 offers an opportunity to meet those expectations.3 Measure EE would give the mayor clear responsibility for running city government. Just as importantly, it would give the city council stronger tools to review decisions, investigate problems, and hold the executive branch accountable.

Measure EE establishes clear accountability.

Today, Oakland’s system divides executive responsibility between an elected mayor and a non-elected city administrator. Under the current charter, the city administrator holds authority over city operations and department leadership that residents often assume belongs to the mayor they elected to run the city.

Measure EE would reconcile these contradictions, making the mayor the city’s chief executive. This would give an elected leader clear authority to direct and coordinate the work of the city administrator and city departments and make it harder to avoid responsibility when that work falls short. Measure EE makes the mayor — not a non-elected administrator — ultimately accountable to voters for results.

Having clear and explicit lines of authority optimizes conditions for making decisions faster, coordinating responses more effectively, and delivering results more quickly on key challenges such as homelessness, public safety, and illegal dumping.

Consider a neighborhood facing repeated illegal dumping. Removing one pile of trash may address the immediate complaint. Preventing the next pile may require several departments to coordinate cleanup, enforcement and longer-term improvements. Residents should not have to untangle city hall’s organizational chart to find out who is responsible for bringing those departments together.

Measure EE strengthens checks and balances.

Measure EE also recognizes that accountability should not begin and end at the ballot box. That’s why the measure includes important checks and balances, strengthening the city council’s ability to demand information from departments, craft sound policy, investigate concerns, and hold the executive branch accountable.

Measure EE:

• Gives the city council stronger authority to conduct hearings and issue subpoenas when it needs answers from city departments or outside parties.

• Requires council confirmation of key department leaders, including the officials responsible for finance, human resources, public works and transportation. Not every department appointment would require confirmation, but the council would have a formal check on these consequential leadership choices.

• Establishes an independent budget and legislative analyst office to support the council, providing them with independent expertise about city budgets, major proposals, and the likely cost of policy decisions. That would help council members ask better questions, make informed decisions and represent their districts more effectively.

Measure EE preserves council members’ ability to request information and report constituent concerns. Just as importantly, it emphasizes the power to call legislative hearings when patterns of constituent concerns point to more systemic problems or a need to rethink or change how we deliver services.

Measure EE would give the mayor veto power over legislation and budget decisions. But it also gives the eight-member council the power to override that veto with six votes. In other words, the mayor can lead, but the council retains the power to decide when a strong majority achieves consensus.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Measure EE is the kind of accountable, functional and transparent government Oakland deserves.

These are the practical, common-sense tools for better government that a diverse, complex city like Oakland requires. That’s why Measure EE is backed by a broad coalition, from the League of Women Voters of Oakland, SPUR, Bay Area Council, the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, Empower Oakland and Revitalize East Bay to Oakland Rising Action, East Bay Young Democrats, the Alameda County Democratic Party and labor. A wide range of elected leaders are also championing Measure EE, including mayor Barbara Lee, Oakland council president Kevin Jenkins and council member Charlene Wang, state senator Jesse Arreguín and congresswoman Lateefah Simon.

Of course, no government structure can guarantee honest leadership. More authority must be matched by scrutiny, enforcement and robust public participation. But Oaklanders are asking for a government where responsibility is clear and where the tools to demand answers are stronger than they are today. Under Measure EE, an elected mayor will have the authority to manage city operations and the city council will be better equipped to examine executive decisions and represent residents.

That is the kind of accountable, functional and transparent government Oakland deserves. Join us at www.reformoaklandyesonee.com and vote YES on Measure EE.

— Gail Wallace, board member, League on Women Voters of Oakland
— Michael W. Wallace, senior pastor, Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church

Measure EE: Voter Information Guide

319KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Shall the measure to amend Oakland's City Charter to, among other things, (1) make the Mayor the City's chief executive and legislative veto, (2) empower the Council to override vetoes, confirm appointments of certain directors, and appoint an Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst, (3) affirm Councilmembers' right to acquire information from other City officials, (4) require Councilmembers to work full-time, and (5) empower the Public Ethics Commission to set salaries for all City elected officials using similar formulas, be adopted?

Download

Don’t miss a beat.
Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

See these related articles about charter reform:

BECOME A DONATING MEMBER

We rely on our readers’ financial support to continue our work. Your contributions are tax-deductible.

Become a donating member

We are a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit based in beautiful Oakland, California. Our mission is to make truth more accessible to all Oakland residents. Learn more.

Thank you!

BY BEN GOULD

Editor’s note: Oakland Report’s charter reform series is exploring Oakland’s city charter and how it potentially could change — a question that Oakland voters are being asked on November’s ballot with Oakland’s Measure EE. We invited Ben Gould, Oakland Budget Advisory Commission member and organizer of Oakland Residents for Good Government to offer his commentary for our readers to consider. We have invited a commentary from Measure EE supporters as well. Other installments in our charter reform series share counterpoint perspectives from other prominent participants in the charter reform debate.

Measure EE would give sweeping new powers to one person.

Measure EE, the “strong mayor” charter amendment, is presented as a way to fix Oakland’s governance problems. But voters should look carefully at how it proposes to fix those issues, and ask whether it’s really the right solution.

Measure EE would grant the mayor a sweeping array of new powers — ultimately granting them more power than almost any other mayor in California. The mayor would gain the power to hire, oversee, and fire not only the city administrator, but also almost every department director responsible for the delivery of core city services.

The mayor would be responsible for recommending contracts for the council to approve — not city staff. And the mayor would also gain a powerful veto, including budgetary line-item veto power, letting them block most Council actions and even practically rewrite the Council’s adopted budget.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Measure EE opens the door to corruption.

Clearing bureaucratic imbroglio is an admirable goal — but Measure EE would go a step further, and swing the doors of City Hall wide open for corruption.

Just look at the corruption trial of former Mayor Sheng Thao. Federal prosecutors argue that she tried to make a handpicked appointment (Larry Gallegos) to a powerful department role in order to award lucrative city contracts to her political friends and allies.1

Normally, that would be illegal — but not under Measure EE. Measure EE explicitly empowers the mayor to:

1. Appoint department directors, in most cases with no checks or oversight, and

2. Recommend contracts for the City Council to approve.

In fact, Measure EE not only makes this kind of corruption legal — it even empowers the mayor to veto the City Council if they try to award a contract to a non-corrupt bidder.

Measure EE would make City Hall less accountable, not more.

At the same time as Measure EE invites corruption, it would make City Hall less transparent and accountable to the public.

Right now, the City Administrator goes to every Council meeting. Any Councilmember can ask them about how the city is being run, or what the status is of some project or initiative, and expect an answer from the city’s chief executive then and there, on the dais, in public, on live television, and get an answer.

But under Measure EE, the City Administrator wouldn’t have the insight into most departments. They’d only be responsible for Human Resources and Finance — not the Police, Fire, Public Works, Transportation and other city departments people rely on for direct services every day.

Instead, the mayor would be the person who oversees the main city operations — but under Measure EE, the mayor would not be required to attend city council meetings. They wouldn’t have to answer any questions in public if they didn’t want to, and Council — and by extension the public — would have no way to know what’s actually going on inside City Hall.

Accountability means being held to account — to speak to your actions and to face consequences for misconduct. But if the mayor isn’t expected to speak at council meetings, and gets to choose the time and place that they answer questions — and even who asks the questions — is that really accountability?

If the only way to ensure the mayor faces consequences is to hold a multi-million dollar recall election, then the only people who can truly hold a mayor accountable are the ones with millions of dollars to spend in local politics: groups like Revitalize East Bay and the city employee unions like SEIU — not the neighborhoods or local communities.

Ultimately, Measure EE would make City Hall responsive to deep-pocketed wealthy donors, not the community.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Oakland’s district-based system is designed to ensure every community has an equal voice in City Hall.

The intent behind Measure EE is not new. We’ve seen this before. Fifty years ago, we switched from at-large to district-based city council elections specifically in order to ensure that our Black and Brown communities in West and East Oakland would have fair representation in City Hall.

We already know that there are huge turnout disparities in voting today: nearly half of the votes in the Oakland mayor’s race come from North Oakland and the hills (Districts 1 and 4), even though they represent less than one third of Oakland’s residents.2

Measure EE would make City Council almost powerless.

Our district-based system is designed to level the playing field and ensure every community has an equal voice in City Hall.

Measure EE would take that away from us. It would make City Council almost powerless, leaving the Mayor focused on the interests of wealthy donors and the North Oakland residents (predominantly white homeowners) who show up to vote.

We also already tried a “strong mayor” system, in 1998, but voted against extending it just four years later (2002 Measure CC). Jerry Brown’s watered-down amended version was extended in 2004, leaving us with the mess we’re in today.

Mayor Lee will be in office for the next four years — but then what? If Measure EE passes, we’re stuck with this system for all the mayors who come after Barbara Lee, whoever they might be.

There’s another, better way.

Measure EE isn’t the only option for Oakland. Every other Bay Area city, except San Francisco, uses what’s called a “council-manager” form of government, as exemplified in the Model City Charter put forth by the National Civic League.3

Related story:

Under the council-manager form of government, the mayor serves as chair of the Council — as Council President — and the mayor and council together hire and oversee an experienced, professional City Manager who runs the city departments, combining strong and visible political leadership with steady, effective management.

In fact, over 400 cities in California use a council-manager form of government, while just four cities use a so-called “strong mayor” system like Measure EE. Of those four, only one (San Diego) is as flexible and open to corruption as Measure EE.

Even San Francisco has more constraints on the mayor’s power than Measure EE proposes.

City Council didn’t actually approve Measure EE.

That’s why the City Council actually didn’t approve this measure to go on the ballot. Four of the eight Councilmembers — Zac Unger, Janani Ramachandran, Noel Gallo, and Ken Houston — all voted no on placing this measure on the ballot.

In fact, a clear majority of the City Council would have been thrilled to see a council-manager option on the ballot — they just weren’t willing to put something up against the mayor’s own proposal.

Ultimately, the only reason Measure EE is on the ballot at all is because the mayor’s handpicked committee recommended it, the mayor’s staff wrote it, and then the mayor herself cast the tie-breaking vote to put it on the ballot.

Related story:

Measure EE is wrong for Oakland.

It risks corruption, reduces transparency and accountability, and doesn’t reflect our diverse communities.

There’s a better option: in just two years, we can say yes to a responsive, efficient, transparent government managed by experienced professionals, not politicians.

No on EE is endorsed by Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, former Councilmembers Loren Taylor and Nancy Nadel, and many more community members and leaders.4

Join us in saying YES to good government and vote NO on Measure EE. Learn more at www.OaklandNoOnEE.com

— Ben Gould, Budget Advisory Commission Member and Organizer, Oakland Residents for Good Government

Measure EE: Voter Information Guide

319KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Shall the measure to amend Oakland's City Charter to, among other things, (1) make the Mayor the City's chief executive and legislative veto, (2) empower the Council to override vetoes, confirm appointments of certain directors, and appoint an Independent Budget and Legislative Analyst, (3) affirm Councilmembers' right to acquire information from other City officials, (4) require Councilmembers to work full-time, and (5) empower the Public Ethics Commission to set salaries for all City elected officials using similar formulas, be adopted?

Download

The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

See these related articles about charter reform:

BECOME A DONATING MEMBER

We rely on our readers’ financial support to continue our work. Your contributions are tax-deductible.

Become a donating member

We are a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit based in beautiful Oakland, California. Our mission is to make truth more accessible to all Oakland residents. Learn more.

Thank you!

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.

Read all the headlines

1. Reality star Kash (Mackayla Paige) was accidentally killed by her half-sister, police say

Video circulating online appears to show Paige (Kash) fighting with another person near Oakland’s Cave Lounge on October 12. Paige’s half-sister, Vernika Dunbar is seen attempting to pistol-whip the person Paige was fighting with, when the gun appears to go off, shooting Paige. Dunbar was arrested and has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to news reports. Read more…

2. Oakland to unveil “Black Panther Party Boulevard” street name on stretch of Broadway

City council approved a commemorative street name on Broadway between 14th and 17th streets. A ribbon-cutting is to be held today to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding.

Previous honorees include Black Panther co-founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, former Black Panther chairwoman Elaine Brown, music artists Tupac Shakur, Too $hort, D’wayne Wiggins, and Pete and Sheila Escovedo, NBA hall-of-famer Gary Payton, journalist Chauncey Bailey, and martial arts and film star Bruce Lee. Read more…

3. Costco moves closer to opening its first warehouse in Oakland

Newly filed plans reveal a massive store at the former Oakland Army Base site that could bring roughly 400 jobs and millions in tax revenue for the city. The new store would include a gas station and over 900 parking spaces. Read more…

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. Left out: what Oaklandside’s election profiles don’t mention — and who comes out ahead

An analysis The Oaklandside’s candidate profiles — three school board races and the District 2 council race — found that the same things consistently went unreported: the Oakland Educators Association (OEA) teachers union’s role, and the political endorsements and money behind the candidates.

Candidates whom OEA endorsed seemingly came out ahead in Oaklandside’s profiles; the candidate OEA opposes drew the most negative descriptors. For example, OEA’s political action committee had spent about $15,000 to support school board incumbents Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor as of September 19, but this was left out of the profiles.

Oaklandside promised to publish a follow-up story about political donations and endorsements on September 22, but the story still hasn’t run as of October 17 — nearly two weeks after ballots went out. Read more…

5. Oakland city public union votes to strike

Over 2,000 city of Oakland workers in public sector union SEIU Local 1021 have voted overwhelmingly to strike. SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is a major contributor to Oakland political campaigns.

In announcing the strike vote, SEIU cites the city’s “pervasive understaffing, with more than one in five budgeted positions unfilled across the City, unfair bargaining practices during contract negotiations… and a number of proposed cuts to take-home pay, increased benefits costs, and other takeaways.”

Last month, the city struck an agreement with another city union, Oakland Police Officer’s Association (OPOA), in which that union made benefit concessions by agreeing to pay a 10% share of employees’ Kaiser health premiums (the city had previously been paying 100%), and by paying a larger share into their pensions. SEIU’s most recent contracts included no employee payments toward their Kaiser premiums, and the city paying 100%.

Notably, the OPOA contract includes a “me too” clause that would give it the difference if other city unions extract more favorable terms in their contracts. Read more…

Subscribe to Oakland Report. (It’s free.)

Subscribe now

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a free public service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. We review over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.

Go the Newsstand

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Contribute

Learn more

A familiar pattern, continued

Last month, Oakland Report launched a new section dedicated to examining the local media ecosystem’s coverage of civic issues and decision-making that affect Oaklanders’ lives. We began with analyses of how The Oaklandside, which has described itself as the city’s largest newsroom, presents Oakland’s candidates to voters in the current election cycle.1

For the candidate profiles, we began by checking basic facts and data: we counted the words and quotes each candidate received, checked every claim against the public record, traced which hyperlinks and fact-checks appear to support which candidates, and noted what seemingly relevant information was reported and what was not.

The underlying question we tested: does each candidate get the same treatment — the same checking of claims, the same evidence, the same disclosure of who stands behind them?

We have published three analyses so far:

• Oaklandside’s September 22 school board District 2, in which incumbent Jennifer Brouhard is competing with Arielle Fleisher.2

• Its September 24 profile of the city council District 2 race, where incumbent Charlene Wang faces Nate Adams.3

• Its September 28 school board District 4 candidate profiles, a three-way race in which incumbent Mike Hutchinson competes with Kathryn Camp and Sylvia Williams.4

Since then, Oaklandside has published four more stories about the people on the local ballot:

• An October 2 profile of the school board District 6 race, where incumbent Valarie Bachelor is competing against LeAna Powell and Alexandra Williams.5

• An October 1 story on “why so few people are running” for city council and mayor.6

• An October 5 questionnaire in which mayoral and city council candidates answered a fixed set of questions in their own words.7

• An October 9 story on sex trafficking in District 2 and what Wang and Adams would do about it.8

This installment summarizes the findings of our three earlier analyses, applies the same examination to the school board District 6 profile, and looks at the three other stories.

What is a candidate profile?

A candidate profile typically tells a voter who the candidates are, what they have achieved or done, what they stand for, and who stands behind them, among other facts relevant to their candidacies. News organizations employ various approaches and styles for doing this.

The Oaklandside has published four such profiles this fall to date: for the three school board seats and one contested city council seat (District 2), all of which are on the November ballot.9101112

We first analyzed each one by counting words and quotes, checking facts against the record, and tracing what was reported and what was not. We also looked at the descriptive words the profiles’ authors attached to the facts reported, and how those descriptive words may affect some readers’ interpretations of those facts.

The four profiles were mostly accurate on the facts they include. However, a pattern is evident in what they left out. In all four profiles, it was the same three things:

1. The role of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) teachers union’s role in the race

2. The endorsements and money behind some candidates

3. The incumbent’s actual votes on issues that are mentioned or seem relevant to the profiles, or their specific explanations for those votes.

And in each of the three profiles in which OEA has endorsed a candidate, the candidate who appears to come out ahead is the one aligned with OEA and the East Bay chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — whether that candidate is the incumbent or the challenger. In the fourth, the candidate OEA opposes got the negative descriptors.

Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization — the same IRS nonprofit category as The Oaklandside. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted elsewhere — and let our readers decide for themselves what to think about it. Learn more

Four profiles, one pattern

In each of the four profiles, the OEA teachers union’s role, the relevant political endorsements, and the political donations were incomplete or went unreported entirely — and in each case, the treatment appeared to favor the union-aligned candidate or disfavor the union-opposed one.

District 2 school board (September 22). Incumbent Jennifer Brouhard got 59 percent of the space. The profile omitted relevant details of a Stanford study and state law, both in her apparent favor. It noted the board’s recent contract settlement with OEA, but did not mention that OEA endorses, canvasses for and donates campaign funding to Brouhard. It also did not mention that she served three terms on OEA’s executive board, or that now as board president she votes on OEA’s contract concerning its members’ pay and benefits.13 These omissions are notable on their own. They arguably are more notable when compared to the details about another candidate’s charter school connections that were highlighted in the later District 6 profile (see below).

District 2 city council (September 24). In this profile, the union-backed candidate was the challenger, Nate Adams, not the incumbent Charlene Wang — and the profile’s treatment of the candidates appeared to follow that twist. The incumbent’s public safety-related visit to a shop on International Boulevard was flagged as her campaign’s choice of location and rebutted with crime data. The challenger’s profile followed his supporters on a campaign canvassing expedition, which wasn’t flagged in a similar manner, and his claims were not tested with the same level of rigor. Outside evidence links in the profile ran eight to one in his favor, and his OEA endorsement was never mentioned.14

District 4 school board (September 28). OEA endorsed no one in this race. But it opposes the incumbent, Mike Hutchinson. Every unflattering sentence in the profile was about him. Facts provided were accurate, for example about board votes he abstained from or opposed, but without including his specific stated reasons for taking the actions he did (these were generalized in the profile). A challenger’s 20 years in administration, human resources and financial services, her UC Berkeley honors degree and Goldman School master’s — all of which are relevant qualifications for a school board seat — were reduced in the headline to “parent.”15

District 6 school board (October 2). This profile asked whether a charter school teacher could serve on the board (OEA opposes charter schools). It did not ask whether the OEA-backed incumbent, Valarie Bachelor, could cast a fair and impartial vote on OEA’s contract — even though, as the profile noted, the board would decide on her opponent's employer, a charter school, four days later. (It approved the renewal on Oct. 6.) Bachelor’s vote for 400-plus layoffs was not mentioned; the harm from those layoffs was reported in the challenger’s section, despite the fact that she was not on the board and thus had no vote on the layoffs.16

The amount of space given to the various candidates in each profile was reasonably even. In District 4 and District 6, the three candidates got nearly equal words. But within those reasonably equivalent numbers of words, there were differences in which claims got checked, which records were compressed or generalized, and what relevant information was left out entirely.

Share this story.

Share

Endorsements and political donations are influencing campaigns, but a promised story about them hasn’t been published yet — a week after ballots were mailed

The first profile, published on September 22, ended with a promise: a story on “who’s funding the school board campaigns — and who’s endorsing who.”17 The District 4 profile on September 28 repeated the promise.18 The District 6 profile on October 2 dropped it.19

Alameda County mailed ballots on Oct. 5.20 As of October 11, the promised story has not been published.

Substantial political donations and endorsements have already been made, influencing all four campaigns and voters’ perceptions of the candidates — and detailed information about this is readily available online.

According to political finance disclosures, OEA's political committee had spent about $15,000 on the school board races by Sept. 19: around $5,700 in independent expenditures and $1,800 in direct contributions for each of Brouhard and Bachelor, the two incumbents OEA backs.21

Empower Oakland, the political advocacy group specifically mentioned in the profiles, gave $8,000 spread across four challengers and Hutchinson. Oakland Parents for Quality Education gave $900 each to Fleisher and Alexandra Williams.22

The county Democratic Party made no endorsement in the two races with OEA-backed incumbents, Brouhard’s and Bachelor’s, after no candidate reached its 60 percent threshold, and endorsed Kathryn Camp over the OEA-opposed Hutchinson in District 4 — this is relevant information, but the profiles did not mention it.23

Bachelor had raised $49,823 as of October 7, more than both of her challengers combined; in District 2, challenger Arielle Fleisher had raised the most of any school board candidate, $55,482, through Sept. 19. This, too, was not mentioned in the profiles.24

The closest Oaklandside came was an October 5 roundup of outside groups’ voter guides and endorsements25 and one sentence, in an October 1 story about why so few people are running for City Council and mayor: OEA “has spent thousands independently backing two of the incumbents.”26 “Thousands” is accurate, but that could be read by different readers to mean widely different actual amounts: $2,000 is very different from, say, $15,000.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Three more stories, the same apparent direction

“Why are so few people running” (October 1). The story is sourced largely to progressive voices — Oakland Rising Action, the Wellstone club, the firefighters union — with Empower Oakland and its allies in a section headed “Groups that supported the recalls say the incumbents are all right.” It lists Empower’s donations candidate by candidate. OEA’s spending gets the one sentence above, with no number. And its lead expert on why people don’t run, Pecolia Manigo, is identified as a 2022 school board candidate. She was the OEA-backed candidate who ran against Hutchinson in that election.27

The candidate questionnaire (October 5). Candidates answered in their own words, which arguably is the fairest format in common use. The questions are another matter. On Flock Safety (the controversial automated license plate readers), the premise reads: “Across the country, both liberal and conservative leaders are terminating contracts with Flock Safety.” True — an advocacy group counted 214 jurisdictions that had dropped Flock since 2021 as of late August.28 Flock says more than 6,000 communities use it and that its new city contracts in 2026 have outpaced non-renewals roughly ten to one. No countervailing premise, such as Flock’s own figures, is offered.

The District 2 sex trafficking story. (October 9). On its own, this arguably is Oaklandside’s most balanced piece about a candidate during the current election season. It supplied what the September 24 profile left out: that the 2023 street barriers produced “night and day” results, that the activity returned after the pilot ended, and that it has largely disappeared from the blocks where the new barriers were installed. But again, it appeared to move elsewhere. It also described Wang's budget amendment funding the police vice unit.29 However, it ran four days after ballots went out, and two weeks after Oaklandside’s candidate profiles that checked Wang’s claims far more rigorously than it checked challenger Nate Adams’ claims. To date there has been no follow-up story that checks Adams’ claims with the rigor and focus that this sex trafficking piece does.

Who appears to have come out ahead

In summary:

• District 2 school board profile: the OEA-backed incumbent appeared to come out ahead.

• District 2 city council profile: the OEA-backed challenger appeared to come out ahead.

• District 4 school board profile: the candidate OEA opposes got the negative descriptors.

• District 6 school board profiles: the OEA-backed incumbent was not asked (or if asked, her response, if any, was not published) the conflict-of-interest question her opponent was asked.

The political endorsements and donations that would let a voter see these influences and judge for themselves were not meaningfully noted in the context of the profiles, and a promised follow-up article about those influences has not been published yet.

Related stories:

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to The Oaklandside and the candidates, we present these without further rebuttal:

• The profiles are accurate on the facts they include. We found two minor factual misstatements among the four profiles, both in the first one.

• Space and quotations were roughly equal in the two three-way races, and challengers were given some warm personal descriptors.

• The District 6 profile disclosed Bachelor’s labor background — the first such disclosure among the four profiles (Oaklandside’s August candidate list had also noted it).

• The sex trafficking story, though late, supplied real evidence on a disputed question and included Wang’s rebuttal of her challenger.

• The questionnaire gave every candidate the same questions and printed answers unedited.

• A newsroom covering four races in two weeks has limits; it is implausible to include every detail someone, somewhere may deem relevant. A promised future story can be delayed or dropped for a variety of valid reasons, and it is the publication’s prerogative whether to publish a story or not.

Conclusion

We examined four profiles and found four omissions that all appear to favor the same side. None of these omissions are dramatically significant in isolation of each other: a union’s role left out here, a vote left out there, a résumé trimmed to a label, a promised story on relevant information that arrives after ballots are mailed. Taken in isolation, each one has a plausible and innocent explanation. But taken together, they appear to lead in the same direction.

Whether that apparent direction reflects a view or a habit is not for Oakland Report to decide. What our analyses do indicate is this: the facts that would let a reader judge for themselves — who the relevant backers of every candidate are, what political endorsements and donations are influencing every campaign, and how the candidates’ claims fare against rigorous fact-checks — are incomplete or absent. The ballots are out and votes are being cast. The full story is not.

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Contribute

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.

Read all the headlines

1. BART’s “manufactured” crisis: East Bay Times says voters should reject regional transit tax.

If the Measure RTM transit tax is approved by Bay Area voters, Oaklanders would pay higher sales taxes for the next 14 years. The editorial notes that BART serves around half the passengers it did before the pandemic, but it keeps running the same number of trains and its expenses remain the same. It also asserts that Measure RTM is a regressive sales tax at a time when many Bay Area residents struggle to make ends meet. East Bay Times says Measure RTM is “disrespectful” to voters and people “should not be asked to pay more taxes to those agencies that fail to maturely manage their budgets.” Read more

2. From potholes to storm drains, Oakland is far behind on maintaining basic infrastructure

🎥 The city of Oakland released a report in September 2026 that says up to 40% of its underground stormwater drainage systems are failing and require replacements or upgrades. The report says that a full citywide rehabilitation would cost $3.6 billion and “take at least 70 to 8 years to complete.” Recent public relations moves by the city suggest that it plans to use the report to ask voters to approve more fees through a potential future ballot measure — not to reflect on its own decades-long failure to maintain these systems. The city’s recent talking points in local media and elsewhere suggest that it intends to highlight the disproportionate impact of the deferred maintenance on Oakland’s poorest neighborhoods. It remains to been whether the city will reflect on the inequities the city itself created through decades of deprioritizing basic maintenance. Maintaining a safe and reliable infrastructure is a core service of the local government, which collects property taxes and other taxes on the premise that residents and businesses benefit from this service. If recent news reports are any guide, the city seems poised to use its own failures as a campaign talking point to extract more taxes from its already overburdened citizenry. Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

3. Oakland liquor store operator Go-Gos to jail for selling drugs in his shop

🎥 An Oakland liquor store operator was arrested for selling drugs from hidden compartments in the store. Go Go Amigo Market at 992 105th Avenue was previously the scene of two homicides, and was raided in July for selling drugs and possessing a gun with no serial number. According to news reports, they are accused of selling opioids like Oxycodone in their store — a neighborhood mini-grocer that also sells food and other items to neighborhood residents. Some commenters on social media sympathized with the arrestee, saying that they were just trying to make ends meet, and the police were harassing them. Others shared comments that the store had been engaged in this activity for years, and were glad to see the effort to curtail it. Read more

4. Judge denies Sheng Thao co-defendant’s request to see informant’s tax returns

The request was made by defense attorneys for David Duong, owner of California Waste Solutions. Duong’s lawyers argued that documents seized through a search warrant served on informant Mario Juarez included Juarez’s tax returns. (Juarez also was charged with bribery conspiracy in the case but has pleaded guilty and is testifying for the prosecution.) Prosecutors argued that the defense’s motion, “would allow the defense to dictate the government’s search warrants” and, “would violate the Fourth Amendment.” David Duong is charged with bribery and conspiracy in an alleged scheme to funnel money to former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, including a no-show job for Thao’s partner Andre Jones, in exchange for Thao steering lucrative city contracts to Duong’s business. Thao, Jones, Duong and his son Andy Duong are set to stand trial later this month. All four have pleaded not guilty. Read more

5. Oakland mayor Barbara Lee on the hot seat as city unions picket her speech and threaten to strike

🎥 Public sector unions IFPTE Local 21 and SEIU Local 21 picketed outside the mayor’s state of the city speech amid contentious negotiations over the unions’ contracts. “We’re working hard on everything that you need to make the quality of life that you deserve real, okay? So we’re working day and night, myself, the city council, and we’re gonna continue until we get a fair contract for you,” mayor Lee said to the picketing workers as she entered city hall. The city is grappling with projected $100+ million budget shortfalls in each of the next five years. The unions say they are preparing to hold a strike authorization vote later this month; they last went on strike in 2017, which lasted a week. Read more

Subscribe to Oakland Report. (It’s free.)

Subscribe now

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a free public service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. We review over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.

Go the Newsstand

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Contribute

Learn more

Oakland Report is taking a closer look at the people who step up when the city’s capabilities falter. In this installment, we review Friends of Sausal Creek’s 30 years of service — and the city’s unfulfilled parks tax promise that was meant to make its work less necessary.

Planted 30 years ago: community stewardship helped bring Sausal Creek back to life

Sausal Creek’s ebbing and flowing waters cascade down the Oakland hills and through Dimond Canyon, where vegetation and greenery spring forth in verdant patches. Trees tower overhead, sunlight fracturing through their branching arms and bright leaves. The roots of mature oaks and maples planted decades ago, and California poppies and asters planted just last season, reach deeper into the soil with each passing year, thriving in this watershed’s ecosystem.

In a few places, bare patches of dirt, seemingly empty and devoid of life, are harbingers of new life to come — awaiting the seeds carefully planted there to sprout and flourish.

Oakland’s Sausal Creek didn’t always look this way. Back in 1996, the area was overgrown with invasive species, crowding the ecosystem and sapping nutrients from the native flora. The creek was dried up in certain places, and some of its twists and turns undermined and conflicted with the urban infrastructure built to channel it in days gone by.

That year, 1996, Michael Thilgen got a message from his friend Kathy Kramer, then executive director of the Aquatic Outreach Institute, about starting a watershed awareness group.1

Around 40 people came to the first meeting. “It was clear that there was a common sense of commitment,” Thilgen said.

With support from the City of Oakland, the Aquatic Outreach Institute and the county flood control district, the group adopted a neglected stretch of the creek.2 Friends of Sausal Creek (FOSC) incorporated as a nonprofit in 2001.

Today, thirty years since that fateful meeting, that seed has grown to become a mature and remarkably successful community-based organization.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Key facts

• FOSC stewards about 140 acres of the 2,600-acre watershed. It reported over 2,800 volunteer visits and over 8,000 service hours across more than 20 restoration sites in fiscal year 2025.3

• The city promised voters the Measure Q parcel tax (2020) would add to, not replace, existing park maintenance spending. The city had collected $82.5 million from the tax by June 2023, but left $22 million unspent — and it used a loophole in the measure’s language to evade its promised minimum spending on parks maintenance in June 2023, June 2025 and June 2026.45678

• FOSC’s revenue roughly doubled between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. It reported $533,000 in fiscal year 2025 revenue; most of its revenue that year (57 percent) came from government grants — mostly from the state, not the city.9

Community-led restoration, one patch at a time

FOSC’s main work is removing species deemed invasive, replanting species deemed native, and promoting biodiverse zones to support wildlife and help keep the creek’s water clean.

FOSC has monitored the creek’s water quality monthly for more than 15 years, adding to our understanding of the watershed’s health over time.

Sausal Creek is home to a population of genetically wild rainbow trout.10

FOSC’s work is undertaken in the context (and some would say the aftermath) of a long history of channeling and urbanization. Nearly half of Sausal Creek now flows through culverts beneath city streets as it makes its way from the Oakland hills to San Francisco Bay.

In the creek’s modern era, larger-scale improvement projects along the watershed typically have been carried out with government partners.

In 2001, with the city, FOSC restored two acres of riparian habitat in lower Dimond Canyon, reporting a nearly 50 percent gain in native species cover.11

In 2016, FOSC, the city and the county flood control district removed more than 250 feet of culvert and concrete spillway below Wellington Street in Dimond Park, widening a buried section of the creek and replanting it with native flora. Of the roughly $4 million cost of the work, about $2.4 million came from the 2002 Measure DD tax.12

The current flagship effort is a three-year restoration of 50 acres of redwood forest at the headwaters, building on earlier work at Fern Ravine in Joaquin Miller Park.

Major projects like these “mostly are initiated by the city,” Thilgen said; FOSC “comes along toward the end to do the planting.”

FOSC executive director Nicki Alexander said about 57 percent of FOSC’s 2025 revenue came from government grants, chiefly state agencies; 32 percent from individual donors; and the rest from program services such as corporate work days, foundations and other sources.

The city’s capacity “ebbs and flows, and definitely has waned recently”

Because the city of Oakland owns the parkland, FOSC operates under Oakland’s Adopt-A-Spot program. FOSC restoration manager Noé Romo Loera said the nonprofit has adopted about 140 acres of the roughly 2,500-acre watershed; much of the rest is private yards. City tree crews remove large non-native trees pro bono, and the city writes letters of support for grants.

“The reality is that the city of Oakland is strapped for both finance and time,” Loera said, and the permitting system treats a native planting project with the same scrutiny as a developer building a house beside the creek. When split-rail fencing FOSC installed in Joaquin Miller Park was cut down twice, there was no one to call: the city has no park rangers, Loera said, and the police have “bigger fish to fry.”

“Historically, the city has been very supportive because we are filling in those gaps,” communications and outreach coordinator Eliana Thompson said. “But their capacity ebbs and flows, and definitely has waned recently.”

Share this story with someone you know.

Share

The parks tax voters approved — and the promise city council keeps suspending

Oakland voters were promised the gap would close. On March 3, 2020, voters approved Measure Q, a 20-year parcel tax of $148 per single-family parcel, with 64 percent of revenue dedicated to parks maintenance and recreation.13

Measure Q requires the city to maintain its existing park maintenance spending so the new money will add to, not replace, existing funds. However, the measure included a loophole that enables the city council to suspend that requirement by declaring “extreme fiscal necessity” — which it has done, repeatedly.

In June 2023, June 2025 and again in June 2026, the Council declared a state of “extreme fiscal necessity” and temporarily suspended Measure Q’s park maintenance requirement in its budget. Staff estimated that fully honoring the measure’s maintenance-of-effort and minimum funding requirements would cost about $33.9 million in fiscal year 2026–27.14

The city continued to collect the Measure Q tax money from Oaklanders while evading some of the requirements voters were promised. A total of $82.5 million in new taxes had been collected by June 30, 2023. In December 2023, a performance audit found the funds were spent within the measure’s rules but were under spent, leaving a $22 million balance — and that the city had set no baseline for park conditions.

(Note: The city faced a roughly $265 million two-year deficit in 2025.15 The 2023 city auditor’s report found the money was spent within the rules, including the invocation of the “extreme fiscal necessity” loophole — concluding that the Measure Q funds were underspent, but not misspent.16)

The tax is still collected, but the floor beneath it — the city’s own parks spending — is no longer guaranteed. It is reasonable to consider the possibility that some of what FOSC’s volunteers do in Dimond Canyon is work the city would otherwise be obligated to fund.

The situation in another park across town provides an instructive contrast. Tyrone Carney Park, a half-acre park in East Oakland’s Sobrante Park neighborhood, was fenced off in 2002 after drug activity and shootings. The park remained closed for 24 years. It finally reopened to fanfare on Aug. 29, 2026, after a $3.5 million renovation.1718

The city of Oakland appears to lack the capability to fully support its own parks for various reasons — including its budget, priorities, and policy decisions that span decades.

The practical result is that the city left one park offline and inaccessible for a generation, while another one flourished largely through help from an organized group of Oaklanders who took it on themselves to weed, plant, and help improve it.19

It does not escape notice that the neighborhoods around both these parks are subject to the same city taxes, including property taxes, parcel taxes, and fees.

Working within the urban fabric: why outreach matters

Public reception to park improvements and other changes is not always positive. Large-scale removal of species deemed invasive can be jarring, Loera and Alexander said: a green hillside is not necessarily a healthy one. In 2011, the creek daylighting project’s planned removal of 84 trees in Dimond Park, including 22 redwoods, drew a petition of more than 600 signatures objecting to the tree removals, and much of the backlash landed on FOSC.20

Hence the outreach: free monthly walk-and-talks, signage at planting areas and a K-12 program that reached nearly 2,000 students in fiscal 2025. Thilgen described homeowners along the creek now planting native flora in their own gardens, reducing the potential for seeds from flora deemed invasive to wash into the watershed and encroach again. The engagement appears to be compounding: Alexander said that in 2018, 25 or 30 people at a work day was a big win; last year’s Creek to Bay Day event drew 200.

The increased level of engagement with the community, according to Thompson, helps propel FOSC’s efforts forward and allows the organization to grow and be successful. Thompson and Thilgen credit FOSC’s increasing volunteer base to the visible signs that Sausal Creek, Dimond Canyon, and Dimond Park are well-loved and taken care of. This reinforces a positive cycle, as the improving health and beauty of these spaces, which are largely due to the efforts of the community, seems to then directly increase community participation.

Even if the change may be difficult and uncomfortable, Alexander said it’s ultimately not for FOSC or any one individual, but the community that it brings together.

Making a difference, little by little

The ongoing restoration of Sausal Creek is not the work of one day, one year, or even 30 years. There will always be another weed that resprouts, another blockage to dislodge, more invasive ivy to untangle. Thompson said that isn’t something to be cynical about.

“The city might not have the capacity, but you do have a couple hours to spend every week. And a lot of restoration work is weeding, and anybody can do that. And, the best part is, you’ll begin to see a really wonderful community form.”

— Eliana Thompson, communications and outreach coordinator, Friends of Sausal Creek

That the city’s capabilities have ebbed is a fact; that the volunteers are still flowing in after 30 years is a fact too. Whether the parks tax ever delivers the baseline city capabilities and park maintenance voters were promised is a question for the city’s next budget cycle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phoebe Vo is a second-year student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a reporter for the Daily Californian. She has five years of experience in journalism and plans to continue covering issues important to the Bay Area. Phoebe first joined Oakland Report through its inaugural summer internship program, and is continuing as a freelance contributor.

DONATE TO SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. Your donation in any amount helps us continue to produce stories like this one.

Donate

Learn more

Public sector unions IFPTE Local 21 and SEIU Local 1021 announced plans to picket mayor Barbara Lee’s state of the city speech today, October 6. The two unions, which represent the city’s technical and service workers, have been locked in contentious contract negotiations with the city for months.

The unions recently held “strike school” sessions to train city workers for a potential strike action.

The city is facing over $100 million in structural budget deficits through the end of the decade. The two unions argue that 1 in 5 city jobs remain unfilled. The unions are largely funded by city workers’ dues withheld from their city paychecks.

Notably, IFPTE Local 21 also represents some employees assigned to the mayor's and city council members’ offices, though their labor contract excludes them from a number of standard provisions.

The unions’ demands, the city’s reported offers, and the finances

IFPTE Local 21 represents the city’s professional and technical employees including engineers, inspectors, and planners. SEIU Local 1021 represents clerical and front-line service staff. Their combined membership in Oakland includes around 3,100 city employees.

Since bargaining opened, the unions have pressed five demands in bulletins, rallies, and public comment:

• Cost-of-living raises.

• Withdrawal of the city’s proposed benefit concessions (such as health premiums, the cost of which the city currently pays 100%).

• Continued work-from-home, which IFPTE characterizes as a no-cost benefit.

• Filling vacant positions (the city’s vacancy rate is currently around 20%).

• Converting some sworn police desk assignments to civilian jobs.

On that last demand, a May 2025 union-commissioned report identified 38 such positions.12

Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is elsewhere overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted — and let our readers decide what to think about it. Learn more

Where negotiations stand

The contracts for SEIU, IFPTE, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1245, and the Confidential Management Employees Association (CMEA) expired June 30, 2026.

The city has been in negotiations with those unions for months. The city council has the final authority to approve or reject proposed contracts, and has met in closed session multiple times to discuss the negotiations. The negotiations themselves are led on the city side by unrepresented executive and confidential city staff.

The city has not publicly disclosed its bargaining positions, so most of what has been publicly said about them comes from union bulletins.

By SEIU’s telling, the city’s opening position in May was to request that the employees begin paying more for medical coverage immediately, with further increases in 2027; and to contribute an additional 1% of their pay toward pensions, with no additional cost-of-living raises in this round.3

On September 23, the union called the city’s revised offer “bogus.” It described the offer as 7% pay increases over three years, plus bonuses the union described as not guaranteed and non-pensionable.

SEIU posted a strike-vote schedule on October 1. We could find no announcement of a strike date as of this writing.

We also we could find no public record of an impasse declaration, state mediation, fact-finding, or an unfair labor practice charge before the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in this round of bargaining.

California’s public-sector rules generally require impasse procedures to run their course before a lawful economic strike, unless a union alleges unfair labor practices — the route these unions took before the roughly week-long December 2017 strike, which then-mayor Libby Schaaf called unlawful.4

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

A decade of raises

Since the 2017 strike, the civilian unions have received across-the-board raises that total roughly 28% (about 31% compounded), excluding step increases, equity adjustments, and bonuses which raised pay further for specific job classifications. Much of it came with the 14% increases in their 2022–25 contracts.

The one-year 2025-26 contract extensions which expired on June 30 paid one-time bonuses of $3,000 for full-time and $2,500 for permanent part-time workers — about $10.2 million in total — instead of a base raise.

It also included contingent “triggered” raises of 0.05% for each $150,000 of General Purpose Fund revenue the city received in fiscal year 2025-26 above a $787.7 million projection, capped at 3%. Whether these additional raises will be triggered is to be settled after a year-end audit, which the city says will be released in December 2026.5

SEIU has stated that members received no raise in the contract's final year. The “trigger” had not fired as of the city’s third quarter revenue report, and the city has not yet published its year-end 2025-26 financial report. Thus no final determination has been made yet.

Oakland Report previously found that average total compensation per city employee grew 79% over ten years (a figure that covers all employees, including police and fire overtime and benefits, and should not be read as civilian base-pay growth).6

Related story:

How the police and fire contracts compare

The city council approved a new Oakland Police Officers’ Association (OPOA) contract on September 15, with council member Carroll Fife casting the lone no vote. Its terms run from July 2026 through June 2031, and include:

• Raises totaling 14% in nine steps.

• Longevity pay of up to 15% of base for officers with 20 or more years of service.

• The city’s share of the cost of employees’ Kaiser premiums stepping down from 100% to 90% by January 2030.

• Officer pension contributions rising from 12% to 15% of pay by July 2030.

• A “me-too” clause that gives the police union the same increases that other unions may later negotiate, if those other unions’ increases are greater.

A staff report from the city human resources director estimated the agreement’s net five-year cost to the city at $72.1 million, reaching about $29 million a year by 2031, but not accounting for medical cost inflation.

Related story:

The OPOA MOU covering December 2018 through June 2024 set out and recited every across-the-board increase officers received back to July 2015.7

Compounded from July 2017, police base pay rose about 29.9% through FY 2025–26, compared to about 31.6% for the “civilian” units like IFPTE and SEIU. So, over a decade there have been comparable raises, with the civilian units slightly “ahead.”

The fire union’s decade also is documented, and it is comparable to the police union’s compensation increases. After a 14-month dispute that went to arbitration, an arbitrator’s January 2019 award set IAFF Local 55’s 2017–20 contract in a package the city described as “up to 8%” over three years.8

The current fire MOU, as extended in 2022, then delivered 2.5% (Jan. 2021), 1.5% (Jul. 2021), 2% (Jan. 2022), 3.5% (Jul. 2022), 3.5% (Jul. 2023), 3% (Jul. 2024), and 3% (Jul. 2025).

Compounded from July 2017, that is about +29.2% — within a point of police — or +30.5% if the contingent raise ultimately is “triggered” when the city’s fourth quarter financial report is released around end of this calendar year.

The firefighters contract expired the same day as the civilian units: June 30, 2026. The firefighters union is among the unions named in the police contract’s “me too” clause.

The recently approved police contract compounds to about 14.9% more by mid-2031 — roughly 2.8% per year, back-loaded, and paired with the health and pension concessions described above. The city’s reported civilian offer — 7% over three years, about 2.3% per year — tracks the police trajectory through mid-2029, assuming no future additional concessions in either direction.

The OPOA agreement’s “me too” clause entitles officers to match any better terms a civilian union may negotiate before 2031, so any civilian settlement would also reprice the police contract — which narrows the city’s financial room to maneuver. The implementing salary ordinance returns to council for final passage today, the day of the mayor’s speech.

The budget backdrop

Whatever is agreed in the civilian contracts currently under dispute must fit a budget that, by the city’s own forecast, is struggling with a nine-figure structural gap.

The city finance department’s five-year forecast projects annual General Purpose Fund deficits of roughly $115 million to nearly $130 million through fiscal year 2029–30.

The city’s fiscal year 2025–27 budget closed a $265 million two-year gap in part by assuming a new parcel tax. As placed on the June ballot (with significant financial and political support from SEIU, IFPTE, and the firefighters union), Measure E would have raised about $34 million a year. Voters rejected it.

The city’s midcycle budget then was approved by city council on a 6–2 vote with no layoffs. It leaned on one-time money,9 cut the police budget from about $410 million to $375 million,10 and declared “extreme fiscal necessity” for the fourth consecutive year to unlock restricted funds.11

Credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the city’s general-obligation rating to Aa2 with a “negative” outlook in December 2024. Another rating agency, S&P cut its rating two notches to AA− in February 2025. Both agencies affirmed those ratings in October 2025.12

Personnel costs are the city’s largest expense category. Each percentage point of across-the-board raises weighs directly on the structural gap, and can affect the city’s credit ratings.

Other considerations and caveats

Several of the figures above come with caveats.

• The terms of the city’s offers come from union bulletins; the city has not confirmed them.

• The fiscal year 2025–26 “triggered” raise remains unresolved: a reported third-quarter projection of a roughly $32 million surplus does not by itself satisfy the revenue test, and the determination awaits the city’s year-end financial report.

• The cumulative raise totals are our own calculation from MOU terms — they exclude steps and equity adjustments, which raised pay more for some classifications, and the deficit figures are projections, not actuals.

• The decade comparison in Figure 3 is indexed to June 30, 2017 because that is the earliest date from which both units’ raises are documented. OPOA’s ‘equity adjustment’ steps applied unit-wide to base salary and are therefore included, while classification-specific equity adjustments — civilian and the 2021 Engineer-of-Fire raise — are excluded.

• The civilian 6% raise over fiscal years 2019–21 is drawn as a ramp because its step dates were not located.

What the record supports is a this: civilian workers absorbed a year without a guaranteed base raise while police secured a five-year deal with larger annual increases — while also making significant benefit concessions the civilian units have yet to make.

The city faces nine-figure annual gaps that any civilian union settlement, through the police contract’s “me too” clause, would compound.

It stands to reason that the civilian unions’ planned picketing at mayor Barbara Lee’s state of the city speech today is aimed at exactly that tension.

Editors’ note: After publication, a sentence was added to this article noting that IFPTE Local 21’s contract also covers some employees assigned to the mayor’s and city council members’ offices. Our thanks to an alert reader who brought this to our attention.

SUPPORT OUR WORK

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. We present the facts and let the reader decide.

Support our work

Editors’ note: This article was originally posted by Oakland resident Rajni Mandal on her Substack page. Oakland Report is republishing it with Mandal’s permission for our readers to consider. Subscribe to Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates to receive her articles directly.

Oakland is repairing far more potholes than it did just a few years ago

Potholes are a perennial problem for most Oaklanders. Oakland’s 311 system (Oak311) provides residents with a way to report potholes, creating a documented service request that the city can use to track and address the problem.1

City records show that Oakland is repairing far more potholes than it did just a few years ago.2 The city reported repairing more than 58,000 potholes in fiscal year 2024–25, more than three times as many as in 2021–22.

Yet that increase in repair activity isn’t readily apparent in the 311 data. Oak311 receives thousands of pothole requests each year, and many requests remain open — including requests filed over a year ago.

So how can we reconcile what the city reports repairing with what residents see in 311, and what does that mean for a resident reporting a pothole?

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Oakland is fixing far more potholes than 311 requests

City reports show a significant increase in annual pothole repairs beginning in 2022, from about 14,000 a year to more than 58,000. Oak311 requests are a fraction of that figure, generally ranging from about 2,100 to more than 4,000 per year.

The figures are not equivalent. A resident can report a location with multiple potholes, crews can repair additional defects they encounter while working in an area, and one deteriorating section of roadway may need repeated patches over time.

Oakland has become substantially faster at closing pothole requests. Among “closed” requests filed in 2024, the median time to closure was 319 days. For requests filed in 2025, it fell to 68 days, and for requests filed through July 2026 it was 28 days.

But faster closure times among closed requests tell only part of the story. Of the 2,905 pothole requests filed in 2025, 1,354 were listed as “closed,” while another 1,030 remained “open.”

A source of ambiguity is what an “open” request actually means. During a 2024 meeting of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission (BPAC) Policy and Legislative Committee, participants discussed how some pothole requests remained open even after a location had been patched, while other requests were reportedly closed even though the physical problem remained.34 They also discussed locations that had received repeated patches because the underlying pavement continued to fail. This discussion illustrated how for a resident looking at an old 311 request, those distinctions are largely invisible.

Sometimes the pothole is only part of the problem

Oakland’s poor pavement condition is not a new finding. A 2024 analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle put Oakland’s pavement condition in the “at risk” category,5 while a more recent Oakland pavement assessment placed the city’s overall network at “fair.”6

The 311 data shows a strong relationship between pavement condition and pothole reports. Residents reported potholes at more than three times the rate per road mile on Oakland’s most deteriorated streets compared with streets in relatively good condition.

But at some point, patching individual potholes is no longer enough. An OakDOT paving official explained the distinction during an October 2024 BPAC meeting:7

“You do get to a point where there’s enough potholes in a particular location that you’re just like, it’s like with your tooth, right? You’re not going to do two fillings where there’s one cavity. You go, okay, I gotta replace this whole thing now… I think the challenge is prioritizing that citywide.”

— Sara Fine, OakDOT paving program manager, Oct. 17, 2024

Oakland operates a separate multi-year paving program for that larger work. The current Five-Year Paving Plan covers 2022–27, with streets prioritized based on factors including pavement condition, equity and safety.8

Open pothole requests filed from January 2024 through April 2026 were compared with Oakland’s pavement data and paving projects. Of the 3,199 requests matched to a PCI score, two-thirds were on streets with a PCI below 50. More than 4 in 10 of those were on streets with no identified paving project.

This does not mean those potholes have not been patched; an open 311 status does not reliably indicate whether maintenance occurred. But paving does not provide an explanation for many of the open requests on Oakland’s deteriorated streets.

For residents, however, that distinction is largely invisible. A 311 request does not tell them whether the city considers the problem an isolated pothole, a symptom of broader pavement failure, or what treatment is planned.

How are potholes prioritized?

Oakland has previously recognized that some potholes present greater risks than others.

In 2022, the city released a memo titled, “Managing Exposure to Lawsuits Involving Bicyclists and Potholes” which discussed strategies such as prioritizing pothole service requests on bikeways and working with bicycle advocates to identify particularly important hazards.9

Bike East Bay developed an agreement with Oakland in 2012, where they track and elevate 10 high-risk potholes a month for repair.1011 They report that more than 1,000 potholes have been filled through this partnership.

But at BPAC meetings in 2024, participants raised questions about whether the City’s historical prioritization system was still functioning as intended, such as whether bikeway priority routes are being used in city analysis, whether policies are documented or current, and whether Oak311 and Cityworks (the internal tracking software) were communicating reliably.12

The discussion is useful beyond bicycle routes because it raises the same question for every 311 request: What happens after the report is submitted? Oak311 provides the front door: residents report the problem and create a record that the city can route internally. The Alameda County Grand Jury reported that OakDOT seeks to inspect pothole or street damage complaints within three to five business days.13

Inspection, however, is not the same as repair. A pothole may be patched later, prioritized based on risk, or be part of a street requiring more extensive work. The public-facing 311 record generally doesn’t show when an inspection occurred, what was found, what priority was assigned or what action followed. This can leave residents in the dark as to why some requests remain open for months or years.

When potholes cause damage or injury

There are quantifiable financial costs and injuries attributable to potholes and street deterioration. From 2021-2024, Oaklanders filed more than 1,400 vehicle claims involving potholes, resulting in more than $240,000 in payments.14

The consequences can be considerably more serious for bicyclists and motorcyclists. Since Oakland issued its 2022 pothole-liability analysis, the city has approved at least $22.2 million in eight settlements involving serious injuries attributed to potholes or comparable roadway-surface defects.1516171819202122

Most potholes will never result in a serious injury or lawsuit. But a system receiving thousands of reports still needs a way to identify risk, assign priorities and ensure that the highest-risk problems don’t disappear into the larger workload.

What happens to my pothole?

Oakland reports repairing more than ten times as many potholes annually compared to residents’ reports through 311. At the same time, thousands of resident requests remain open or otherwise unresolved in the public-facing system.

That is not an argument against using 311, as a 311 request creates a documented record of the problem and gives the city information it can use to identify, prioritize and respond to street defects.

But when a request remains open for months or even years, an “open” status alone provides little useful information about what happened after it was reported.

The longer Oakland asks residents to wait for a pothole request to be resolved, the more important it is to tell them what they are waiting for.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Methodology and data notes

• 311 requests. Pothole requests were identified in Oakland’s OAK311 service-request data using the “Streets - Potholes/Depression” category. “Open” and “closed” reflect the statuses recorded in the public dataset. An “open” request does not establish that a pothole remains physically unrepaired, and a “closed” request does not independently establish that a repair occurred.

• Closure times. Closure time was calculated from the request creation date to the recorded closure date. A cluster of bulk closures recorded February 2-4, 2026 was excluded from closure-time calculations because it could distort the measurement of individual request processing times.

• Pavement condition. Pothole locations were spatially matched to Oakland pavement segments and their Pavement Condition Index (PCI). PCI measures the overall condition of a street segment; it does not measure individual potholes, whether a pothole was repaired, or the quality or timeliness of a repair.

• Paving plan. OPEN pothole requests were compared with streets identified in Oakland’s paving data. Being on the paving plan does not mean an individual pothole is being left for future paving, and being off the plan does not establish that a pothole should have been repaired.

• Settlements. Roadway-surface settlements were compiled from City Council resolutions and agenda reports. Settlement payments resolve disputed claims and do not constitute admissions of the city’s liability.

• Data sources. City of Oakland OAK311 service-request data (dataset quth-gb8e)23 extracted September 17, 2026 through Transparent.city24; Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports25; 2025 Pavement Condition Survey26; and Pavement Data & Five-Year Paving Plan maps.27

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. We present the facts and let the reader decide.

Learn more

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.

Read all the headlines

1. “Paying everybody”: Secret recordings describe Sheng Thao’s working relationships, coordination between Oakland city officials and recycling company

Newly filed recordings in the federal corruption case against former Mayor Sheng Thao include a 2022 video of cooperating witness Mario Juarez toasting the Duong family for “paying everybody” after California Waste Solutions won its Oakland recycling contract. Also included are phone calls Andy Duong apparently taped without the other party’s knowledge, in which Thao shares details from a city council closed session during a 2019 city–CWS legal dispute and, as mayor in 2023, disparages Councilmembers Treva Reid and Janani Ramachandran. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that Juarez’s broader allegations of cash bribes to officials can go before the jury over defense objections. Read more

2. Governor enacts new law adding more environmental review to proposed Oakland coal terminal

Governor Newsom signed the bill Wednesday, adding new complexity to the proposal to construct the West Gateway Terminal Project at the former military base in West Oakland. If built, it would be largest coal export terminal on the West Coast. The proposal has been embroiled in lawsuits for over a decade, including the city breaching a previous agreement to allow the proposal, followed by court decision that allowed the project to proceed. Activists have strenuously opposed the coal terminal’s development. A new study this week found that the coal terminal have more environmental impacts than originally thought. Read more

3. Oakland teachers union rep caught posting political attack flyers outside high school’s main office

A school librarian at Skyline high school was caught posting political attack flyers about the school board elections on a bulletin board in a main hallway of the school. The flyers come a year after school principals reported union threats and intimidation. The employee was identified by school administration as an Oakland Education Association union representative who has been quoted in multiple news reports earlier this year criticizing the district administration over contract negotiations. The union, Oakland Education Association is the biggest outside spender in recent school board elections; four of the seven current board members were elected with OEA’s backing. Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. City of Oakland exits 23 years of federal oversight of its police department

A federal judge lifted what has been more than two decades of federal monitoring of the Oakland Police Department, ending the longest-running oversight of a police force in U.S. history. Plaintiff's attorney Jim Chanin, who brought the original police misconduct case with co-counsel John Burris that led to the federal consent decree in the early 2000s, called the police department’s progress “absolutely astronomical.” Robert Warshaw, the federal monitor assigned to police Oakland's progress on the reform tasks said, “The Oakland Police Department can continue its forward path no longer tethered to the court.” Warshaw also urged caution, warning the city and its police department that, “joy should be tempered with humility, because many of the things you've accomplished, you should have been doing all along.” Read more

5. Wealthy couple shot dead on Oakland’s Panoramic Way

Police responded to reports of gunshots at a residence in the Oakland hills near UC Berkeley. Two people were found deceased from apparent gunshot wounds, police say. The couple owned a fashion business, Bryn Walker that had suffered from risky financial moves by the husband, who was experiencing mental health struggles, a relative says. The couple had lost $100 million, while the husband’s mental state deteriorated, according to the wife’s brother. The family had intervened and made plans to institutionalize the husband to help him recover his mental state, but on the morning he was set to be institutionalized, the couple was dead from an apparent murder-suicide, the family member says. Read more

Subscribe to Oakland Report. (It’s free.)

Subscribe now

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a free public service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. We review over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.

Go the Newsstand

BECOME A MEMBER OF OAKLAND REPORT

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Join now

Learn more

Editors’ note: This commentary was originally published on September 25 in Truth on the Streets, a journal about the homelessness and addiction crisis in Portland, Oregon by veteran social services worker Kevin Dahlgren. Oakland Report is republishing it with the author’s permission for our readers to consider. Subscribe to Truth on the Streets to receive it directly.

Subscribe to Truth on the Streets

BY KEVIN DAHLGREN

The reason the country is so divided over homelessness is that liberals and conservatives often look at the same homeless encampment and see two completely different problems.

Liberals tend to see a failure of systems. Housing is too expensive, wages are too low, treatment and social services are inadequate, and government has failed to prevent vulnerable people from falling through the cracks.

Conservatives tend to see a failure of accountability. Addiction goes untreated, severe mental illness goes unmanaged, public disorder is tolerated, and too many programs ask very little from the people receiving help.

That difference shapes almost everything that follows.

Liberals are generally more likely to argue that housing must come first because stability gives someone the foundation needed to address addiction, mental illness, employment, and other problems.

Conservatives are generally more likely to argue that housing without expectations can simply move the same destructive behavior indoors, and that treatment, recovery, work, personal responsibility, structure, and accountability have to be part of the solution.

Put simply, liberals are more likely to ask, “What did the system fail to provide?” Conservatives are more likely to ask, “What does the individual need to change?”

One side places more emphasis on systemic reform, housing, social spending, and government intervention. The other places more emphasis on behavioral change, treatment, expectations, public order, and consequences.

But neither explanation is sufficient by itself.

Personal responsibility has limits. Someone suffering from severe mental illness, cognitive impairment, profound trauma, or overwhelming addiction may not be capable of consistently making rational decisions without intensive treatment, structure, supervision, and long-term support. In those cases, simply demanding better choices may accomplish very little.

A person who is psychotic, profoundly impaired, or completely consumed by addiction cannot always be treated as though he or she is making decisions from the same position as a healthy adult.

At the same time, there are homeless people who retain substantial decision-making capacity but repeatedly reject treatment, shelter, medication, employment, recovery programs, or other realistic alternatives.

Conservatives argue that government cannot spend its way around behavior forever. If someone is offered reasonable opportunities but continues engaging in conduct that is dangerous to themselves or destructive to the surrounding community, additional money without expectations may do little more than sustain the status quo.

This is where the political divide becomes especially important.

In many major American cities, homelessness policy has for years been heavily influenced by progressive ideas about Housing First, harm reduction, low-barrier services, bodily autonomy, voluntary treatment, and reducing coercion. Homeless service nonprofits, advocacy organizations, public health departments, housing agencies, and local governments in many large urban areas operate within this philosophical framework.

Critics on the right argue that because these institutions frequently share similar assumptions about homelessness, competing ideas involving mandatory treatment, sobriety expectations, behavioral requirements, work, sanctions, or stronger civil commitment standards can be dismissed before they are seriously tested.

The more radical wing of the left goes considerably further.

Most anti-capitalist activists argue that homelessness is fundamentally a consequence of capitalism itself. Housing is treated as a commodity, landlords seek profit, wealth is unequally distributed, poor people are priced out, and homelessness becomes the predictable result.

Within this framework, addiction, mental illness, crime, disorder, and individual decision-making can become secondary explanations because the economic system is viewed as the underlying cause.

At the furthest end of that argument, homelessness cannot truly be solved through better shelters, treatment programs, policing, employment, or even conventional affordable housing because capitalism itself is seen as the problem. Private ownership, profit-driven housing markets, and large disparities in wealth must therefore be fundamentally transformed before homelessness can disappear.

The problem with allowing any single ideology to dominate homelessness policy is that eventually the ideology itself can become more important than the results.

Critics of progressive homelessness policy point to a difficult question: after years of enormous public expenditures, expanding homelessness bureaucracies, widespread adoption of harm reduction, and major investments in Housing First programs in many West Coast cities, why do visible homelessness, street addiction, overdose deaths, and severe public disorder remain so persistent?

Those trends do not by themselves prove that progressive policies caused the increases. Housing costs, fentanyl, methamphetamine, mental illness, economic conditions, migration, treatment capacity, and many other factors also matter. But poor outcomes should at least force policymakers to examine whether the dominant model is delivering what was promised.

That scrutiny becomes especially important when the organizations responsible for solving homelessness are also responsible for defining success.

A system can count contacts, outreach encounters, referrals, shelter nights, naloxone distributed, housing applications completed, and millions of dollars spent while avoiding the much harder question: Are substantially more people actually recovering, becoming stable, leaving the streets, and remaining housed?

The same skepticism should apply to conservative solutions.

Clearing an encampment without adequate shelter, treatment, or somewhere realistic for people to go may simply move homelessness several blocks away. Arresting people repeatedly without addressing addiction or severe mental illness can create another revolving door. Accountability without an attainable pathway out is not much of a solution either.

Housing should be provided when housing is the primary problem. Treatment should be readily available when addiction is the primary problem. People experiencing disabling mental illness may need intensive psychiatric care, structured environments, and in some circumstances forms of intervention that go beyond repeatedly asking whether they would like assistance.

People capable of working should be given meaningful opportunities to work, rebuild purpose, and become more self-sufficient. And when individuals repeatedly reject reasonable alternatives while continuing behavior that harms themselves or the surrounding community, accountability cannot simply disappear from the conversation.

The mistake is assuming homelessness must be either a systemic failure or an individual failure. In reality, it can be both, and the balance is different for every person. Effective policy therefore has to be capable of distinguishing between someone who cannot make better choices and someone who will not make better choices. Treating those two people exactly the same may sound equitable, but it is not necessarily effective.

The real test should not be whether a policy sounds compassionate or punitive. It should be what happens afterward. Are fewer people sleeping outside? Are fewer people dying from overdoses? Are more people completing treatment? Are people with severe mental illness becoming stable? Are people working when they are capable of working? Are formerly homeless people remaining housed a year, three years, and five years later? Are emergency room visits, jail bookings, overdoses, and repeated shelter stays declining? Those are measurable outcomes.

Homelessness is not purely a failure of capitalism, government, personal responsibility, housing, treatment, or compassion. It is a human problem involving economics, addiction, mental illness, trauma, disability, behavior, relationships, opportunity, and choice. Any ideology that insists on explaining every homeless person through a single cause will inevitably misunderstand a large portion of the population it claims to be helping.

Homelessness is too complicated to be owned by either side. Liberals are right that circumstances matter. Conservatives are right that behavior matters. The challenge is determining which matters most for the person standing in front of you and responding accordingly.

A system genuinely interested in ending homelessness should be willing to test ideas from across the political spectrum, abandon programs that repeatedly fail, and expand approaches that measurably help people leave the streets.

The question should not be whether an idea is liberal or conservative.

It should be whether it works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Dahlgren is a freelance journalist, a drug and alcohol counselor, and a homelessness consultant in Portland, Oregon. He has worked in social services for over twenty-five years.

“I started reporting on the homeless and addiction crisis a few years ago after many years of watching our government fail in ending this crisis. I entered social services with the genuine intent to make a difference. I quickly learned this was near impossible. Our social service system is extremely dysfunctional, has become very radicalized and at times corrupt. What once was a cause has now become a multibillion-dollar industry.

“I was fortunate over the last eight years to work for programs I truly believed in, and we made a real difference. But the problem is so big, a few successful programs with measurable results are barely enough to make a dent. However, I am optimistic. We are creating a shift. Questioning the status quo is becoming more accepted as many others have started to notice that the billions spent to solve this crisis have, in fact, made it worse.

“It is why I decided to start this newsletter. I also have a very active X account, where over the last few years, I have interviewed hundreds of homeless people. I started interviewing them when I realized nobody was really listening to the experts with actual results. In fact, they were often the ones bullied, doxxed, and ridiculed by our current social service system. The homeless know exactly what is going on and have shared with me the brutal truth.

“I am excited to share what I have learned over the last few decades and know it is no longer if we can end this crisis but when.”

— Kevin Dahlgren, author and publisher of Truth on the Streets

Truth on the Streets is a reader-supported publication based in Portland, Oregon. Subscribe to receive new posts and support its work.

Subscribe to Truth on the Streets

Video clip 1. Two political campaign flyers were posted at Skyline High School in a prominent location next to the school’s main office door. School administration identified the person who posted them as a librarian at the school who also is a teachers union representative. The flyers attacked and named the committees and donors that have backed candidates the teachers union opposes. (Video montage by Oakland Report)

A union rep posted two campaign flyers about the school board elections in the school where he works

At 11:00 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 29, a passerby noticed two political campaign flyers pinned to the bulletin board by the main office at Skyline High School, prominently displayed beside the office door.1

One flyer was headlined, “The wealthy elites funding Oakland school board elections.” The other asked “What’s the problem with ‘Empower Oakland’?”, and named three candidates it expected Empower Oakland, a local political advocacy group to support in the Districts 2, 4 and 6 school board races on the November 3 ballot.2

The flyers were first observed on the bulletin board at 11:00 a.m., and were still on display as of 2:50 p.m. — for nearly four hours, on a school day — before being removed after complaints to the school administration. How long they had been there before 11:00 a.m. that morning is unclear.

After complaints to the school administration and the district’s ombudsperson, Skyline High School principal Rebecca Huang confirmed shortly before 3:00 p.m. that she had not been aware that the flyers had been posted. Huang confirmed that the flyers would be removed right away, and that the administration would check for any other political posters that may have been posted around the campus.3

The school administration identified the person who posted the flyers as a school librarian and Oakland Education Association (OEA) site representative, Dylan Drewry. OEA is the district’s teachers union.

News reports indicate that Drewry is “on the [OEA] bargaining team.”4 Drewry has been quoted in local coverage of this year’s union contract dispute.

In February, as OEA members voted to authorize a strike, Drewry told NBC Bay Area that the district is “investing in the wrong things, like outside contractors, high-level management, high salary management.”5

He told local television station KPIX, “We were told 0% raises, 0% wage increase, which is not only insulting, but it is a pay cut in this environment where we have inflation.”6 He is quoted by KQED stating, “We are in a really profound fight for the schools our students deserve and stability in our schools.”7 And in May, local media outlet The Oaklandside quoted Drewry on the district’s new artificial intelligence policy.8

(Oakland Report could find no public statement by Drewry about the school board candidates, the committees named on the flyers, or the flyers themselves.)

In response to complaints about the flyers, the school administration said that a formal complaint to the district would prompt a “full investigation.”

Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is elsewhere overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted — and let our readers decide what to think about it. Learn more

Posting the flyers at school violated district policy — and arguably state law

The posting violated district rules no matter what the flyers said. Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Administrative Regulation 4119.25 states that employees shall not “post or distribute political campaign materials on district property.”9 The district’s flyer policy requires Communications Department approval for any posting and says material that advocates “for a specific political candidate, party, or religious ideology will not be approved.”10

State law also prohibits the same conduct — with criminal penalties. Education Code § 7054(a): “No school district ... funds, services, supplies, or equipment shall be used for the purpose of urging the support or defeat of any ballot measure or candidate, including ... any candidate for election to the governing board of the district.” Under subdivision (c), a violation is a misdemeanor or felony, punishable by up to one year in county jail and/or a $1,000 fine, or 16 months to three years under Penal Code § 1170(a).11

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

16- and 17-year-olds are eligible to vote in school board elections. The flyers were posted where they attend school.

Oaklanders aged 16 and 17 are eligible to vote in OUSD board elections, so Skyline students living in Districts 2, 4 and 6 can register and cast votes in the school board election coming up in a few weeks.12 The main office where the flyers were posted is located next to the high school’s front entrance.

OUSD rules prohibit school employees from using district time “to urge the passage or defeat of any ballot measure or candidate” and district equipment “for the preparation or reproduction of political campaign materials, even if the district is reimbursed.” The regulation applies to all district property — classrooms, hallways, common areas and the main office bulletin board alike.

State law permits a school to host a district-controlled forum for campaign material only if it is open “to all sides on an equitable basis.” A bulletin board displaying the two flyers with no opposing flyers displayed alongside them does not appear to pass that test.1314

Even if the school employee also has a union role, it confers no exemption. For example, in San Leandro Teachers Assn. v. Governing Board (2009), the California Supreme Court held that a district could prevent union newsletters endorsing board candidates from being distributed in teacher mailboxes.15

Whether a criminal § 7054 case could be made is unclear. A thumbtack and a bulletin board are a thin basis for “equipment.” Whether Drewry used district time, printers or paper to produce the flyers is unknown; the school administration identifies him only as the person who put them up.

We could find no instances of criminal prosecution in comparable circumstances. It is more likely than not that the matter resolves through the district’s disciplinary process.

Notably, the flyers carry no “paid for by” line. A reader cannot tell who produced them or who paid.

Disclosure rules generally require a “paid for by” disclosure when a registered committee pays for a communication or spending surpasses $1,000, so no disclosure violation is apparent at the scale of two pages.16 We found no committee registration for “Parents United for Public Schools,” the name credited on the flyer. Its website does not display the flyers.17

Regardless of whether a prosecutor would ever take it up, district policy is clear: an employee may not post this material on campus.

The flyers attacked “wealthy elites funding Oakland school board elections,” but didn’t mention that OEA is the biggest outside spender in the last four school board elections

Here we turn to the substance of the flyers themselves.

Beneath the “wealthy elites” headline, the first flyer listed the funders of eight committees active in OUSD board races, including Empower Oakland, Oakland Parents for Quality Education, former governor Jerry Brown’s Committee for California, and the California Charter Schools Association’s political arm. Much of that history is documented in campaign filings and prior reporting.18192021

What the flyers didn’t include is the biggest outside spender in recent school board campaigns: Oakland Education Association’s own political action committee (PAC).

Oakland Report’s analysis of campaign finance disclosures shows that the OEA PAC has spent $687,000 supporting OUSD board candidates since 2020 — more than any other committee in those races — including two of the incumbent board members seeking re-election: board president Jennifer Brouhard (D2) and vice president Valarie Bachelor (D6).

No other committee comes close to that amount of spending over that span.

A flyer that names no union committee, but lists the opposition-aligned committees under the headline “wealthy elites,” presents only half the picture to the students who see it posted on their school’s walls.

Related story:

The political spending the flyers describe — by groups that have backed candidates the teachers union opposes — is real, but much of it is from past election cycles, not the current one.

In 2020, committees funded by Michael Bloomberg, the California Charter Schools Association and Arthur Rock, together with Jerry Brown’s Committee for California, spent $928,000 supporting Austin Dannhaus, Maiya Edgerly, Leroy Gaines and Clifford Thompson — three and a half times what union-aligned committees spent. Only Thompson won.

In 2022, a committee funded almost entirely by Brown’s leftover campaign money spent $156,500 for Nick Resnick and Kyra Mungia, both of whom ultimately lost.

In 2024, opposition-aligned committees reported $62,000 in independent expenditures, three-quarters of it Brown’s money behind Patrice Berry, against $209,000 from union-aligned committees.

Through Sept. 19, 2026, none of the opposition-aligned committees had reported an independent expenditure in this year’s board races.

In the current election cycle, OEA’s PAC has spent more than the opposition

OEA PAC has spent $15,242 in this election cycle as of the latest campaign finance disclosure filings on September 19, including $5,724 in independent expenditures for each of Brouhard and Bachelor and $1,800 in direct contributions to each.

OEA’s spending in past election cycles suggests that the bulk of its spending is still to come. In the 2020 and 2024 elections, every dollar OEA PAC spent on school board candidates was reported after the close of the first pre-election reporting period in late September. In 2022, 94% of its spending came after that date. That year, the union’s spending stood at about $11,000 on Sept. 24 and finished at $188,000 on election day.

In addition, OEA-backed candidates benefit from door-to-door canvassing by union members, which OEA has publicized on social media.22

To be fair, the opposition-aligned committees have followed similar trajectories in the past. Jerry Brown’s Committee for California made all of its 2024 spending for Patrice Berry in October, and the Brown-funded Resnick and Mungia committee spent its entire $156,500 in the last three weeks of October 2022. So the $9,800 reported for the opposition-aligned committees in the current 2026 cycle to date likely understates how much they eventually will spend, too.

On the opposition side: Empower Oakland gave $1,800 each to Arielle Fleisher, Kathryn Camp and LeAna Powell and, on Sept. 16, $1,300 each to Alexandra Williams and Mike Hutchinson. Oakland Parents for Quality Education gave $900 each to Fleisher and Williams.

Fleisher has raised the most of any candidate at $55,482 — much of it from individual donors, not committees — followed not far behind by Bachelor (also the beneficiary of mostly individual donations) at $46,523.

Hutchinson, the D4 incumbent the second flyer groups with the opposition side, had raised $4,263 through Sept. 19; Empower Oakland’s $1,300 is the only committee money reported for him.

Share this article.

Share

The flyers portray the influence of “wealthy elites” on elections, but they leave out the teachers union’s own influence on the board

The teachers union has spent nearly $700,000 since 2020 to elect school board candidates friendly to its interests — $686,917 in independent expenditures and direct contributions through Sept. 19, 2026, more than any other committee in those races.

Four of the seven current board members were elected with that money and still have the union’s backing: Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor in 2022, Rachel Latta and VanCedric Williams in 2024. They form the board’s 4–3 majority on contested votes, including the officer elections of January 2025.23

Related story:

Brouhard, the board president, served three terms on OEA’s executive board before her election. The superintendent the board appointed in 2025, on a 6–1 vote, is Denise Saddler, a former OEA president who led the union for six years.

Those board members then vote on OEA members’ pay and benefits — including substantial increases to union members’ compensation. In June, the board approved a union contract that adds $104.8 million in compensation over three years, despite a formal warning from the Alameda County superintendent of schools that it “endangers the District’s fiscal stability.”

None of this appears on the flyers the OEA representative posted on school grounds.

The flyer’s posting outside the main office follows a year of documented friction between OEA and school administrators

In May 2025, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that multiple Fremont High School staff members told district officials that OEA president Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, after refusing to check in for a visitor pass on March 17, 2025, threatened to beat up principal Nidya Baez; Taiz-Rancifer denied making any threat.24

At an April 23, 2025 board meeting, the president of the principals’ union, United Administrators of Oakland Schools, said members had been told, “We control the board, we got Kyla fired, we can get you fired,” and that “our members don’t feel safe walking to their cars.”25

In December 2025, Oakland Report reported in a commentary that parents who spoke in favor of school consolidation at a board meeting were heckled as “closers” and “privatizers,” and that one was told they would be slapped if they turned around to face their heckler.26

In April 2026, more than 60 OUSD principals signed a letter stating that the district “can no longer afford to postpone difficult decisions about how many schools we operate” — a position the flyers dismiss, when Empower Oakland makes it, as a “doomloop narrative.”27

None of this establishes that OEA directed or approved the flyers’ posting at Skyline High. It does mean the question of whether an OEA site representative posted campaign material inside a school will be read against a backdrop in which administrators have already complained, publicly, about union pressure on personnel decisions.

Related story:

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to OEA and the school employee who, according to the school’s administration, posted the flyers, we note the following counterpoints without further rebuttal:

• Parents United describes itself as an independent, parent-led organization, and nothing we found shows OEA produced or approved the flyers.[40]

• The flyers’ central claim — that most money to the committees they name comes from donors who are not Oakland parents — is supported by filings and reporting.[41]

• The school principal removed the flyers and identified the poster the same day the complaints came in.[42]

• OEA president Taiz-Rancifer has unequivocally denied the Fremont High allegations, and OUSD has not said whether it investigated them.[43]

• The group remains free to distribute the flyers at eligible locations off campus.

Additional caveats

The timeline rests on one eyewitness observation and the email chain; the flyers may have been posted well before 11:00 a.m.

Dollar figures come from Oakland Public Ethics Commission and Alameda County Registrar of Voters filings through the Sept. 19 reporting period; spending reported after that date, including 24-hour reports in the final weeks, is not included.

Drewry’s role in posting the flyers was identified by the school administration; his OEA bargaining team role is reported by KPIX and The Oaklandside.

Conclusion

Two campaign flyers naming school board candidates were posted on district property for most of a school day and possibly longer, five weeks before an election in which some of the students walking past them can vote.

The district’s regulation and flyer policy prohibited an employee from putting them there — as they would a flyer praising Empower Oakland’s slate — and state law bars the use of district resources for the same purpose.

The employee the school administration identified as having posted the flyers is an OEA site representative and a member of the union’s bargaining team.

The flyers’ accuracy around campaign spending on school board elections is a separate and mixed question — and the biggest outside spender in the school board races is missing from it.

Editors’ note: We invite OEA president Raiz-Tancifer, OUSD employee and OEA rep Drewry, principal Huang, OUSD board president Brouhard and OUSD superintendent Saddler to respond to this article, if desired, either by sending a written response for publication in Oakland Report, or posting a response in this article’s comments, or issuing public statements in formats of their choosing. We will publish any such responses — and if any correction to this story is warranted, we will do so.

Related story:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Charlene Price” is an Oakland resident who has extensive interactions with OUSD. The author’s name has been changed to protect their privacy and prevent personal and professional retaliation. Oakland Report has verified the identity of the writer and the accuracy of the facts in this report.

Video clip 1. Oakland police’s federal oversight has ended. A federal judge lifted what has been more than two decades of federal monitoring of the Oakland Police Department, ending the longest-running oversight of a police force in U.S. history. (Video montage by Oakland Report)

Editors’ note: This article was originally posted by Oakland resident Rajni Mandal on her Substack page. Oakland Report is republishing it with Mandal’s permission for our readers to consider. Subscribe to Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates to receive her articles directly.

What was meant to be a few years became decades

As I was walking to federal court on Tuesday afternoon, I was thinking of the first time I even heard the term “NSA.” I had heard it spoken during my first meeting of the Police Commission, which I attended back in the summer of 2024. The term was bandied about, and seemed to represent something very complicated, obtuse, and something that those who were speaking knew more about than me.

I later came to learn more about this out-of-court settlement,1 which was enacted in response to the infamous Riders scandal over 25 years ago. The lawsuit was brought forth by civil rights attorneys Jim Chanin2 and John Burris3 against the City of Oakland.

The NSA (Negotiated Settlement Agreement) is a 74-page-long document which outlines 51 “tasks” which entail everything from investigations of police misconduct, reporting use of force, personnel management, training and police academies.4 Progress and compliance with these reforms was to be adjudicated by a federal judge and court-appointed monitor.

What was meant to be a few years became decades—and finally today, after 23 years, Judge William Orrick5 announced that federal oversight would end, with a final dismissal order to follow. Although many may term this as an “exit,” it is rather a continuation of changing policing practices and culture that can now be fully under local control.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

The cost of federal oversight

The consequences of this decision are significant, not only with regards to streamlining police oversight, but also financial cost. As I have written previously:6

“Since 2003, the City has spent over $20 million on monitor and court-related expenses,7 along with more than $3 million in attorney fees.8 Robert Warshaw and Associates, contracted as the federal monitor, initially received nearly $1 million annually—a figure that has dropped to approximately $400,000 since 2023.”910

— The author, May 8, 2025

For city officials, however, criticizing the federal monitor and court oversight could have consequences, given the City’s position in the litigation. During court today, federal monitor Robert Warshaw11 discussed how one police chief was called into Judge Thelton Henderson’s12 kitchen the night after the chief criticized the NSA.

The relationship between the monitor and OPD leadership was often contentious. Former chiefs Anne Kirkpatrick, Sean Whent and LeRonne Armstrong publicly criticized Warshaw or the monitoring structure,13 and Armstrong later argued that his criticism of Warshaw contributed to his firing.14

Finding a way out

Although the reforms are essential and necessary, the length, complexity and cost of oversight had become increasingly burdensome and, for years, the City also lacked a coordinated internal structure for managing compliance.

In January 2025, city councilmembers had begun discussing collaborating with the City Attorney to develop a unified plan to end court oversight.15 In November 2025, mayor Lee then established a new position, the Constitutional Policing Administrator, and developed a cross-departmental approach to assessing task compliance.16 This included biweekly meetings with police leadership, City Administrator, mayoral staff, Police Commission Chair, and city attorney representatives.

The improved communication, as well as involvement with the federal monitor’s team, led to significant praise by Judge Orrick.17 The appointment of chief Beere by mayor Lee was also touted today by Judge Orrick, the plaintiff’s attorneys and monitor Warshaw as instrumental to maintaining constitutional policing and NSA standards, even after court oversight.

Share this story.

Share

Who speaks for the community?

At the same time, the community itself became increasingly involved in a court process that for decades had largely been conducted among the parties, the monitor and City officials. In years prior, advocacy groups had sent letters directly to court expressing their views regarding federal oversight and accountability of the police department.

These included a “motion to intervene” filed in 2019 by former Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price, then an attorney representing the Coalition for Police Accountability (CPA).18 The motion sought to make CPA and four community advocates—Rashidah Grinage, Saied Karamooz, Anne Janks, and John Jones III—formal parties to the federal case. They argued that the existing parties did not adequately represent the interests of Oakland residents and that community participation could help the court achieve sustainable compliance with the NSA and ultimately bring federal oversight to an end. Their subsequent letter in 2025 criticizing then-police chief Floyd Mitchell19 was directly referenced by Judge Orrick, showing that these community submissions were being heard within the court process.

This led me to create and circulate a petition amongst residents to urge the court to end federal oversight of the police department.20 Judge Orrick recognized the petition in court, giving direct acknowledgment to more than 1,000 Oakland residents asking that responsibility for policing be returned to local institutions:21

“For those of you who have signed petitions urging me to close down the court’s oversight function, I hear you. I agree with most of your sentiments. The elected and appointed leaders of the city and OPD, including the police commission and not the federal court, should be 100% responsible for policing in Oakland.”

— Judge William H. Orrick, Jan. 27, 2026

More than one community voice

Prior to today’s hearing, the court also received letters from the Bay Area Council22 and SAFE Oakland23, who collectively represent leaders from the faith, business, civil rights, and neighborhood communities, supporting exit from federal oversight and returning police accountability to the city and its residents.

CPA also submitted a letter advocating the opposite stance, warning that the civilian oversight structure was not funded nor strong enough to monitor nor maintain reform.24

Judge Orrick again commented on those letters, noting that community organizations and lawyers had differing views on compliance, in reference to one task being 2% below target.

I do believe this increased community participation was significant. By the final year of federal oversight, there was no single “community” position before the court. Residents, neighborhood groups, business and faith leaders, civil rights advocates and police-accountability organizations were speaking directly to the court, and sometimes asking the judge to do opposite things.

The word “community” was also brought up repeatedly today by the judge, mayor, chief Beere and the plaintiff’s attorneys. After years in which this case was largely a discussion between attorneys, the monitor, police officials and a federal judge, Oakland residents and community organizations had increasingly become part of that discussion as well.

Bringing it back home

I took down this exchange between Judge Orrick and chief Beere during the hearing, which I think sums up today’s outcome:

Orrick: “Tomorrow are you prepared to comply with and reach all the needs of constitutional policing for the city of Oakland?”

Beere: “We live and breathe it…the NSA is part of the Oakland Police Department’s DNA. We have absorbed the practice and institutionalized it. Wednesday morning, we will continue to do it and improve on it.”

Orrick: “You are off to a great start from everything I hear and read. It is gratifying to have you in this spot. Thank you for doing it.”

Beere: “I believe in this department and community. I am a product of the NSA.”

— Judge William H. Orrick and Oakland police chief James Beere, Sept. 29, 2026

Later in the hearing, Orrick responded to mayor Lee:

“I appreciate the commitment to constitutional policing and this effort to bring oversight back where it belongs…it belongs to the people which you serve and the institution you run, the city.”

— Judge William H. Orrick, addressing Oakland mayor Barbara Lee, Sept. 29, 2026

And now, the next chapter begins. The disagreements about policing, oversight and accountability are not over. But after 23 years, those debates will no longer primarily take place before a federal judge and monitor. They return to Oakland: its elected officials, its civilian oversight bodies, its police department, and its residents.

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven, well-sourced analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We present the facts and let the reader decide. Do you have an idea for a story on local government issues? Learn more at oaklandreport.org/about.

A familiar pattern, with a twist

On September 28, local media outlet The Oaklandside published a profile of the candidates for Oakland school board District 4: incumbent Mike Hutchinson and challengers Kathryn Camp and Sylvia Williams. Its headline was, “A teacher and a parent line up to challenge OUSD’s District 4 incumbent.”1

This latest profile followed a pattern in Oaklandside’s profiles of political candidates in this cycle so far:

• One candidate’s claims were fact-checked by the profile’s author while the other candidates’ claims were passed along unchallenged

• Outside evidence was used selectively to bolster some candidates and not others

• The role of the influential teachers union, Oakland Education Association, in helping elect candidates friendly to OEA’s interests went unreported.

Our previous analyses found that both of Oaklandside’s previous profiles (on the District 2 school board and city council candidates) appeared to favor one candidate. And in both of those profiles, the candidate backed by the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and East Bay Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) came out ahead.23

Oaklandside’s latest candidate profile, on the District 4 school board candidates, continued that pattern, with a twist.

Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization — the same IRS nonprofit category as The Oaklandside. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted elsewhere — and let our readers decide what to think about it. Learn more

Oaklandside loaded several negative descriptions on Mike Hutchinson and his record, without listing his explanations

Oakland Education Association has not endorsed a candidate in the Oakland Unified school board race for District 4. But its opposition to one of the three candidates, incumbent Mike Hutchinson, is on the record.

In the Oaklandside profile on the District 4 school board candidates, every unflattering sentence that was written in the reporter’s own voice was about Hutchinson.

The profile’s author noted that Hutchinson was elected “after two failed runs.” The author wrote that he “blames the current school board majority.” They added that “at every school board meeting, Hutchinson declares his opposition to the current board majority, and he abstains or votes against most board actions.” The author noted that his restructuring resolution “languished after 2025.”4

All of these statements were technically accurate, but Oaklandside’s choice of words to describe them — “failed,” “blames,” “languished” — suggests that its pattern of attaching descriptors to items presented as factual reporting continues.

For example, the vote claim was technically accurate, but incomplete. At a board meeting earlier this year, on February 25, Hutchinson abstained on 53 of 59 recorded items and voted no on the layoffs.5 In our review of this year’s contested votes — layoffs, the consultant contract, the superintendent’s contract, the budget, the teachers’ contract — it appears that Hutchinson opposed or abstained on every one he attended.678

What the Oaklandside profile left out was Hutchinson’s explanations of why he abstained or voted no.

On the layoffs, Hutchinson told the board, “There is nothing to inform any of the decisions that are listed here.”9 At a recent candidate forum, he stated: “I voted against the layoff of 400 workers earlier this year because it was not part of a larger fiscal solvency plan, which we still don’t have.”10 Several of his no votes tracked the county’s warnings to the district about its finances: on September 15, the county superintendent gave Oakland Unified’s 2026-27 budget only conditional approval and noted the district’s lack of clarity on roughly $30 million in further cuts it budgeted for but did not specify.

(The Oaklandside’s District 2 profile six days earlier also contained negative material about its incumbent, Jennifer Brouhard — “tensions,” “turnover,” a decision “never” explained. But each item was paired with her explanation.)11

In the latest profile on District 4, Hutchinson’s explanation was given for only one: an ethics case. That case concerns his unsuccessful 2016 campaign: Oakland’s public ethics commission found that his committee failed to file 19 required campaign finance reports, exposing him to penalties of up to $95,000, and the commission has not yet set the amount.12 The profile noted that Hutchinson “said he sent communications to the Ethics Commission to clear the case and is ‘very frustrated that it still hasn’t been resolved.’”

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

The teachers union hasn’t endorsed in District 4. But its opposition to the incumbent is on the record

OEA endorsed Hutchinson in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Then in 2022 it endorsed Pecolia Manigo against him. About that 2022 break, Hutchinson told The Oaklandside the following year, “It wasn’t just that OEA didn’t endorse me, but OEA ran a candidate against me.”13

In 2023, on the first day of a teachers union strike, Hutchinson was board president. He told reporters it was the union, not the district, that had walked away from the table, and added, “I’m an OEA baby.” As he spoke, “three other school board members — Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams, and Valarie Bachelor — stood and turned their backs on him in a public rebuke.”14

Brouhard, Williams and Bachelor all have deep ties with and receive significant political support from OEA.151617

In April 2025, the board voted 4-3 to end Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell’s tenure, eight months after extending her contract. Hutchinson voted no and said from the dais: “They’re openly colluding with [union] leadership.”18

At the same meeting, the president of the principals’ union reported that a principal had been told, “We [OEA] control the board. We got Kyla fired, we can get you fired.”19

The Oaklandside’s profile relayed Hutchinson’s account of that episode as something he “blames” the majority for. It did not report the vote, the timing, or the threat — evidence that would have let readers judge whether the blame is warranted.

The split between Hutchinson and OEA has visibly continued. The county superintendent’s April letter notes that fiscal decisions have “frequently been decided by narrow 4-3 votes.”20

In December, hours before the board’s budget vote, OEA emailed members that the district “does not have a structural deficit” and called the chief business officer’s contrary analysis “blatant insubordination.” She resigned two days later.21

In June, Hutchinson abstained from voting on the union’s new contract.22 This month, local political group Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club’s education committee wrote: “He is not endorsed by the teachers’ union; he has been disruptive and non-collaborative at meetings.”23 A prominent ally of the majority was blunter: “Do not rank Mike.”24

Share this story.

Share

The challengers’ résumés were missing

The Oaklandside profile’s headline called challenger Kathryn Camp “a parent” and her section was labeled “the PTA president.” Her campaign website tells a fuller story.

Camp says she has 20 years in administration, human resources and financial services, and has managed “multimillion-dollar budgets.” Her campaign site describes how she returned to school in her 30s, earned associate degrees from Laney and Berkeley City College, transferred to UC Berkeley, graduated with honors in political science, and earned a master’s degree from the Goldman School of Public Policy.25

None of this relevant experience appeared in the profile. The Oaklandside’s August candidate list noted her government affairs job at Block; its latest profile dropped even that.26

Notably, four days earlier, Oaklandside relayed city council District 2 challenger Nate Adams’ path “from community college” to UC Berkeley as narration.27 Camp told the same story at the August forum — “I started at [community] college as a working adult” — but this latest profile didn’t mention it.

Turning to the other challenger: Sylvia Williams was labeled in Oaklandside’s profile as “the educator and former union rep,” a disclosure she volunteered. What the profile did not report is where she stands in relation to the current superintendent and board majority.

At the forum noted above, Williams said she felt “optimistic about the current superintendent” and would “partner with her, [and] with those on the school board who are moving in that direction.”

Her budget plan’s first listed priority is “Teacher pay increases for school stability.”28 The profile relayed her literacy, arts and facilities planks nearly as written, but not the one about increasing teacher pay — a plank the county has already weighed in on: its April letter said the union agreement “endangers the District’s fiscal stability.”29

What the profile left out

The Oaklandside profile again did not list the candidates’ endorsements — these were deferred to a promised follow-up story. Readers of the profile were not told that the Alameda County Democratic Party endorsed Camp over Hutchinson; that local political advocacy group Empower Oakland ranks Hutchinson its first choice; that the Wellstone club ranks Williams first; or that Gary Yee — the board president who carried the 2022 school closure vote — is on Camp’s endorsement list.30313233

In April, more than 60 principals from Oakland Unified School District wrote that the district “can no longer afford to postpone difficult decisions about how many schools we operate.”34

Oaklandside’s previous profile of the District 2 school board candidates cited the principals’ letter (without linking to it). Its District 4 profile, in which all three candidates discussed closures at length, did not mention it at all.

Hutchinson’s apparent charter school record — “no new Prop 39 co-location leases, no new charter schools,” a 25 percent reduction, by his account — went unmentioned.35 The 2023 teachers union contract he presided over as board president was described as “a 10% across-the-board raise.” KQED reported at the time that most teachers received 15.5 percent, a package the district valued at $70 million.36

Related stories:

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to The Oaklandside and all three candidates, we present these without further rebuttal:

• The profile gave roughly equal space, quotation and photos to each candidate.

• The Hutchinson ethics item was documented, linked, paired with his response, and if anything softened: it omitted the 19 violations and unanswered subpoenas The Oaklandside itself previously reported.

• Camp’s literacy and math figures, stated in the reporter’s voice, check out against 2025 state results.

• Hutchinson’s own campaign line is “end school closures”; the profile’s anti-closure framing was his.

• Williams’ union disclosure came from her, not from the reporter’s research, and she said that she believes she can manage that perceived conflict of interest, asserting that a school board member represents “the community, you’re not representing teachers or the union.”

• Hutchinson’s own conduct in office supplies material for negative characterizations: he calls for the superintendent’s resignation, posts “#FlipTheBoard,” and tells forums the majority won’t “work with anyone who has our students’ and communities’ best interests at heart.” A profile that reported none of that would be incomplete in the other direction.

• OEA’s 2022 choice to back a challenger to Hutchinson was strategic, by its own account — keeping Hutchinson in District 5 and adding an ally in District 4, during a time when the district boundaries had shifted due to a redistricting process — and the OEA president said at the time, “I’m rooting for him.”

• The profile said an endorsements story is coming.

Conclusion

Oaklandside’s latest candidate profile was less unbalanced in the areas of equal space and quotations than its two previous profiles were. However, the pattern of the teachers union-aligned candidate getting the benefit of the evidence we observed in our first two installments in this series persists, but from a different angle.

OEA appears not to have offered a formal endorsement in the District 4 contest yet. However, OEA’s record of opposing one candidate — Hutchinson — is public. The Oaklandside’s profile attached negative language to Hutchinson in multiple passages, and attached none to the others.

The incumbent Hutchinson’s votes were counted in the profile, but his specific reasons for those votes were not reported.

The challengers were introduced by their roles — teacher, parent — not by their relevant qualifications for serving on a complex and challenging elected board, even when those qualifications include a UC Berkeley Goldman School master’s degree — or a stated plan to partner with the current OEA-backed board majority.

The information that would let a voter place the three candidates on Oakland’s political map — who endorses or funds their campaigns, and where they stand on the letter 60 principals signed — was held for a separate, future article.

All the above suggests that Oaklandside’s pattern of asymmetrical coverage persists, but with a twist. From different angles, all of its candidate profiles so far appear to lean in favor of OEA-backed candidates, and against candidates OEA opposes.

Whether that reflects an editorial view, the limits of a 2,600-word format, stylistic choice by the profile’s author, or an incumbent who invites the treatment (Hutchinson) is not something three profiles alone can settle — but it is consistent so far. Oaklandside’s endorsements and political donations story, when it runs, may yield more insight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Charlene Price” is an Oakland resident who has extensive interactions with OUSD. The author’s name has been changed to protect their privacy and prevent personal and professional retaliation. Oakland Report has verified the identity of the writer and the accuracy of the facts in this report.

[Clarification: An earlier version of this analysis said Hutchinson “was not given the opportunity to explain his reasoning” for his votes, and that the profile offered “none of his explanations.” The profile does report his general criticism of the board majority. It does not report the reasons he gave for the specific votes it characterized. The text has been lightly revised to clarify this.]

DONATE TO OAKLAND REPORT

We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. Your voluntary donation is needed to continue to produce accurate, deeply researched, evidence-driven articles like this one.

Support our work

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We present the facts and let the reader decide. Learn more at oaklandreport.org

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.

Read all the headlines

1. City drops another $3+ million to clear sunken boats from Oakland estuary

City officials staged an effort to pull some 40 derelict vessels from the Oakland estuary this week. The effort comes after years of allowing “anchor out” vessels to float there indefinitely, similar to the RV encampments on Oakland’s streets. The city finally moved to clean up after an Alameda-based group helped get a federal grant. City officials issued a press release and held a press conference celebrating the cleanup and featuring the police chief announcing, “We’re not going to put up with it anymore,” adding that the city is moving to “reclaim the waterfront” for the public. The city appears eager to spin this belated clean-up effort as progress (which it is), but the city’s effort came only after decades of complaints and untold environmental damage to the bay waters — and only after the state stepped in and threatened to impose fines. Read more

2. Oakland city workers prepare for a strike at union-led “strike school”

Oakland city workers attended “strike school” during their contract negotiations with the city. A video of the session shows city workers holding signs and shouting a call-and-response chant: “What do we want? Fair contract! When do we want it? Now!” IFPTE Local 21, which represents the city’s professional and technical workers, and SEIU Local 1021, which represents clerical and front-line service workers, have been locked in contentious contract negotiations with the city for months. The unions issued a joint press release claiming that, “Mayor Barbara Lee and city administrators have thus far refused to address the city’s understaffing crisis. After months of dragged-out negotiations and the expiration of union contracts, workers express frustration at the city’s unwillingness to invest in staffing. ‘Striking is a last resort, but we’re ready to do whatever it takes.’” Read more

3. Oaklandside news editor moderates communist group’s forum

Local media outlet The Oaklandside’s senior news editor Darwin Bondgraham emceed a forum on policing for communist group Seeing Red in Oakland last Saturday, Sept. 19. The group billed the event as “a provocative discussion about contemporary police power, what it might look like to deconstruct it.” Bondgraham is the author of the book, “The Riders Come Out at Night,” about the infamous police misconduct scandal in the early 2000’s that led to a federal consent decree and decades of oversight of Oakland’s police department. For his part, Bondgraham helped promote the event with a post on Twitter (renamed X after Elon Musk purchased the social media platform) stating, “Tonight in Oakland, Stuart Schrader will be talking about his important book, Blue Power, a history of police associations and political organizing. Roll through.” Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. Oakland’s teachers union backs Jennifer Brouhard — and her own party doesn’t. (The Oaklandside’s profile mentioned neither)

On September 22, local media outlet The Oaklandside published a profile of the Oakland Unified school board District 2 candidates (incumbent board president Jennifer Brouhard and challenger Arielle Fleisher) with the headline, “An experienced incumbent meets a parent challenger.” The profile gave Brouhard 59% of the space compared to her challenger, misstated a Stanford study and Prop 39, and supplied evidence for one side only — a framing Oaklandside has used before. The profile also didn’t mention that Brouhard receives substantial political support from teachers union Oakland Education Association (OEA), of which Brouhard is a past board member, and whose contracts Brouhard now votes on as school board president. Two days later, in its profile on the District 2 city council race (“Democratic socialists are on a roll. Can one win a seat on Oakland city council?”), the Oaklandside again checked one candidate’s claims but not the other’s — and the same side came out ahead. Read more

5. Sheng Thao "catch and kill" story allegations admissible in trial, judge rules

A federal judge said Friday that jurors can hear accusations that former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao’s co-defendants sought to buy off a local journalist to prevent a story about alleged sexual misconduct that occurred during a 2023 trade mission to Vietnam. Thao also attended the junket. Court filings discuss a video of then-San Leandro councilman Bryan Azevedo recounting sexual activities with prostitutes during the Vietnam trip. The prosecution’s filings assert that, "when Thao learned about the reporting, she became irate, concerned that Azevedo's behavior on a trip she was prominently associated with would reflect badly on her and harm her politically." The journalist, Steven Tavares of East Bay Insiders, says that Thao co-defendant Andy Duong offered him a “sponsorship” of $2,000 per month through county supervisor David Haubert’s chief of staff, Shawn Wilson. Wilson was a co-host of Tavares’ podcast at the time. Wilson admits that he accepted $10,000 from Duong for “public relations” work. Read more

Subscribe to Oakland Report. (It’s free.)

Subscribe now

Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a free public service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. We review over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.

Go the Newsstand

DONATE TO OAKLAND REPORT

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our nonprofit work.

Donate to Oakland Report

Learn more

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment of our new Media bias section, we look at The Oaklandside’s September 24 profile of the two candidates for Oakland City Council District 2.

A familiar pattern, again

On September 24, local media outlet The Oaklandside published a profile of the candidates in the District 2 city council race, which features two candidates: incumbent Charlene Wang and challenger Nate Adams.

The article’s headline was, “Democratic socialists are on a roll. Can one win a seat on Oakland city council?”1

The headline made no reference to the incumbent Wang, instead announcing the profile with a clear reference to Adams and the Democratic Socialists of America of which he is a member (“on a roll” and “can one win a seat...?”).

The hero image that accompanied the article depicts Adams canvassers standing outside the rusted steel gate of an Oakland house, one wearing a red shirt bearing a DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) logo and the word “socialism!”

“Crime is troubling, but if you can stay out of the fray, ‘you’re good,’ [a resident speaking with Adams canvassers] says. The cost of living is the most pressing concern, especially for younger people. For the older generation, he continues, ‘our concern is the streets — the streets got holes. The city has done so much to clean Oakland, but yet it stays the way it is.’

“[The canvasser] Rachel nods. The man doesn’t know it, but he’s recited the exact platform she’s there to promote. Affordability. Busted roads. Unfilled city jobs — some 1,000, the vast majority of them already budgeted for, which Adams has made it his priority to fill.”

— The Oaklandside, Sept. 24, 2026

The first 267 words of the article followed the two Adams volunteers door-knocking in the San Antonio neighborhood. The last sentence of the profile also was given to Adams.

In between, Wang got more ink than her challenger. That’s consistent with what we found in our analysis of The Oaklandside’s September 22 profile of school board candidates Jennifer Brouhard (incumbent) and Arielle Fleisher (challenger), which also gave more ink to the incumbent.23

Related story:

One notable difference is that The Oaklandside’s school board profile presented the incumbent Brouhard first. In its city council profile, it presented the challenger Adams first.

That difference could be plausibly attributed to the differing writing styles of the two authors of those articles.

But aside from minor stylistic differences, there are several similarities between the two Oaklandside articles that are perhaps more consequential.

Editors’ note: Oakland Report is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization — the same IRS nonprofit category as The Oaklandside. We are not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign, and we do not offer political endorsements. We present the evidence we find — especially evidence that is overlooked, mischaracterized, or omitted elsewhere — and let our readers decide what to think about it. Learn more

Oaklandside fact-checked Wang’s framing, but not Adams’

Wang, the incumbent, took the reporter to International Boulevard’s “Blade” — an area notorious for open-air sex trafficking — where a convenience store worker described being struck in the face during a group robbery and a bakery owner said she sometimes fears she won’t get home at night.

The profile then stepped back and editorialized in the author’s voice: “But it’s worth noting that Wang took us to one of Oakland’s most dangerous areas.” It followed this by citing citywide statistics, such as that homicides are at a historic low and violent crime is down 25%. The author also observed, without offering evidence, that much of District 2 “almost never” experiences the kind of incidents Wang describes having occurred on the Blade.

The cited citywide statistics are accurate.4 However, two relevant things are missing.

The Adams canvassing the reporter joined also appears to have been arranged by his campaign, in neighborhoods and at doors the campaign likely selected, yet the profile didn’t say it is “worth noting.”

When city leaders announced the 2025 crime decline, they credited “local violence prevention programs, police surveillance technology and frequent interagency coordination.” The surveillance technology prominently includes the Flock Safety camera program, which Wang voted for and Adams says he opposes. The profile used the crime decline to discount Wang’s framing without reporting what the city says produced it.

The profile’s treatment of Flock aligns with The Oaklandside’s own coverage of the company, which has been consistently critical.

Oakland Report reviewed eight Oaklandside stories about Flock published since March 2024. (There may be other articles that mention it.) All eight of the articles we found in our initial search cited examples of the company’s data being misused elsewhere, yet none reported OPD’s 2025 arrest results. Additionally, five of the articles tested a Flock proponent’s claim in the reporter’s voice, yet none tested an opponent’s. 56789101112

The Oaklandside’s September 24 profile flatly stated that “Adams opposes Flock” — followed by “it’s not only people on the left who agree with him” and four links to the company’s controversies. It also flatly stated that “Wang voted to approve,” followed by police statistics attributed to “Oakland police say.” In the context of The Oaklandside’s substantial body of past coverage on this issue, some readers could read this as less a comparison of the two candidates’ positions than an extension of that coverage.

Editors’ note: This analysis does not take a political position on Flock Safety, nor does Oakland Report. Our interest in the matter here, as with the other topics we discuss in our pages, is focused on evidence and accountability around the issues that affect Oaklanders’ lives — especially when the evidence presented elsewhere is incomplete or mischaracterized, and accountability is lacking.]

The safeguards Wang authored when the council approved the contract 7–1 on December 16 — a hard-coded ban on Flock’s “national lookup” feature, up to $200,000 in liquidated damages, quarterly certifications signed under penalty of perjury, and four city auditor compliance audits — are summarized in the profile as “a bunch of limitations.” Two concrete examples are given: a ban on out-of-state and federal access, and a bar on use against reproductive care. The rest were omitted.13

The profile then noted that “it’s unclear if these safeguards are enforceable, in part because Oakland hasn’t finalized its contract with the company.”

That caveat was accurate — The Oaklandside’s own September 22 story (“Flock’s Oakland cameras are tracking millions of trips. Are safeguards enforceable?”) established with the city attorney’s office that the contract remains unsigned. But it is the only one of Wang’s policy actions in the profile that received 35 words of description and 19 of doubt.

The same one-way treatment is evident in the profile’s characterizations of Wang’s street barriers on the “Blade,” an effort to disrupt open-air sex trafficking in that area. The profile gave Adams the last word on the matter (the barriers “will just relocate the activity”) and supplied no evidence either way.

However, the record of those barriers’ effectiveness is more nuanced, by Oaklandside’s own account. For example, its July reporting quoted a San Antonio nonprofit director calling the 2023 East 15th Street barriers “a night-and-day transformation.”14

The record also shows the activity moved to the avenues now being closed — a displacement Wang herself acknowledged at the July hearing.1516

Readers of the profile were provided neither fact — only Adams’ assertion that the street barriers, one of Wang’s signature achievements in office, will prove ineffective.

Subscribe to Oakland Report (it’s free).

Subscribe now

Oaklandside provided more evidence to support Adams’ claims — and none against them

Oakland Report reviewed the profile’s 38 hyperlinks and assessed which of the candidates’ claims they support or refute.

On the disputed policy questions — Flock, street safety, and the Blade — seven links provided supporting evidence for Adams’ positions, and one supplied evidence contradicting Wang’s framing. Only one supplied evidence supporting Wang’s claims: the police department’s arrest statistics, and that was attributed to “Oakland police say.” Wang’s remaining claims are linked mostly to her own materials.

By comparison, Adams’ claims were either stated in the author’s voice or linked to supporting reporting — and none drew a rebuttal from the profile’s author.

The profile characterized Adams as “fond of pointing out” how much Oakland pays in trip-and-fall lawsuits (“dollars that could instead go to fixing sidewalks”). It linked The Oaklandside’s August investigation of $55 million in road and sidewalk settlements to confirm that claim. That investigation attributed $31.9 million of the total to potholes and street holes, and noted that sidewalk lawsuits accounted for nearly $9 million over 16 years — about $560,000 per year.17 The profile itself provided neither figure.

The profile stated, in the author’s voice, that Adams promises to fill “some 1,000” unfilled city jobs, “the vast majority of them already budgeted for.”

The city’s most recent staffing report counted 839 vacant, unfrozen positions. The city’s human resources staff told the council that roughly half of them had no hiring activity because departments had not submitted paperwork.18 The “unfilled” figure cited in the profile is the high end of the available numbers — total vacancies including frozen positions — rather than the 839 the city is currently authorized to fill.

Meanwhile, the harder problem behind it went unmentioned; and the profile didn’t report how the challenger proposes to fill them if he is elected.

The profile left out who backs the challenger

Wang’s endorsements were named in detail and characterized as “established leaders and groups.” By comparison, Adams’ base was described only as “rooted deeply in the dynamic and surging DSA.”

His campaign website lists more detail than that: Oakland Education Association (OEA), the teachers union also supports Adams, as do Oakland Unified school board president Jennifer Brouhard, two Richmond councilmembers, and the Green Party of Alameda County.1920

The profile mentioned Brouhard only as a DSA-endorsed candidate, not as an Adams endorser.

The profile also reported that both campaigns raised “a decent amount of money,” but provided no concrete dollar amounts. (Adams reported a little over $43,000; Wang more than $115,000 in the first half of the year alone.)21

Notably, Oaklandside’s previous school board profile promised to publish a follow-up article on funding and endorsements in that race, but the present article on the city council District 2 race makes no such promise.

Accusation of a “smear campaign” against Wang was highlighted

The profile noted that a Wang constituent accused DSA of a “smear campaign,” citing an Instagram post that “claimed she wants to criminalize sex work.” The profile linked to the post but did not describe it.

The Instagram post was published on East Bay DSA’s official account — the same chapter whose co-chair, Dori Goldberg was quoted for 117 words in the Oaklandside profile.

The post’s headline was, “Criminalizing sex work is not public safety,” and included a screenshot of The Oaklandside’s July 8 story on the street closures.22 The DSA post opposed the street closures but not the fines ordinance, saying that the closures would “criminalize sex workers & trafficking survivors.” It also claimed that “if OPD and the carceral state are involved, there will be more harm than good.”

The Oaklandside profile’s own description of Wang’s ordinance — fines on “pimps and johns,” with revenue set aside for sex trafficking survivors — is the fact needed to test that claim. The reporter didn’t connect them, nor did the profile report asking Goldberg about it.

Instead, it quotes Goldberg saying, “Goldberg, though, is adamant Adams will win, and the [DSA] chapter has endorsed 10 other local candidates as well, including Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor for Oakland school board.”

Class markers for Adams, and a credential for Wang

The profile’s biographical language appears to lean in the same direction.

The author described Adams as having “developed his political chops during early COVID, after graduating from UC Berkeley, which he transferred to from community college.” They add that he “was actually raised conservative, by his single, Japanese-American mother, in Sacramento.” Both of those sentences emulated phrasing from Adams’ campaign website, which says he “transferred from community college to UC Berkeley” and was raised by “a single mom in a low-income neighborhood.”

The mention of “community college,” attached to the elite UC Berkeley degree, is the campaign’s own softening of it. The profile adopted it as the author’s narration.

Wang was introduced as “a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government” who “held jobs dealing with homelessness and healthcare policy on the East Coast” and “worked for the Biden administration on reconnecting communities.”

Wang’s own account on her campaign website and LinkedIn page is different, and is not emulated in the profile. Wang says she served as a political appointee of President Joe Biden, special advisor to the Department of Transportation’s assistant secretary for policy under Pete Buttigieg, and director of the Reconnecting Communities program, which she says she launched and describes as a $3 billion to $4 billion federal initiative. Wang says she later served as a special advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency.23

The Oaklandside profile led Wang’s professional experience with the credential that reads as elite, and compressed the portion of her record that some readers would take as markers of notable professional achievement to simply, “held jobs” and “worked for.”

Neither passage in the profile is technically wrong. But the choices the author made — the challenger’s class origins foregrounded in his campaign’s own words, the incumbent’s substantive federal program experience condensed and paraphrased — seem to align with the profile’s overall framing of a “working class” community organizer against an “established” incumbent.

Adams’ campaign platform is relayed almost verbatim; Wang’s is sampled and condensed

Oakland Report compared the Oaklandside profile with each campaign’s website to test how much of each campaign’s wording was relayed verbatim or near-verbatim.

Adams’ platform page lists 18 planks. The profile relayed eight of them, several nearly word for word:

• The campaign’s headline, “Slash the Rent, Fix the Streets, 1000 City Jobs” became the profile’s “Affordability. Busted roads. Unfilled city jobs — some 1,000.”

• The campaign’s “spending more on trip and fall lawsuits than we do on repairing our sidewalks” became “he’s fond of pointing out how much money Oakland spends on trip-and-fall lawsuits — dollars that could instead go to fixing sidewalks.”

• The campaign’s list of violence prevention, ambassador, MACRO, dispatcher and naloxone commitments was reproduced item for item.

The ten planks left out of the Adams portion of the profile include arguably the most contestable ones:

• Raising payroll taxes and license fees on large companies

• Raising real estate transfer fees

• Commercial rent stabilization

• Establishing an East Bay public bank

• A Port of Oakland arms embargo

Also absent from the profile:

• The platform’s opening line naming advocacy organization Empower Oakland among the things elected officials are “too scared of”

• The platform’s description of Flock’s license plate readers as “facial recognition cameras” — a capability the cameras do not have, according to Flock and to every Oaklandside story we reviewed that describes them.

By comparison, Wang’s “Delivering for Oakland” page lists 62 items. The profile relayed five of them:

• Writing Measure FF (closing a transfer-tax exemption for foreclosures)

• Working to bring a Grocery Outlet to the district

• Voting to support state legislation challenging PG&E’s monopoly

• Creating the state’s first municipal sex trafficking survivor fund

• Installing street barriers to disrupt sex trafficking on the “Blade.”

Left out of the Wang portion of the profile were items that most directly answer DSA’s critique of her:

• Wrote Oakland’s sanctuary city ordinance

• Launched a violence prevention academy for the Ceasefire strategy

• Reversed cuts to shelters

• Funded tenant legal aid

• Funded 180 affordable homes.

The profile also credited Adams with a plan to “expand the Department of Violence Prevention” without noting Wang’s claimed record on the same program.

Note: these are campaign claims, and Oakland Report has not verified them. The point is that the Oaklandside profile did not report them either.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Other considerations and counterpoints

In fairness to The Oaklandside and both candidates, we present these counterpoints, largely without rebuttal:

• The Blade accounts were extensive and sympathetic, and Wang’s personal disclosure about childhood abuse was handled with care.

• Wang’s credentials were listed at length, and her PG&E vote was presented as defying a corporate lobbyist — a direct answer to DSA’s framing of her.

• A self-described leftist constituent, quoted at length, called DSA’s tactics a smear and said Wang’s constituents agree with her.

• Disclosing that Wang chose the tour location was sound practice. Our objection is that it was applied to one campaign only.

• DSA’s volunteer and membership figures were properly attributed, and the profile noted that the DSA won “only a small fraction” of primaries.

• The convenience store robbery, the crime statistics, and the vacancy figure all check out against other reporting.

• The profile’s caveat that Wang’s Flock safeguards may be unenforceable is accurate in that the contract is unsigned.

• The Instagram post’s headline did say “criminalizing sex work,” so the constituent’s paraphrase, as the profile relayed it, is defensible.

• The profile attributed Wang’s website claims as claims (“she puts in this bucket,” “She believes,” “She also notes”) and stated Adams’ platform as description (“He wants,” “He supports”). An incumbent’s claimed achievements warranted attribution in a way a challenger’s proposals did not, so some of this asymmetry is proper practice.

• The profile gave Wang her own class and identity markers — “the child of Chinese immigrants,” and “Both say they experienced economic insecurity growing up” — and the community college and single mother details were Adams’ own account of his life, not the reporter’s invention.

• The Oaklandside’s Flock coverage quoted proponents in most stories, including homeowner groups, Oakland police, and the NAACP’s “force multiplier” argument. Our finding concerns which claims were checked by the author — not whether both sides appear.

Conclusion

The Oaklandside profile was accurate on the facts it included, but what it tested and what it omitted are perhaps more significant. Our analysis found the profile to be subtly but consistently asymmetrical in favor of the DSA- and OEA-backed Adams.

Wang’s framing was rebutted with data, while Adams’ claims were left to stand unexamined. Outside evidence links ran eight to one in favor of Adams’ claims.

Key aspects of Adams’ political backing — including the teachers union and its chosen candidate who drives the school district’s finances and that same union’s members’ compensation — was left out.

Adams’ platform was relayed nearly item for item, but omitted its tax increases; Wang’s record was reduced to five items of 62.

Two of Oaklandside’s candidate profiles, published two days apart by different authors, appear to follow similar tracks. In each, the candidate aligned with DSA and OEA received the favorable handling of evidence, whether incumbent or challenger, and OEA’s role went unreported.

Whether that reflects a settled editorial view or two independent editorial choices is not something two articles alone can settle. But it is enough to warrant watching the profiles that come next.

DONATE TO OAKLAND REPORT

We are an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, not affiliated with any public agency, labor union, corporate interest or political campaign. Your voluntary donation is needed to continue to produce accurate, deeply researched, evidence-driven articles like this one.

Donate now

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We present the facts and let the reader decide. Learn more at oaklandreport.org