Video montage 1. Oakland police department’s Bearcat armored vehicle was deployed at the recent shootout at Manzanita Park.1 (Video source: KTVU. 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.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

“I don’t even think that we should be recommending any type of armored vehicles whatsoever”

Last year, after months of deliberation, the Oakland police commission voted to recommend approval of the Oakland police department’s request to replace its aging “Bearcat” armored vehicle and failing armored Suburban with two smaller armored vehicles.

The police department has described this equipment as essential for public and officer safety. Former police chief Floyd Mitchell stated:2

“From my standpoint, being a military veteran, being a police officer for over 30 years, being a SWAT commander… and being involved in many critical incidents and rescue missions—the [Bearcat] vehicle is meant to save lives.”

— Police chief Floyd Mitchell, June 12, 2025

In November 2025, the police commission approved the police department’s replacement recommendation.

There was, however, one commissioner who strongly disagreed.

Omar Farmer, then an alternate commissioner and unable to vote, presented his own analysis of equipment alternatives and stated:3

“I don’t even think that we should be recommending any type of armored vehicles whatsoever.”

— Alternate police commissioner Omar Farmer, November 20, 2025

Nearly ten months later, Farmer succeeded in persuading the police commission to nullify that vote. By then, he had been elevated to a full commissioner and could vote.

What follows is the story of how Farmer used a genuine Brown Act violation and preliminary guidance from the city’s public ethics commission to pursue a substantive public safety outcome he had been seeking for years.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

A long history of opposition

Farmer’s efforts to remove the Bearcat can be traced back several years.

In 2021, as a community participant, he took part in the police commission’s armored vehicle policy and replacement process. The commission subsequently adopted a nonbinding resolution calling for Oakland’s police department to phase out and replace the Bearcat.4

Farmer also drafted a separate Reimagining Public Safety Task Force proposal seeking to accelerate the Bearcat’s retirement.5 Although he was not a voting member of the task force, Farmer served on one of its advisory boards and helped develop Recommendation 38, titled, “Eliminate the Bearcat armored vehicle ASAP.”6

The proposal, which listed Farmer as its contact, called for retiring the Bearcat within six to eight months and urged the city to explore bypassing competitive bidding requirements to expedite a replacement.

“In over policed neighborhoods like East and West Oakland, where it’s typically deployed, it strikes fear in those residents. It also has been shown to trigger their trauma, escalate situations like in [Joshua] Pawlik, and not deter or reduce crime.”

— from Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommendation 38

The police commission’s resolution did not itself end the police department’s use of the vehicle. Under city ordinance, use of approved equipment ceases only after city council approval.7 That binding action was never completed, and OPD retained the Bearcat.

Four years later, Farmer was still trying to turn that unimplemented recommendation into a binding outcome. He described his rationale at a June 2025 police commission meeting:

“When OPD comes rolling through these communities with the Bearcat and other military equipment such as tactical gear, they appear to many of those folks who suffer from PTSD to be akin to an occupying force.”

— Alternate police commissioner Omar Farmer, Jun. 12, 2025

Influencing the police commission’s review

The police commission has the power to review the police department’s militarized equipment requests before the department seeks funding or city council approval.8

As part of that review, the commission convened an ad hoc committee composed of commissioners Wilson Riles Jr. and Sam Dawit and alternate commissioner Omar Farmer, along with several community members and subject matter experts.

The meetings revealed significant discord. Draft recommendations prepared by Farmer and Riles stated that the police department should “divest itself of the BearCat and not replace it with another BearCat.”9 Dawit objected that the recommendations did not represent all the views within the committee, stating “I think that a lot of this is pretty one-sided.”10

He added that “some opinions and maybe some personal agendas” were driving the report and said he would not vote for it. Farmer rejected Dawit’s criticism, calling part of his statement “disingenuous.”

Dawit later submitted written dissenting comments stating:11

“I am disappointed in your final draft statement, as it ignores nearly every position I have verbally brought up over our numerous ad hoc calls.”

— Police commissioner Sam Dawit, Sept 22, 2025

His written dissent was not included alongside the ad hoc committee’s recommendation in the commission’s agenda packet, but the email later became part of Farmer’s public ethics commission complaint.12

Video clip 2. “We have… some personal agendas here that drive a lot of this report.” Police commission militarized equipment ad hoc committee meeting, Sept. 2, 2025.

Commission requires clarification

In October, the ad hoc committee’s recommendations prepared by Riles and Farmer were presented to the full police commission.13 They included the following:

“That, as previously agreed, OPD divest itself of the BearCat and not replace it with another BearCat; and purchase a non-paramilitary armored vehicle consistent with what was agreed to in 2021 when funds become available.”

— from Oakland police commission’s ad hoc committee recommendations, Oct. 9, 2025

This conflicted with the police department’s request for two smaller Bearcat SUVs. During the ad hoc meetings, Farmer repeatedly challenged the police department’s assessment that the other alternatives could not meet its operational needs.

At the October 9 police commission meeting, the police department explained its request while Farmer relied on a separate presentation comparing the Bearcat with alternatives considered in 2021.14

Farmer said he created the presentation to “clear things up,” but also explained that he wanted to revive alternatives the police department had rejected. This echoed a discussion Farmer had at an ad hoc committee meeting, where he clashed with police department staff.

Video clip 3. “I don’t know why we’re trying to roll back decisions that were made whether they’re legally binding or not.” Oakland police commission militarized equipment ad hoc committee meeting, Sept. 2, 2025.

The police commission did not vote on the recommendation. Instead, it referred the matter back for clarification and directed that the police department provide a clear, written description of the equipment it was requesting.15

The Brown Act violation: emails with too many recipients

Following the October meeting, police commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta obtained a written memo from the police department clarifying the department’s request.16 He forwarded it to ad hoc committee chair Wilson Riles Jr. and included commissioners Farmer and Dawit on the email.17

The message therefore included four of the police commission’s seven members. Although the commission requires five members for a quorum under its own rules, four members constitute a majority: the relevant threshold under the Brown Act’s prohibition against serial communications.

Following the email exchange, the police department’s memo was attached to the recommendation and the language being revised to state:

“That, as previously agreed by the Commission and the Council, the Department be directed to divest itself of the current Lenco G3 BearCat and not replace it with another Lenco G3 BearCat; but rather purchase two armored vehicles that are a step down from the BearCat when funds become available; OPD is currently requesting two new Lenco Tactical SUVs (smaller BearCats).”

— Oakland police commission revised recommendation, Nov. 20, 2025

The revised recommendation and police department’s memo were then included in the publicly posted agenda packet for the commission’s November 20 meeting.

Public ethics commission staff and legal counsel subsequently agreed that including four commissioners in the exchange violated the Brown Act. The more consequential question (and the one that would later divide Farmer and the police commission’s legal counsel) was whether that violation invalidated the full police commission’s subsequent public deliberation and vote.

Related story:

The crucial vote

At the November 20 meeting, Farmer publicly challenged the revised recommendation:

“Because the letter that you’re referencing from the ad hoc—the ad hoc hasn’t even met again since we had the previous version of the letter that the public saw. So that new version of the letter, where you’re approving them to have the two newer types of BearCats, the ad hoc never met and conferred to actually put that into the letter…So that’s not necessarily a recommendation from the entire ad hoc.”

— Police commissioner Omar Farmer, Nov. 20, 2025

Chair Garcia-Acosta addressed Farmer’s objection and clarified that the recommendation did not specifically endorse the police department’s two proposed vehicles:

“My understanding is that the recommendation I just read—that the ad hoc isn’t specifically recommending those two new vehicles. The recommendation from the ad hoc and from Council was to divest itself from the current Lenco G3 BearCat and not replace it with a similar one; rather, purchase two armored vehicles that are a step down from the BearCat. There’s no specific [vehicle identified].”

— Police commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, Nov. 20, 2025

The police commission then publicly discussed whether the revised language authorized the two Bearcat SUVs or merely approved replacing the existing vehicles with a smaller “step-down” alternative. Commissioner Dawit directly asked whether the vote would allow the police department to purchase two Bearcat SUVs. Garcia-Acosta explained that the question was whether the police department’s proposed smaller vehicles satisfied the commission’s criteria and the prior direction to replace the larger Bearcat.

Farmer remained opposed, not simply to the revised language, but to the substantive outcome:

“I just personally feel as a Commission that recommending a BearCat, or any of the types of armored vehicles at this point…I don’t even think that we should be recommending any type of armored vehicles whatsoever.”

— Police commissioner Omar Farmer, Nov. 20, 2025

After discussing Farmer’s objection, questioning the police department staff and receiving public comment, Dawit—an actual member of the ad hoc committee— moved to “approve OPD’s request to divest the current Bearcat and armored vehicles and purchase two Lenco tactical Bearcat SUVs (six-passenger) as a step-down replacement when funds become available.” Riles seconded the motion, and it passed 3-0-2.18

Farmer was an alternate commissioner and could not vote.

Did the Brown Act violation affect the vote?

Farmer maintained that the Brown Act violation (and the revisions made without the entire ad hoc committee’s approval) invalidated the final vote.

At the September 10 meeting, commissioners Farmer and Booker described what happened next. Farmer submitted a ‘cure and correct’ demand to chair Garcia-Acosta and police commission counsel seeking to redo the Bearcat vote. The matter was referred to Booker, who reviewed it with counsel and concluded that no additional action was necessary (these events were described at the Oakland police commission meeting on September 10, 2026)19.

Farmer then questioned commissioner Riles about the disputed revisions at an ad hoc committee meeting in December 2025.20 Riles explained that the language was changed after OPD provided the written clarification requested by the full Commission.

Commission staff explained that the police department had been asked to clarify exactly what it wanted and that its written response was used to align the recommendation with the department’s actual request. Riles described the deputy chief’s letter as:

“The clearest ask that I saw.”

— Police commissioner Wilson Riles, Dec. 2, 2025.

Farmer acknowledged that the letter had been included in the November agenda packet.

This exchange is important. By then, Farmer had been publicly told why the language had changed. He had raised his concerns publicly before the November vote, the full police commission discussed those concerns, and he later received an additional explanation directly from Riles during a public meeting.

When his request to redo the vote was rejected internally, Farmer turned to the public ethics commission.

A continued campaign

After the police commission declined to redo the vote, Farmer filed a formal complaint with the public ethics commission in April 2026.

By that time, Farmer had been elevated from alternate to full commissioner to serve the remainder of Wilson Riles’ vacant term.21 That appointment created a separate controversy: it was announced following a closed session without a publicly agendized vote. The city attorney later issued a public legal opinion concluding that the police commission did not have the authority to elevate Farmer in that manner.22

Related story:

Farmer’s public ethics commission complaint included the emails sent to four commissioners. They included Riles’ approval of the revisions23 and Dawit’s separate email documenting his dissent from the committee’s recommendations.

Public ethics commission enforcement staff later issued “informal preliminary guidance” stating that a violation had occurred and recommending that the police commission consider whether to “cure and correct” it, including whether to redo the Bearcat vote (the public ethics commission itself had not yet heard or decided Farmer’s complaint).24

Public ethics commission staff reviewed the emails, ad hoc recommendations and November meeting.25 But its critical conclusion about why the recommendation changed was attributed to an interview with Farmer:

“According to a public ethics commission staff interview with former* police commissioner Omar Farmer, the adopted recommendation reflects the position that the non-member of the ad hoc committee advocated for.” (*The public ethics commission’s memorandum referred to Farmer as a ‘former Commissioner,’ although he was serving as a commissioner when the guidance was issued.)

— Public ethics commission, Sept. 16, 2026

There is no indication that public ethics commission staff interviewed Dawit, Garcia-Acosta or police commission staff before determining why the recommendation changed. Nor did the preliminary guidance address the extensive public discussion before the November vote or the December exchange in which Riles explained the revisions directly to Farmer.

The public ethics commission’s conclusion also conflicted with the record. Dawit had publicly supported an armored vehicle acceptable to the police department, later made the motion to approve the final recommendation and voted for it. Riles had explained that the recommendation changed in response to the written clarification requested from the police department.

Nevertheless, public ethics commission staff’s preliminary guidance gave Farmer another opportunity to undo the Bearcat vote.

Farmer gets his vote

Now serving as a full commissioner with voting power, Farmer was able to revisit the Bearcat decision under an agenda item addressing the public ethics commission staff’s preliminary guidance—just days before the city council was scheduled to vote on Farmer’s replacement. Whether that vote had any legal effect would itself become part of the dispute.26

Farmer reiterated his position that the email chain and revised recommendations had invalidated the November vote. He also alluded to additional legal action if the police commission declined to nullify it:

“So my feeling is—the bottom line is this is a Brown Act violation, okay? Any commission business associated with the Brown Act violation, to me, should be nullified or canceled out. I feel we have a legal and moral responsibility to do so. It not only damages the Commission’s credibility, but it also exposes us legally. And if this issue isn’t cured or corrected, that’s the direction this could take.”

— Police commissioner Omar Farmer, Sept. 10, 2026, video)

The police commission’s independent legal counsel, Katina Ancar, agreed that including four commissioners on the email chain constituted a Brown Act violation. She disagreed with Farmer about the remedy.

Ancar advised the commission to acknowledge the violation but not redo or nullify the vote. She explained that the ad hoc recommendation was not itself an action of the police commission. The full commission had subsequently reviewed the recommendation at a public meeting, questioned police department staff, received extensive public comment and voted.

Farmer interrupted her:

ANCAR: The question before the commission is because there were four commissioners on that [email thread]. And if there was a substantive change to the recommendation, and commissioner Farmer is saying it was a substantive change. Does that in some way infect and require a re-vote on that recommendation? And my advice is that that recommendation was just that. It was a recommendation. It was not an action of the commission. It was just a recommendation that the ad hoc…

FARMER: NO, no.

ANCAR: No?

FARMER: No. We have the authority. They need our…

ANCAR: The full commission then looked at the recommendation, took public comment, extensive public comment, spoke with OPD again, and then had a discussion on the dais about that recommendation.

Ancar also explained that nullifying the vote would have no current legal effect because the deadline for the Commission’s recommendation had already passed:

ANCAR: My assessment is that the vote does nothing because a new vote would do nothing or a nullification would do nothing because the November 20th vote was taken and the deadline for the commission to take that vote was November 29th.

FARMER: Well, to you it’s nothing. To you it’s nothing. To me it’s not nothing.

Farmer then made clear that he did not want another vote on the merits. He wanted the prior vote erased:

FARMER: “I don’t think we need to retake the vote. It’s moot. We don’t need to do all that. I just want to nullify the vote.”

Commissioners Farmer, Jackson-Castain and Booker voted to ‘‘cure and correct’’ the violation by nullifying the November Bearcat vote, contrary to Ancar’s legal advice. Booker stated, “Since counsel agrees it is a violation, then I vote yes”—although Ancar had expressly distinguished acknowledging the violation from nullifying the vote. Chair Garcia-Acosta and commissioner Grillo abstained. The motion passed 3-0-2.

Farmer explained why nullification mattered. If the police department still wanted the BearCat SUVs, he said, it would need to make “a formal presentation to the ad hoc and to the commission” that included alternative vehicles.

John Lindsey-Poland (a commission “subject matter expert” with similar views to Farmer)27 agreed that nullification had consequences: “If you annul it, you annul that policy. You have no policy on what happens to the Bearcats.”

Despite Ancar’s legal opinion, Farmer intended nullification to force the police department to begin the approval process again.

Video clip 4. “My advice is that that recommendation was just that. It was a recommendation. It was not an action of the commission.” Police commission legal counsel Katina Ancar, Sept 10, 2026.

Who holds oversight accountable?

The Brown Act violation was real. But the police commission’s chosen remedy did more than acknowledge an improper email: it reopened a public-safety decision Farmer had opposed and could not vote against.

Farmer was entitled to oppose the Bearcat and to advocate for alternatives. The issue is whether an ethics complaint should become a second route to reverse a policy decision after that position failed in a public vote.

Public ethics commission staff gave that effort institutional weight before their commission heard the case and without indicating that it interviewed several central participants. The police commission then nullified its vote contrary to its own legal counsel’s advice, without reconsidering the Bearcat on its merits.

The irony is difficult to ignore. A law intended to protect public decision-making was used to undo a decision reached after public deliberation, public comment and a public vote.

Independent oversight is necessary. But without guardrails, an ethics complaint can become a second route to a policy outcome the complainant could not obtain through the ordinary public process.

Oakland has built layer upon layer of independent oversight. What it has not built is a reliable way to hold the overseers accountable.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to author Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Related story:

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 police officers indicted for conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice

Two Oakland police officers were indicted this week on charges of conspiring to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration. The accused officers work in the police department’s helicopter unit. An FAA safety inspector also was charged in the scheme. The indictments come after another Oakland police officer was criminally charged in a separate case last month, and less than three weeks before a major hearing in Oakland’s bid to end more than two decades of federal court oversight of its police department. Read more

2. “More bitches. Bring ‘em all here.” Kevin Jenkins caught on tape with Sheng Thao co-defendant

A phone call between council member Kevin Jenkins (District 6) and California Waste Solutions executive Andy Duong, co-defendant in the Sheng Thao bribery and corruption trial was revealed this week through court records. On the January 2024 call, Jenkins and Duong discuss the recalls of mayor Sheng Thao and district attorney Pamela Price; council member Carroll Fife’s (District 3) push for the city to buy modular housing units from Duong’s company; an invitation for Jenkins to attend a yacht party, and more. Jenkins opens the call with a greeting: “Andy, what’s up, brother?” Duong replies, “More bitches, more bitches, brother,” to which Jenkins responds: “More bitches. Bring ‘em all here.” Read more

3. Oakland’s city construction contracts riddled with problems, audit finds

The Oakland city auditor released a report on the city’s construction contracts which found that a small group of construction companies received most of the lucrative business. The audit examined $330 million in contracts issued by the city over three years from 2022 to 2025 for roads, buildings, traffic lights, sewers, and other construction projects. According to the report, the city lacked adequate controls over payment processes, was slow in issuing payments to contractors, provided insufficient oversight of voter-approved bond measure funds, and lacked a long-term plan for carrying out capital projects. Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. Oakland schools trustee VanCedric Williams got paid by California teachers union. He denied it, then voted to approve teachers union contract

Oakland Unified School District trustee VanCedric Williams (District 3) voted to approve a contract with the Oakland Education Association teachers union that will cost the district an estimated additional $104.8 million over three years. Prior to that June 24 vote, trustee Mike Hutchinson (District 4) told Williams he should recuse himself because he is a paid board member of the California Teachers Association, which receives dues from OEA. Williams denied that he had a conflict of interest, stating that “I do not take a paycheck from CTA. They do not pay me a salary at all.” A review of IRS records shows that CTA reported paying Williams in each of the last three years for which it has filed. Meanwhile, Williams’ financial disclosure forms for those years listed no income from CTA. Read more

5. Fruitvale stabbing spree suspect’s case suspended due to mental illness

The suspect in a series of multiple random knife attacks which left one dead and four injured in Oakland’s Fruitvale district last month was referred to psychiatric evaluation this week by an Alameda County judge. The evaluation will determine whether the criminal prosecution will continue, or whether the defendant will be indefinitely committed to a state psychiatric facility. The judge has suspended the criminal case pending the outcome of the evaluation. The next hearing is set for October 16. Read more

Oakland Report’s Newsstand reviews 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.

Read all the headlines

We rely on your financial support

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. Our mission is to provide deep-dive, evidence-based reporting and analysis on government decisions that affect Oaklanders’ lives. We rely on voluntary donations from our readers — sign up today for a monthly or one-time donation in any amount you choose.

Donate now

Not ready to donate yet? Subscribe (it’s free).

Video montage 1. “It’s basically a law that’s not enforceable.” Oakland public ethics commission chair expresses frustration that it has no way to enforce the police commission’s violation of open meeting laws. (Video source: City of Oakland. Montage by Oakland Report.)

Oakland Agenda Watch provides summaries of upcoming public meeting agenda items that catch our attention. In this installment, we examine a “cure and correct” letter written by public ethics commission enforcement staff to the Oakland police commission.

Ten months later, the police commission considers a cure for having broken the rules

Oakland Police Commission regular meeting, Sept. 10, 2026, agenda item X

On August 19, Oakland’s public ethics commission (PEC) enforcement chief Tovah Ackerman notified the Oakland police commission that emails among four police commissioners on September 20–22 and October 10, 2025 violated Oakland’s sunshine ordinance and the Brown Act.1

Ackerman characterized her letter, which was issued on a public ethics commission letterhead, as “informal preliminary guidance.”

The PEC’s enforcement staff found that the four members of the police commission — Omar Farmer, Wilson Riles, Sam Dawit, and chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta — exchanged email communications regarding a ‘militarized equipment ad hoc committee’ recommendation to divest from an Oakland police department BearCat armored vehicle.

Notably, an earlier draft of the recommendation had said that OPD should not replace the BearCat at all.2

The complaint further alleges that a commissioner revised the ad hoc committee’s recommendation via these private exchanges, circumventing public meeting requirements.

Following these private email exchanges, the full police commission voted to adopt the ad hoc committee’s revised proposal during its November 20, 2025, special meeting.

That vote told the Oakland police department to give up its Lenco BearCat armored truck and buy two smaller armored SUVs.3

Ackerman’s August 19 letter further recommends that the police commission put its November 20, 2025 vote on armored vehicles back on the agenda to decide whether to “cure and correct” the violation.

PEC staff’s memo says the final version of the BearCat recommendation reflected the views of a commissioner who was not on the committee that wrote it, citing an interview with commissioner Omar Farmer.

A public comment filed with the PEC this week by Oakland resident Rajni Mandal asks the commission not to adopt the PEC staff’s recommendation as written.4

[Editors’ note: Mandal is an occasional Oakland Report contributing writer.]

The police commission put the PEC letter on today’s agenda for discussion and a potential vote.

The agenda describes the PEC’s guidance as concluding that the emails “constitute a meeting,” and asks commissioners to decide “whether the need exists to cure and correct” the November 20 vote.5

For the PEC’s part, it will not take up the case until September 16.6

‘It’s basically a law that’s not enforceable.... So if people want to violate it… it’s easy to violate’

The public ethics commission admitted that it has no real power to enforce the police commission’s sunshine ordinance violation when it discussed the matter on July 15, 2026.7

“I just want to be really clear that what we’re saying here as an ethics commission is that it’s basically a law that’s not enforceable, essentially. So if people want to violate it, and it’s easy to violate, you know, with messing up meeting notices and agendas and you have bodies that are volunteers and amateurs and stuff like that. So it really doesn’t give us a lot of help.”

– Francis Upton IV, public ethics commission chair, July 15, 2026

Oakland Report reviewed the full text of the sunshine ordinance violation regarding ‘serial meetings’ (such as by having four commissioners on an email discussing commission business, out of view of the public). Our conclusion: the police commission definitely appears to have violated the ordinance.

Notably, the PEC has yet to issue a ruling on the matter. At its July 15 meeting, PEC staff confirmed that it can notify commissions and ask them to voluntarily correct violations, but the PEC has no true enforcement mechanism.

Redo — and possibly overturn — the Bearcat vote?

The police commission’s agenda includes the option to redo its past vote to keep the Bearcat. The relevant agenda item reads, “Request regarding whether the need exists to cure and correct the Commission’s November 20, 2025, vote on Recommendation A”.

It is important to keep in mind that this recommendation (to redo the vote) was based solely on Farmer’s testimony, according to the PEC staff report. Farmer filed his complaint in April — five months after the emails had been sent around — asserting that the vote was invalid because of the ‘serial meeting’ issue created by the emails among police commissioners.

In sum, the PEC is basing its recommendation based on Farmer’s testimony alone, and now the proposed cure is for the police commission to reconsider (and possibly overturn) its previous vote.

The memo’s key source is a commissioner the council refused to reappoint — twice

Farmer’s own seat on the police commission has been in dispute for almost a year. The city council declined to reappoint Farmer twice, on October 21, 2025 and again on January 20, 2026.8

After the first council vote against reappointment, Farmer and chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta issued a statement accusing the police chief and blaming the city for “anti-commission harassment.”9

Related story:

Farmer’s term had expired in October 2025, but he stayed on as a ‘holdover’ alternate because no replacement had been seated.

The commission then used a different route to keep Farmer, defying the city council’s intent. City Charter section 604(d)(8) lets the commission elevate an ‘alternate’ to fill a permanent voting seat that becomes vacant for a reason other than an expired term.

Critically, the elevation of an ‘alternate’ is intended to maintain a quorum so the commission can conduct its business, but only the Selection Panel can officially fill a vacancy.

Commissioner Wilson Riles left the commission on February 2, 2026. (Riles passed away a few months later.)

On March 26, the police commission emerged from a closed session and announced that Farmer had “taken over the term of former Commissioner Wilson Riles.”

However, the posted March 26 agenda gave no public notice of any appointment — an apparent violation of the Brown Act.10

Read this related article:

Mandal, the same resident who filed this week’s public comment, filed a Brown Act “cure and correct” demand on March 31.

Police commission vice chair Shawana Booker then claimed that the announcement “was not a readout of a closed session vote.” However, the meeting video clearly shows Booker confirming that it was.

On April 9, city attorney Ryan Richardson issued an opinion that the commission “must take action, appropriately noticed,” to fill a vacancy, and that a person the council declined to reconfirm “is not qualified to serve a new fixed term.” The commission could seat Farmer only temporarily, Richardson wrote, and must replace him “promptly.”11

Two weeks later, on April 23, the police commission selected Farmer to assume the remainder of Riles’ term. The commission’s website now describes him as “serving in a holdover capacity as a Commissioner, not as an Alternate Commissioner,” with a term ending October 16, 2026.12

In other words, a holdover alternate whom the council twice declined to reappoint became a full commissioner without a council vote.

Farmer sat on the committee that drafted the BearCat recommendation and, at its September 2, 2025 meeting, defended the draft’s position not to replace the BearCat.

Farmer now sits on the police commission’s reconstituted “militarized equipment ad hoc committee,” alongside chair Garcia-Acosta and commissioner Shane Williams.

The facts of the matter are not in dispute. The sunshine ordinance expressly forbids serial emails among a quorum, and the PEC exists to enforce that rule.13

Aside from the revelation that the PEC actually has no enforcement mechanism to speak of, the question is one of order: Ten months after the violation occurred, who decides whether a violation occurred, and when?

The ordinance says a mandatory cure follows a PEC hearing, not a staff letter

The city’s sunshine ordinance section 2.20.270(D) says nothing stops a local body from curing a challenged action on its own. It further says that if the PEC, “upon the conclusion of a formal hearing conducted pursuant to its General Complaint Procedures” finds a violation, the body “shall agendize for immediate determination whether to correct and cure the violation.”

The police commission staff’s memo asks the PEC to “adopt a finding that sufficient evidence of a violation… exists and issue guidance to the Oakland Police Commission to agendize this matter.”

The memo itself says the section applies “when the PEC determines a violation has occurred.”

PEC staff Ackerman’s August 19 letter paraphrases the same section the same way: “when the PEC determines a violation has occurred, the local body… ‘shall agendize for immediate determination whether to correct and cure the violation.’” The words “upon the conclusion of a formal hearing” do not appear in her letter’s summary of the rule.

It stands to reason that a “sufficient evidence” finding at a regular meeting is not the same as a finding after a formal hearing.

The PEC’s own rules keep the decision with the ethics commission, not the police commission

The PEC’s “mediation and complaint procedures” outlines the correct sequence.

After an investigation, PEC staff writes a probable cause report. The PEC then reviews it and may close the case, ask for more investigation, or move toward a hearing.14

A violation is found “only if the weight of the evidence shows that it was more likely than not that a violation has occurred.” The procedures call for “a fair hearing for persons and entities accused of violations” among their purposes.

Ackerman’s August 19 letter reached the police commission before any of those steps happened at the commission level. Her letter does not hide this. It says staff “will present this information to the PEC at its regular meeting on September 16, 2026, and recommend that the PEC find a violation,” and that her “informal” guidance is issued “in anticipation of that meeting.” It asks the Police Commission to “notify PEC staff of any action it takes so that staff can report that activity in their presentation to the PEC.”

Counterpoint: the case for early guidance

PEC staff would likely make these points, which we offer here without further rebuttal:

• The ordinance directs the PEC to “provide information to other city departments and local bodies on appropriate ways in which to implement this ordinance.”

• The letter was labeled “informal” and “preliminary,” and framed as voluntary: “If you choose to do so.” It also asks that any re-agendized item “include a new opportunity for public comment.”

• At the PEC’s July 15 meeting, the enforcement chief said staff sometimes resolves sunshine ordinance issues informally, “short of an official formal commission action.”

• The November 20 vote was a recommendation to the City Council. The ordinance says a challenged advisory action does not stop the receiving body from acting.

Read this related article:

The police commission may cure on its own; whether it must is a question the PEC has not answered

Today’s item asks the police commission to treat a staff conclusion as if it were a commission finding. The ordinance’s mandatory cure follows a hearing and a PEC determination. Neither has occurred yet.

The public comment also asks the PEC to check whether former commissioner Sam Dawit and chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta were interviewed about how the BearCat recommendation changed.

The practical effect is that ten months after the apparent violation, the police commission appears set to vote on the police department’s use of the Bearcat vehicle — and potentially to overturn its previous vote.

Those are questions about the merits. The sequencing question is simpler: as of today, only PEC staff has declared a violation, not the PEC itself.

Whether the police commission will agree, ten months after the fact, remains to be seen.

Don’t miss a beat. Donate to support our nonprofit work.

Become a supporting member

14

City of Oakland. “Mediation and complaint procedures, §§ VI(A), VI(C).” Public Ethics Commission, effective Jan. 4, 2024. https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/boards-amp-commissions/documents/pec/enforcement/pec-complaint-procedures-effective-january-7-2024.pdf

---

WE RELY ON YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT

Oakland Report provides deep-dive, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. All contributions go directly to continuing our nonprofit work.

Donate now

Learn more

Oakland Agenda Watch provides short summaries of key items on public meeting agendas that catch our attention. Today we take a look at the year-end financial statements presented to the Oakland Unified School District board on September 9.

Oakland Unified’s general fund cash fell $100 million in a single year

Oakland Unified School District board meeting, Sept. 9, 2026, agenda item Q

On June 24, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board of education adopted a $1.2 billion budget for 2026-27. Its budget only balances if the district cuts another $30 million this fall — but it still hasn’t said where, exactly those cuts will land or what they will affect.1

OUSD’s chief financial officer described the math this way.2

“The question is, how do we end up with a positive fund balance if there’s a deficit? Well, because, if we were to cut $30 million from our budget, we end up with this amount.”

— OUSD chief financial officer Ryan Nguyen, June 24, 2026

It’s now two months into the new fiscal year.

The September 9 board meeting agenda lists four budget-related items: the ‘unaudited actuals’ that review OUSD’s year-end income and spending from 2025-26, its year-end general fund balances, an Education Protection Account (EPA) spending plan, and a resolution allowing the district to move cash between its own funds.345

Oakland Report examined all four reports. They show that the district’s cash on hand in its general fund shrank by $100 million last year, and it’s still unclear how or where the district plans to cut $30 million this year.

According to the year-end statements under review at today’s meeting, OUSD’s general fund cash started 2025-26 at $267.9 million and ended at $167.8 million. District staff project that it will shrink to $157.6 million by June 2027.

One month of the district’s payroll costs roughly $60 million.

Key findings

• The district’s general fund cash fell $100 million in a single year. Its main unrestricted fund shrank from $267.9 million to $167.8 million.

• OUSD ended the 2025-26 fiscal year with $16.4 million more than it projected in May. Unrestricted money — the part the district can spend on anything — ended the year at $32.3 million.

• But only $4.2 million of that is free to use. $27.7 million is locked in required emergency reserves.

• The district still hasn’t informed the public where it will find another $30 million in cuts this year. Its “Next Steps” slide says only that it will “continue financial stabilization efforts.”

Subscribe to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

The district’s financial year ended better than it projected

‘Unaudited actuals’ are not a budget forecast or an adopted budget. In financial terms, ‘actuals’ show the real amount of funding the district brought in and how much it spent in the previous fiscal year.

Year-end actuals typically provide a truer picture of a public agency’s finances than its board-approved budget and forecasts, which sometimes are based on hopes and dreams as much as the financial realities the agency faces.

OUSD’s unaudited actuals show that in fiscal year 2025-26, the district took in $838.5 million and spent $924.7 million from its general fund.

Including transfers, its general fund balance shrank by $91.5 million, from $261.6 million to $170.1 million.

That is a substantial difference, but it is smaller than the district predicted. Staff say the district’s deficit spending ended $20 million below what the June 2025 budget projected.

Nearly every spending category came in under budget, more than offsetting a $30 million drop in restricted revenue.

The district is moving to shuffle money between funds

The district is seeking permission to allow the general fund to ‘lend’ cash to three smaller funds — adult education, child development, and cafeteria — when their state and federal reimbursements arrive late.

This type of interfund loan is permitted under the Education Code and is not uncommon.

Loans must be repaid within the year, and staff must report every transfer at the First and Second Interim financial reports.

The same presentation shows why the timing of cash being available matters. As noted above, one month of the district’s payroll costs roughly $60 million.

Share this story with someone you know.

Share

The district’s financial cushion is smaller than it appears

Most of the district’s ‘extra’ money sits in its restricted funds, which grew to $137.8 million. Those funds are legally tied only to specific programs. District staff attribute the increase partly to unspent EPA and Title I grant money last year.

The district’s unrestricted balance is what matters for the question of where the board’s as-yet-unspecified $30 million in new cuts will come from.

As of June 30, that unrestricted balance was $32.3 million. Of that, $27.7 million is the district’s ‘reserve for economic uncertainties’ — a rainy day fund set at 3 percent of spending, per board policy. Another roughly $350,000 is nonspendable for various reasons.

That leaves only $4.2 million available, which staff have assigned to “budget balancing solutions going forward.”

The data suggests that the better-than-expected year-end balance covers around one-seventh of the promised $30 million in cuts.

Read this related article:

A fourth budget-related item on the agenda about Education Protection Act funding is routine. OUSD expects to receive around $57.5 million in Proposition 30/55 money and plans to spend all of it on teacher salaries and benefits, as the state constitution requires. District staff are careful to note that EPA “is not new or additional money.”

Other considerations and counterpoints

We present these counterpoints for readers to consider:

• These figures are prepared by district staff and are unaudited; the independent audit is due in December.

• The final state budget also added around $8 million in cost-of-living money and up to $12 million for special education.6 District staff say updated projections will follow.

• The district’s new unaudited actuals suggest that the required cut is now smaller than $30 million.

• Staff note that the district’s financial reserves meet both the 2 percent state and 3 percent board minimums.

• The district’s finances ended fiscal year 2025-26 in better shape than it projected.

‘Still planning to implement’ the cuts

Alameda County superintendent Alysse Castro wrote on June 18 that OUSD identified “a single budget revision of $30 million in future reductions that have not yet been specified.”7

Without these cuts, she wrote, the district “would be unable to meet the 2 percent state-required [reserve] in 2026-27.”

In August, district staff told the board they were “still planning to implement” the $30 million reduction.

Meanwhile, the district appears to have burned through $100 million of its cash balance last year — and as of today, exactly how it plans to cut another $30 million remains unknown to the public.

BECOME A SUPPORTING MEMBER

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. If you value our work, please donate.

Donate to Oakland Report

Editor’s note

Oakland Report publishes commentaries from influential voices about current issues in Oakland. We invite counterpoint commentaries from other leading voices. Do you have something to say on this issue or others? Visit our About page for more information.

Learn more

Standing clear is safer this year

If a knife falls off the kitchen counter, you shouldn’t try to catch it before it hits the floor.

In financial markets, “catching a falling knife” describes the stock market crashing. Trying to buy in before it hits rock bottom is akin to grabbing a plunging blade — you risk severe injury (financial loss) rather than waiting until it’s safe to pick it up.

It’s also common knowledge that a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.

This is because a dull blade requires more force, which makes it more likely to slip, move erratically, and cut you before you even realize what happened — especially when you’re working fast.

This is why experienced chefs (and financial advisors) know that unless you absolutely must stop the knife before it hits the floor, it’s better to stand clear and let it fall.

Which brings us to the 2026 Oakland elections.

Subscribe to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

The shifting dynamics of Oakland politics

The recent defeat of Measure E and before that, the successful recalls of mayor Sheng Thao and district attorney Pamela Price exposed shifting dynamics in Oakland politics — and how much “Oakland progressive” branding, while still potent in some quarters, appears to have thinned.12

It also showed that a new message resonated with Oakland voters and revealed new maps of political support for prioritizing ethics, accountability, and practical results in local government.34

Mayor Barbara Lee campaigned heavily in support of Measure E.5 After voters rejected the measure, a path seemed to open for a competitive candidate to challenge and potentially unseat Lee from the mayor’s office in 2026.

Perhaps the strongest potential challenger was Loren Taylor, who came very close to winning the mayor’s seat in both the regular election in 2022 and in the post-recall election in 2024.

But, despite receiving a fair amount of encouragement from civic-minded Oaklanders to run for mayor again, Taylor ultimately decided to sit this one out.

I asked Taylor why he did not file to run this year, and this was his response:

“Most Oaklanders acknowledge that we’re still not moving with the focus and urgency that we need on our most critical issues. While the coalition we’ve built [the one that defeated Measure E] is united around solving these most critical problems, not all agree that changing mayors at this time is the highest priority for Oakland. I decided not to run for mayor in this year’s election because I believe it better to focus our coalition on the priority issues we agree on instead of making the Mayor’s race the focus, which would distract and divide us.”

— Loren Taylor, former Oakland council member and mayoral contender

Why are fewer qualified candidates running for mayor and council this year?

The 2022 city elections saw competitive races across the board, including the mayor’s race. Sheng Thao ultimately won that race by fewer than 700 ranked-choice votes — a mere fraction of a percentage point.6

Back in 2022, ten people ran for mayor, including three sitting council members and one former council member. That election also showed just how competitive Oakland politics had become: council districts 2, 4, and 6 all featured strong challengers. Since the 2022 election cycles, six first-time council members were elected (Oakland has eight council members plus a mayor).7

In 2026, it’s almost the exact opposite situation. This year, the mayor’s seat and three council seats in districts 2, 4, and 6 are up for election again — but there are very few competitive races.

(Notably, the Oakland Unified School District board elections are genuinely competitive races this year — but that is a topic for another commentary.)

This year, only four people are running for mayor, and based on campaign finance filings to date, there has been relatively little fundraising or institutional support among the challengers, with Lee far and away in the lead.89

Candidate Mindy Pechanuk appears to have the most organized base, with a small but passionate group of mostly local conservatives — but her supporters’ numbers appear to be limited, compared to Lee’s juggernaut.

Candidate Brenda Grisham, a prominent figure in the 2022 district attorney recall, is a compelling candidate but hasn’t seemed to gain momentum. And like Grisham, candidate Julius Robinson also has not reported any campaign funds raised as of June 30.

Unless Barbara Lee, who is 80 years old, withdraws or becomes incapacitated from old age before election day, she appears to be a lock to win election to a full term as mayor.

(Whether Lee’s advancing age could lead to incapacitation after she is elected is a real and present concern that voters have to reckon with and decide for themselves — as they have with octogenarian candidates in other elections across the country.)

Share this article with someone you know

Share

What about the city council races?

On city council, District 2’s Charlene Wang has drawn a somewhat competitive challenger in Nate Adams — a self-described “democratic socialist” candidate whose polished marketing materials and campaigning seem to be popping up all over Oakland lately.

Candidate Adams appears to be working hard to raise his profile and appeal to Oaklanders, but so far his campaign appears to have limited institutional support and fundraising, compared to the relatively more moderate incumbent.

Adams’ campaign provides a potentially interesting test: has the “democratic socialists of America” (DSA) movement run out the clock on their effectiveness, entering “useful idiot” territory, for local progressives? Notably, Adams appears to have virtually no meaningful support from the local progressive institutions.

The progressive incumbents have lately appeared to shift toward a somewhat more pro-tech, pro-business platform — possibly out of self-preservation — as voter sentiment has shifted toward fixing Oakland’s day-to-day problems like public safety, encampments and illegal dumping, not to mention the city’s infamous, chronic governmental dysfunction.10

For her part, the incumbent Wang is a fairly visible and active council member who regularly engages with her constituents. She appears to be safe from Adams’ challenge — but it is still early in the contest.

The District 4 race is an interesting situation. The incumbent influencer/singer/council member, Janani Ramachandran drew no challengers, despite hailing from a politically active district that has produced Oakland’s previous three mayors, and despite concerns about her lack of gravitas and her potential self-dealing.11

Read this related story:

District 6 incumbent council president Kevin Jenkins drew one challenger: the persistent Nancy Sidebotham, who has run in seemingly every election possible for decades. Sidebotham typically hasn’t raised or spent much money in her campaigns — instead, she appears to mostly use her candidacy as a pulpit to spread awareness about Oakland’s dysfunction.

I respect Sidebotham because I find her observations about Oakland’s problems are mostly spot-on. But District 6 is not exactly a competitive race — unless there is an “October surprise” in store for incumbent council member Jenkins related to the Sheng Thao federal corruption trial, which is set to begin October 19.12

(Jenkins is a witness in the trial and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.)

What about the city auditor’s race?

Incumbent city auditor Michael Houston is running unopposed for re-election. This is consistent with the last three election cycles that have seen no competition for this important role.

Perhaps this is because one actually has to be professionally qualified to effectively perform the role of city auditor (unlike city council, where the bar for qualification is quite a bit lower).1314

Even the mayor’s seat — the most important and consequential elected position in the city — appears to be elected on vibes as much as qualifications. For example, Sheng Thao won the mayor’s seat in 2022 even after demonstrating her inability to explain basic government functions like how a municipal bond works.15

It’s all vibes here in Oakland, baby.

But vibes won’t fix our city’s serious financial problems — and that’s just the tip of the knife.

Past is prologue to Oakland’s precarious present

It may seem like ancient history, but to understand Oakland’s current financial predicament, it’s important to go back to where it started. Here are five key events that knocked the knife off the counter:

1. The Oakland Coliseum deal. The city tied our financial future to the sale of the Oakland Coliseum to the African-American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG), counting on that money to help stabilize the city’s finances. Then the city failed to ever receive the money it was promised, helping force us into austerity measures.16

2. Measure NN and Oakland’s police staffing. Voters passed Measure NN on a promise of the city maintaining a minimum of 700 officers. The city then did its usual Lucy-Charlie Brown football pull, and used the money to patch the budget instead.17

3. Measure E parcel tax rejected. Taxpayers finally had enough of the lack of transparency and the waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Oakland. After voters rejected the new tax, the city suddenly found the magic beans after all, and saved the budget, again — for now.18

4. Budget alarm bells. Oh, and the Alameda County Grand Jury and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute both released comprehensive reports sounding the alarm on the existential severity of Oakland’s budget crisis.1920

5. “No coal” lawsuit. A potential $600-plus million judgment from the Oakland coal lawsuit saga is still looming like an iceberg waiting for the Titanic.2122

All of the above events were and continue to be very bad for the city of Oakland — financially, politically, and most importantly, for everyday Oaklanders who depend on and deserve a fully functioning city.

Unless something drastic changes, Oakland’s financial future looks like bankruptcy is near.

Given all this, it’s reasonable that few qualified potential candidates are eager to pause their professional careers and other successful pursuits to challenge Oakland’s current roster of incumbents.

Who wants to be in charge of a potentially soon-to-be-bankrupt city — where the elected leaders may soon no longer control the city’s budget, can’t deliver the services people need and deserve, and are effectively little more than rubber stamps and punching bags for problems they no longer have control over but still are responsible for solving?

I surely don’t.

Perhaps the more interesting question is who does want to seek or remain in office under these circumstances — and what’s in it for them?

The knife’s edge — Sheng Thao’s corruption trial

If the Sheng Thao trial proceeds as scheduled, Oaklanders may be forced to confront questions that cannot simply be wished away: how deep did the corruption run, who was involved, and how did so many people in positions of power and responsibility fail to see — or choose not to see — what was happening?

Like the knife falling from the kitchen counter, Oaklanders would be wise to let it fall to the floor, then reckon honestly with the damage it has caused.

Civic-minded Oaklanders can learn much from this trial — that is, if it proceeds all the way to trial. (All four of the key defendants — Sheng Thao, her partner Andre Jones, and Andy Duong and David Duong of California Waste Solutions have pleaded not guilty.)

A full and fair trial, with all the testimony and evidence presented for the public to see, deserves close public scrutiny by every Oaklander, because it will tell us just how deep the rot goes and who was involved. Otherwise, after the knife has finished its descent and the damage is done, how will Oaklanders know who to trust, what we’re walking into, or who we’re really dealing with?

Read this related story:

Another important factor: Oakland’s toxic political environment

Oakland has developed a political environment that makes running for office look less like public service and more like volunteering for a four-year public bloodletting.

And I believe that’s intentional, by the way.

I can speak from first-hand experience here. Run hard against Oakland’s “progressives,” and masked protestors just might march on your home and vandalize it.23 Lies and rumors just might be circulated about you in a coordinated smear campaign.24 City departments like the Public Ethics Commission and City Attorney’s Office could even become weaponized against you, simply for asking tough questions about accountability that Oaklanders ask every day in this city.25

For a prospective candidate who has a lot to lose — friends, employment prospects, reputation — against tactics such as this, why risk the possibility of weaponized media coverage, coordinated smears, bot armies, and cancellation, just to win an office and inherit a city burdened with enormous and potentially insurmountable fiscal and structural challenges?

Which brings me to my last question.

Why are so few candidates willing to challenge the political establishment by running hard to the left of the current “progressive” regime?

Notably, the same “progressives” who spent years accusing recall leaders of secretly plotting a right wing, “billionaire” tech takeover of Oakland are now defending data centers to voters, and rolling out the red carpet for corporations owned by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

(I’m not offering a political position on data centers or billionaires; I’m merely pointing out the hypocrisy and apparent political opportunism.)

District 3 council member Carroll Fife, who is not up for re-election until 2028, is now arguing with her (former?) base of supporters over her support for bringing data centers to West Oakland.26 This would have been unheard of just a few years ago.

“Progressive” darling Barbara Lee is now taking gleeful photo-op pictures with AI robots meant to replace human labor — including in those very data centers.27

The challenger for the District 2 council seat, the democratic socialist Nate Adams appears to be sincere in his efforts to flank Oakland’s political establishment from the left — but it remains to be seen whether the electorate has the appetite for an even harder turn to the extreme left than Oakland already lives with.

It’s all weird right now.

I believe it’s because Oakland’s “grassroots” progressive movement has always been astroturfed to a large degree by elite donors, nonprofits, foundations, and corporations with ulterior motives, despite posturing to the contrary. This is ironic because accusing their opponents of elitism and fakery is a go-to tactic of Oakland’s progressives.

In my experience, many progressive accusations sound a lot like confessions. Their favored politicians’ latest twist with data centers (not to mention surveillance tech like Flock cameras) is a prime example of this.

Take Piedmont billionaire Quinn Delaney and her husband, real estate developer Wayne Jordan. They have contributed millions to local “progressive” causes in recent years.28 Take for another example tech companies like Meta giving seed funding to progressive-friendly local nonprofit news media outlets like The Oaklandside.29

But more recently, the Oakland power-progressives have appeared far more hesitant to bring new ideas and people into their inner circle. Their operating principle now seems to be “No New Friends.”30

Why is that?

I believe it’s because as the political machine currently in power, they’re on the hot seat for Oakland’s current dysfunction.

Furthermore, with the Sheng Thao trial looming and new disclosures coming out, it seems that there are many among the in-group who possess compromising information about each other. Bringing new people into the inner circle could upset the equilibrium of what I believe — and the trial could prove — is a coordinated grift that involves many more people than just the four defendants currently charged.

So why would anyone who is successful in the world outside of local government and politics want to walk into the mess that is Oakland City Hall at this moment?

I certainly don’t.

Let the knife hit the floor.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seneca Scott is a political strategist, writer, and organizer working at the intersection of media, power, and civic reform. Based in Oakland and Nashville, he has become a prominent voice on municipal governance and institutional accountability in America’s cities.

A national CBS contributor, Scott has appeared in local, national, and international outlets analyzing public-sector politics, urban decline, and political realignment. He is best known for his leadership role in the successful recall of Oakland’s former mayor— a grassroots effort that placed government accountability at the center of public debate.

Scott previously served as East Bay Director for SEIU Local 1021, representing thousands of public-sector workers and leading major contract campaigns and labor actions. As an organizing director for multiple unions across California, he built worker-led coalitions and negotiated complex agreements in highly charged political environments.

His writing has appeared in Newsweek, Compact Magazine, City Journal, and The Free Press, where he focuses on governance, fiscal policy, and the future of American cities.

A graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Scott ran for mayor of Oakland in 2022 on a charter reform platform advocating a stronger mayoral system, drawing on SPUR’s 2021 report, Making Government Work. During the recall effort, he founded Gotham Oakland, an independent media platform dedicated to exposing municipal corruption and challenging local political dysfunction.

Through consulting, media, and organizing, he works to advance transparency, fiscal discipline, and institutional reform at the local level.

DONATE TO OAKLAND REPORT

We rely on voluntary contributions from readers like you. Your tax-deductible gift helps us continue to produce deeply researched, unflinching articles like this one.

Donate now

Thank you.

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we examine the paper trail behind Oakland school board member VanCedric Williams’ claim that the state teachers union does not pay him.

“I do not take a paycheck from CTA”

On June 24, 2026, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board approved a new contract with teachers union Oakland Education Association (OEA). The new contract will cost OUSD an estimated additional $104.8 million over three years.1

Before the vote, OUSD board member Mike Hutchinson asked whether his colleague, board member VanCedric Williams had a conflict of interest.

Williams sits on the board of directors of the California Teachers Association (CTA), OEA’s statewide parent union. Hutchinson asked whether CTA paid him.23

“I do not take a paycheck from CTA. They do not pay me a salary at all. Let’s just be clear, that’s misinformation, that’s distortion, that’s misleading folks and I’m appalled by this false information.”

— OUSD director VanCedric Williams, June 24, 2026

Then the district’s legal advisor stated that because Williams was not paid for his CTA role, there was no conflict.4

Williams voted yes to approve the teachers union contract. It passed 5–0, with Hutchinson abstaining.5

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 4 that San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), which employs Williams as a teacher, confirmed he is on paid leave to work full time for CTA. It also reported that CTA reimburses SFUSD for his salary and benefits.

Oakland Report examined CTA’s filings with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They show CTA also pays Williams directly, starting in 2022.

Key findings

• CTA has reported paying Williams in each of its last three IRS filings. CTA reports paying Williams $4,877 for the ten weeks of 2022 after he joined its board; $48,695 in 2023; and $52,731 in 2024.

• Williams disclosed no income from CTA on any of his four annual Form 700 disclosure statements. His 2023 statement has no income schedule attached. His 2025 statement was filed the morning of the June 24 vote.

• State law names the union (CTA) as the payer. Education Code section 44987 requires the union to repay the district for all compensation paid during a leave from union office.

• The union that pays Williams also helped fund his re-election. CTA gave $97,000 to OEA’s political action committee (PAC) in 2024; the PAC spent $63,076 supporting Williams, more than on any other candidate. Notably, Williams sits on CTA’s “Budget and Political Involvement” committees.

Subscribe for free to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

What CTA’s tax returns say

Nonprofits, including unions, annually file a Form 990 with the IRS. Part VII of the form lists each director’s hours and pay. The form’s Column D reports compensation on a W-2 or 1099 issued by the organization itself.

CTA’s Form 990 for the year ending Aug. 31, 2024 lists Williams as a director working 40 hours per week, with $42,186 in Column D and $6,509 in other compensation.6

The prior year’s return lists him “from 10/23/22,” also at 40 hours, with $3,754 and $1,123. A third return, for the year ending Aug. 31, 2025, reports $46,530 in Column D and $6,201 in other compensation for calendar 2024.

CTA filed it on June 30, 2026 — six days after the June 24 vote.7

All three filings describe CTA’s officers and directors as “released educators” whose districts pay their salaries. CTA reimburses districts in amounts “ranging from basic substitute cost to fully loaded regular salary including benefits.”

Williams’ pay is typical of CTA’s directors. What is unusual is a director who also sits on a school board that bargains with a CTA local.

Was Williams telling the truth?

Williams’ statement was accurate in one narrow sense: his paycheck is issued by SFUSD. But the law that puts him on leave says who really pays.

Education Code section 44987 requires a district to grant leave “without loss of compensation” so an employee can serve as an elected officer of a statewide union. It further requires the union to repay the district for that compensation within 10 days of being billed.8

SFUSD’s paychecks to Williams are legally required pass-through compensation — and in addition to that reimbursement, CTA reports paying Williams directly.

Follow the money

Full-time CTA dues are $858 for 2025–26; with about 2,600 OEA members, Oakland teachers send CTA roughly $2.2 million a year.910

The dues formula rises with statewide average teacher pay, so raises won in Oakland and the 31 other districts in CTA’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign feed the union’s future revenue.

CTA’s board — Williams among them — oversees that budget.

In 2024, CTA supplied $97,000 of the OEA PAC’s roughly $179,000 (Figure 4).1112

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a board member paid by a union — whose re-election that union largely funded — would find it hard to weigh a contract with that union’s local impartially.

What does conflict of interest law say?

The Political Reform Act says officials should act “free from bias caused by their own financial interests or the financial interests of persons who have supported them.” It also states that an official may not take part in a decision that could materially affect a “source of income” of $500 or more in the prior 12 months.13

The OUSD attorney’s legal advice may have rested on the exception that salary paid by a government agency does not technically count as “income” under the Act.14

However, CTA’s direct payments to Williams are different. They come directly from a union, not as a pass-through by a government agency.

The most recently published remunerations to Willams were in calendar year 2024 — outside the 12 months before the June 24 vote. But if the payments continued into that window, CTA appears to be a direct source of income to Williams under the Act.

A related rule, the “nexus” test, treats a financial effect on a source of income as material when the official is paid to advance that source’s goals.15

Board members must also list every non-government source of $500 or more in income on an annual Form 700, due April 1.16

None of Williams’ four statements lists CTA as a source of income. The 2023 statement attaches only Schedule B, for one piece of Oakland real property. Schedule C, for income, is not attached. The 2022, 2024 and 2025 statements each check “None — no reportable interests on any schedule.”

All Williams’ Forms 700 were filed after April 1. His 2025 statement was signed at 11:41 a.m. on June 24, 2026 — hours before the board met and voted on the OEA contract that afternoon.17

Whether CTA’s payments fit one of the Act’s exclusions from “income” is a question for the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). If they do not, the filings appear to omit a reportable source of income in three consecutive years.

Why ‘legal and common’ is not the end of the question

The release arrangement is “legal and common” in public education, as the Chronicle noted. But the Legislature already treats some common arrangements as conflicts too serious to allow. For example, a district’s own employee cannot sit on its board.18

The state also requires disclosing the true source of money routed through a middleman.1920

Research finds that self-interest shapes judgment without the person noticing — even at seemingly minor sums — and disclosure alone can make bias worse. This is why the law typically calls for recusal, not self-discipline.2122

Read this related article:

Other considerations and counterpoints

We offer these countering facts for readers to consider:

• Within CTA, Williams’ pay is typical. The release arrangement is required by state law and it applies to all CTA directors.

• Calendar year 2025 financials are not public yet, and the return covering 2024 was filed six days after the vote.

• When voters elected Williams in 2020 and 2024, they ostensibly knew that he was a union teacher.

• OEA also spent about $20,000 supporting Hutchinson in 2020. OEA appears not to have financially supported Hutchinson since.

• Williams’ vote on the OEA union contract was not decisive. The contract passed 5–0.

• Form 700 omissions are often resolved by amendment and a modest fine. The FPPC decides whether a payment falls within an exclusion.

• Board president Jennifer Brouhard has publicly stated that there is no conflict between the board and the union.23

• Supporters say competitive teacher pay helps a district that struggles to keep teachers. The county office of education has said that OUSD has the resources to pay for the OEA contract this year.

• Williams did not respond to the San Francisco Chronicle’s inquiries about his compensation. Oakland Report invites Williams, CTA, and/or OUSD to respond — we will publish their response, if offered.

What the record shows

Three facts are on the record:

CTA’s own tax filings report paying Williams in each of the three years since he joined its board.

The law that put Williams on leave from SFUSD names the CTA union as the payer of his SFUSD salary.

Williams’ own disclosure statements, including one signed the morning of the vote, report no income from CTA.

Williams’ June 24 statement that the union does not pay him appears to be in conflict with those facts — and the board’s legal advisor appeared to affirm Williams’ description of his compensation before the OUSD board voted.

Whether this violates the Political Reform Act is for the FPPC or a court to decide. Whether it should have led to recusal is a question for Oaklanders to 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 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

Learn more

Oakland Report is taking a closer look at the federal corruption case against former mayor Sheng Thao. In this installment, we reproduce in full a court exhibit that includes the transcript of a January 2024 recorded telephone call between Andy Duong and an Oakland city council member whose name is withheld in the filing.

The call transcript is available in public court records. Duong’s lawyers want to exclude it from the trial

The document reproduced below is a court reporter’s transcription of an eight-minute telephone call on Jan. 19, 2024, between Andy Duong — California Waste Solutions (CWS) executive and co-founder of modular housing venture Evolutionary Homes — and an Oakland city council member whose name is withheld in the exhibit.

Federal prosecutors filed it on September 3 in United States v. Sheng Thao, as Exhibit A to a declaration by assistant U.S. attorney Molly Priedeman supporting the government’s opposition to a defense motion to keep much of it out of the trial.1

Oakland Report verified the transcript against the copy on the court’s public docket, which is available for public view.

Federal prosecutors first described the recording in pretrial filings on July 24 as a phone call Duong recorded with an unnamed Oakland council member about recall campaigns, including the one against then-mayor Sheng Thao.2

The exhibit withholds two identities: the council member, and the county’s elected prosecutor, shown in the transcript as “[local elected prosecutor].”

Alameda County’s district attorney in January 2024 was Pamela Price. The exhibit does not name her. No current or former Oakland council member has been charged in the case.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe for free to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

Background

A federal grand jury indicted Thao, her longtime partner Andre Jones, CWS president and CEO David Duong, and his son Andy Duong on Jan. 9, 2025, on conspiracy, bribery and honest-services fraud charges. The grand jury further indicted the younger Duong with lying to federal agents.

Prosecutors allege that Thao promised to commit the city to buy modular housing units from the Duongs’ housing company, as well as to extend CWS’s recycling contract with the city and appoint officials the Duongs selected.

In exchange, prosecutors allege, Thao was to be the beneficiary of a $75,000 negative mailer campaign against her 2022 opponents, and her partner Jones paid $95,000 for a no-show job. All four have pleaded not guilty.34

Mario Juarez, identified in court records as “Co-Conspirator 1,” and former San Leandro council member Bryan Azevedo have pleaded guilty in related cases and are on the government’s witness list.56

On June 20, 2024, FBI agents raided the homes of Thao, Jones and the Duongs, and CWS’s offices.7

Oakland voters recalled Thao on Nov. 5, 2024, the same day county voters recalled Price.8

The trial is scheduled to begin October 19 with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presiding.910

How the call transcript reached the public docket

The transcript is not evidence the government chose to actively publicize. On August 27, Andy Duong’s lawyers moved to exclude parts of this recording, along with other evidence, from the trial. In their motion to exclude the evidence, the defense argued that it is irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial to the proceedings.

Prosecutors attached the transcript to their written opposition, filed September 3 with Priedeman’s declaration. From there it made its way into the public court records.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers is scheduled to hear argument on the motion in Oakland on September 11. Whether jurors will hear the recording during the trial is not yet decided.

The context of the call

The call was placed three weeks after Oakland police officer Tuan Le was shot and killed on Dec. 29, 2023, while responding to a burglary near Jack London Square.11 The killing occurred about two weeks after organizers announced a recall campaign against Thao, and while a separate campaign to recall Price was gathering signatures.1213

What the call was about

The call begins with the council member’s greeting: “Andy, what’s up, brother?” Duong answers, “More bitches, more bitches, brother.”

The council member replies, “More bitches. Bring ‘em all here.”

Duong then raises a text he had sent about “the cruise tomorrow” — “If you can roll then we can party up up in the yacht.” After the council member begs off the invitation, Duong says he will “keep you posted on another one. Next them we do a — a private one for us only.”

Later in the call, Duong tells the council member that “we put a stop to” the recall after meeting with “Nikki” — apparently a reference to then-council president Nikki Fortunato Bas.14 Duong says he “confronted” the prosecutor and gave her “the opportunity” to prosecute the men accused of killing Officer Le, adding that “a lot of folks is hitting us up to fund the recall.”

Duong recounts telling “Sheng” that if she wanted “another term” she had “better start acting right” about spending “the fund” on housing units, after which “Jestin” — a reference to then-city administrator Jestin Johnson, according to prosecutors — “showed up,” which Duong calls a “win-win” that would “save their next election and the recall.”

Duong goes on to says that a council member he calls “Carol” was angry the city had not “bought unit from you guys.”

The council member asks Duong to line up business owners to support a coming RV policy.

Duong invites the council member to tour the units at his Embarcadero office.

The council member replies, “Just shoot me some dates and I’ll come over.”

Oakland Report presents the full transcript below for readers to review.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Names and references in the transcript

The speakers refer to several people by first name only. The identifications below are Oakland Report’s reading of the context, not the court’s. Apart from Andy Duong and Sheng Thao, no one listed here is charged in this case.

• Andy Duong — Executive with California Waste Solutions and co-founder of Evolutionary Homes, according to the indictment. Duong is a defendant in the trial and has pleaded not guilty.

• “Sheng” — Sheng Thao, mayor of Oakland from January 2023 until her recall took effect in December 2024. Thao is a defendant in the trial and has pleaded not guilty.

• “Nikki” — Nikki Fortunato Bas, Oakland City Council president from 2021-2024; then served as interim mayor. She is now an Alameda County supervisor. Fortunato Bas is named on the government’s witness list.

• “Carol” — Council member Carroll Fife, whose District 3 includes West Oakland; Duong refers to “her West Oakland.” Fife has said she toured an Evolutionary Homes model at the California Waste Solutions building in early 2024.

• “Jestin” — Jestin Johnson, Oakland city administrator at the time of the call, who later resigned amid a text messaging scandal. Johnson is named on the government’s witness list.

• “[local elected prosecutor]” — The name of this person was redacted by the filer. The Alameda County district attorney in January 2024 was Pamela Price, whom voters recalled on Nov. 5, 2024.

• “Carl” / “Carl Chan” — President of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and a principal officer of Save Alameda For Everyone, the committee behind the Price recall.15

• “Greg McConnell” — Longtime Oakland business lobbyist.16

• “Loren” — Loren Taylor, former council member and runner-up to Thao in the 2022 mayoral election. Thao won by 677 ranked-choice votes.17

• “Ignacio” — Ignacio De La Fuente, former council president and a 2022 mayoral candidate.18

• “Tuan Le” — Oakland police officer Tuan Le, 36, killed in the line of duty on Dec. 29, 2023.

• “the units” / “the office, Embarcadero” — Evolutionary Homes displayed converted shipping container modular housing units at the California Waste Solutions headquarters at 1211 Embarcadero, where prosecutors say the city administrator toured the showroom.

• OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER — The Oakland council member with whom the younger Duong was speaking on the call is not named in the exhibit. Duong’s motion describes the other speaker as an uncharged local politician and an uncharged Oakland official.

Other considerations: what Andy Duong’s lawyers argue

The transcript is available in the public court docket. Oakland Report is publishing the transcript in full below for readers to review.

Andy Duong has asked the court to keep parts of it from the jury. His argument, from his August 27 motion, is summarized below without rebuttal, for readers to review and consider.

• The recording, Duong’s lawyers write, contains “no mention of alleged bribery or payments of any kind,” and so has no bearing on the charge that Duong bribed Thao.

• They ask the court to exclude the first minute of the call on grounds that it would paint Duong to the jury as a “foul-mouthed party boy” under Rule 403, which allows a judge to bar relevant evidence when its prejudicial effect substantially outweighs its value as proof.

• Duong’s lawyers also ask the court to exclude the passage in which Duong describes confronting the elected prosecutor and heading off the recall, arguing that neither the murder case nor his relationship with that prosecutor bears on the bribery charges. They assert that the passage would suggest to jurors that he is politically corrupt in a general way.

• They argue in the alternative that if prosecutors are offering the passage as evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), the government missed the court’s May 19, 2026 deadline to give written notice of how it intends to use such evidence.

• An appendix to the motion indexes the specific portions of the recording Duong seeks to exclude.

Duong is represented by Winston Chan and Christine Bonomo of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; W. Douglas Sprague and Bryanna Walker of Covington & Burling; and Erik Babcock of the Law Offices of Erik Babcock.

The transcript

Transcription note: The text below reproduces the court reporter’s transcript verbatim, including filler words, grammar as spoken, and profanity. Bracketed text (for example, “[local elected prosecutor]”) is shown as it appears in the filed exhibit.

(Begin transcription 00:00 – 08:20)

(Telephone ringing.)

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Andy, what’s up, brother?

ANDY DUONG: More bitches, more bitches, brother.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: More bitches. Bring ‘em all here.

ANDY DUONG: What’s up, brother? How you doing? You out of town?

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Nah. I’m here. I’m at City Hall right now. What you up to?

ANDY DUONG: Just, you know, been busy. Back to back meeting all night and stuff. Yesterday they, uh — followed by yesterday, too. Just trying to wrap up the week. But, umm, I just want to give you a call, if you got my text about the, uh, the cruise tomorrow.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah, I got it. I can’t make it tomorrow. I’m supposed to, like, be in Sacramento and be with my girlfriend at the same time.

ANDY DUONG: Oh.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: It’s crazy.

ANDY DUONG: Oh, shit. Okay, okay. Yeah, it’s all good.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah.

ANDY DUONG: But, yeah, but it would have been a, you know, a good event. Just want to, you know, make sure that you get the invitation. If you can roll then we can party up up in the yacht. But, uh, yeah. I’ll keep you posted on another one. Next them we do a — a private one for us only.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay. For sure. What’s up? Uh, are these recalls gonna go through?

ANDY DUONG: Uh, what’s that?

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Are these recalls gonna go through?

ANDY DUONG: Oh, the recall? Nah. We — we put a stop to it. We — I met up with, uh, with Nikki. Uh, and you know, of course Nikki’s working, you know, close with, uh, with Sheng. So, uh, we temporary put a stop. But in terms of [local elected prosecutor], I give her, you know — umm, I confronted her, give her the opportunity to, you know, take the lead on prosecuting all the criminals that, you know, kill the officer, you know, Tuan Le. So —

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: (Unintelligible.)

ANDY DUONG: — uh, she said that, you know, she’s going after them, pushing for, you know, 50 years and possibility no parole. But she needs more evidence to do the enhancement on proving that, you know, the criminal knew that it was, you know, a cop. So —

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah.

ANDY DUONG: Yep. We — we — we waiting. We giving her, you know, the opportunity to, you know, to take the action. If not, then, you know, the community gonna continue on their path, which is the recall. And a lot of folks is hitting us up to fund the recall. So, you know, we just, uh, uh, trying to confront and give the opportunity to [local elected prosecutor] first to see what — what will she do. But we did the Unity healing last Saturday. Carol, Nikki was there, [local elected prosecutor] was there. And then now we’re gonna do a forum for all of the questionnaire. But, yeah, I think right now is okay in terms of, you know, uh, umm, the API community. Uh, but, you know, we got a lot of folks together, uh, like, you know, from church, all of, you know, the African American community, and they — they gonna work with us, uh, patrolling, somewhat volunteering in downtown, too. So we united stronger than ever. So that’s a good thing.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay. I mean, you gotta tell [local elected prosecutor] to keep people in jail. Don’t let them right out.

ANDY DUONG: Yeah. I mean, that’s — ‘cause — you know, that’s why she’s running around. She ain’t afraid that anybody gonna, you know, assassinate her because the fact that she know that she ain’t gonna keep nobody in jail, you know.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah. They all love her, man.

ANDY DUONG: Yeah. Catch, release, catch, release. But it’s about time.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: That’s right.

ANDY DUONG: I mean, she — she’s got to do something ‘cause, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, folks that, you know, committed, you know, a crime that she’s trying to match peace with that kill, you know, an officer, uh, the same life sentence. Which is, you know, is only 25 years, so.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah.

ANDY DUONG: But she got to step up because if she don’t then, you know, it’s gonna jeopardize her — pretty much her, you know, her office. And people already, you know, gather a lot of, you know, petition. And — and now they just wrap up the fund. So if she don’t take the action on it right, on the right path, then, yeah, she’s — she’s gonna get fucked big time.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: So what’s up with — so Sheng’s got people?

ANDY DUONG: Yeah. Well, Sheng is part of it, right? So what happened was, uh, there was some other folks in the Vietnamese community that was teaming up with, you know, Carl Chan, too, that was trying to, you know, recall, you know. And, you know, Greg McConnell, all that group, they’re trying to unite and recall Sheng and Nikki and [local elected prosecutor]. So I pull — uh, when Nikki was there, I pull the folks that was participating with, you know, Carl Chan and them and I say, aye, you know, just back off and don’t attend those event and do not involve. Because now you involve, you bring in the Vietnamese community in there. So, uh, she, you know, admitted and committed that they will back off, uh, you know, on that part or participating with, you know, Carl and Greg McConnell so that way, you know, they can, uh, uh, we can avoid and mitigate the recall on Nikki and Sheng. So we — we helped them on that already. But, you know, uh, Carl, he has that personal, you know, hatred and also Greg McConnell got that personal hatred against, you know, Nikki and Sheng.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay.

ANDY DUONG: Yeah. Big time. Big time. So they trying to, you know, wrap it up. ‘Cause you know, Greg always supported Ignacio before. And, you know, Carl, he was, you know, with Loren and plus he never a fan of, you know, of Sheng and Nikki. So they always disrespecting on Nikki and Sheng.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay. You know, as long as they’re good and everything.

ANDY DUONG: I mean, yeah, right now be good. But they still got to do something. And, you know, umm, met up with, you know, with Nikki, too, and then with, uh, Sheng. I say — you know, and Jestin, he finally stopped by, uh, after all that time. I know that, you know, uh, Sheng is the one that leading him what to do. But they got to start taking action because Carol hit me up and she wanted to place, you know, couple of the units on her West Oakland to do all the press release, umm, you know, and regarding. ‘Cause she was pissed off how Sheng make the statement like, you know, uh, “Officer Tuan Le, this — this — you know, this death, this tragedy, cut us deep.” And then Carol was hella mad. Carol’s like, “Man, what — what — what the fuck about, you know, all these other women that lost their life? You didn’t say shit about it.”

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah.

ANDY DUONG: You know, she was hella mad. So she’s like: “I’ma call out the mayor. I’ma call out city admin. We approve this, you know, $85 million funds back in — you know, before we went to recess break, and then she haven’t done shit. She haven’t bought unit from you guys, she haven’t done anything. I mean, this ridiculous.” So she wanted us to move one of the unit to the West Oakland so that way she can do all press release and call them out. But then I call Sheng. I say, “Aye, you got to get your shit together. Like, what the hell you doing? Like, I understand that, you know, sometime you want to hold that fund and maybe you’re cooking something else that you trying to see where you’re gonna spend the fund. But you want to — you know, you want to save your race or — or, you know, you know, you want to end it because you got to be straight. If you want to — you know, probably that you felt that there’s too much pressure for you, this ain’t right for you, then let us know. Then we will, you know, know what to do. But then if you really want to continue for another term, then you better start acting right.” So, uh, yeah, that’s when she called Jestin. And Jestin, you know, he showed up and, you know, he’s looking at understanding everything and we trying to — you know, this — this is a win-win, right? This is a win-win. This will help with, you know, getting people off the street and this is a good move and this will, you know, pretty much save their next election and the recall. So that’s where we left it at. And, you know, we’ll see where — where — where the city of Oakland goes. But other than that, everybody else, you know, is waiting to be on board. I mean, the county, other cities taking action right now, so. But we want Oakland to be the first ‘cause this is where, you know, the business is. Oakland need the most —

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah.

ANDY DUONG: — help and we want to, you know, help out Oakland.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah. Okay. So I might need your help. We’re gonna do a — we’re going to do a RV policy and get the RVs out of the way —

ANDY DUONG: Okay.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: — and everything. But you know, a lot of the activists are gonna come. But what we need is like the business owners saying like, yeah, this is killing our business with these RVs in front — front of your —

ANDY DUONG: Right, right. Okay. What — what is — in your district?

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah, yeah, my district. The — they’re all over Oakland. RVs are just coming into Oakland.

ANDY DUONG: Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s — it is — it is killing our business big time. They’re just parking, you know, illegally on, you know, just curbside, anywhere. And, you know, just parking there. And sometime they move here and there, sometime they just leave it there as junk.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Yeah. It’s just junk.

ANDY DUONG: Yeah.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay.

ANDY DUONG: Yep. So just let me know. Let me know whenever you need help, bro. And then whenever you get a chance, just stop by and take a tour of the units at the office, Embarcadero, down- — downstair on Suite A.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: Okay. Just shoot me some dates and I’ll come over.

ANDY DUONG: Okay. For sure. All right, bro.

OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER: All right. Appreciate you.

ANDY DUONG: All right, bro. All right. Stay safe and bless. Talk to you soon. All right, bye.

(End of transcription.)

Original transcript

Read the original full transcript from the public court docket. (Click image to download.)

WE ARE 100% SUPPORTED BY YOU

Oakland Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your contribution in any amount helps us to continue to produce accurate, well-researched, evidence-based articles like this one.

Donate now

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.

Browse all the headlines

1. Oakland city workers get ready to strike at union “strike school”

The city union representing professional and technical employees held a “strike school” this week to prepare Oakland city workers for a potential strike. International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 21 has for months hinted at a possible strike if the city doesn’t approve pay raises and “civilianization” of police jobs, among other demands. Read more

2. Janani Ramachandran uses city job openings to lure applicants to her campaign website

Council member Janani Ramachandran (District 4) posted an “informational” video on her Instagram account describing City of Oakland job openings that don’t require a college degree, noting the pay rates and whether teens are eligible to apply. In the video, Ramachandran encouraged potential applicants to comment “JOBS” on her Instagram post to receive more information. Ramachandran then replied to those comments with a link to her campaign website’s homepage. Read more

3. The real reason Caltrans may open I-580 to big rigs

Caltrans says the case for lifting the ban on heavy trucks on I-580 is about relieving pollution on I-880. But its own recently released study shows keeping the ban in place would result in lower diesel pollution overall by 2035. The trucking industry has pushed to lift the ban for nearly 60 years — and now holds the only industry seat on the Caltrans study’s advisory committee. Read more

Share this roundup with someone you know.

Share

4. “I got y’all”: Carroll Fife threads needle with angry data center opponents

Council member Carroll Fife (District 3) clashed with socialists at an anti-data center rally this week, after announcements that the former American Steel building in West Oakland was recently leased to Prometheus, an AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos, and an affiliate of Tesla owned by Elon Musk. Fife once opposed the reuse of the American Steel building for the “tech boom,” saying in 2022 that the building should be preserved for use by artist collectives. She now says, “I’ve not shared my perspective on data centers... because I’m forming it.” Read more

5. OUSD’s credit rating tanks

Oakland Unified School District received bad financial news this week as Fitch downgraded the district’s credit rating to a dismal BBB with a “negative” outlook for the current fiscal year. Ratings lower than BBB- are considered high yield “junk” investments, according to financial analysts. The district has recently assured that its finances have significantly improved, but the new credit rating appears to contradict those assurances. Read more

Oakland Report’s Newsstand reviews 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 daily.

Go to the Newsstand

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.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

(We also have been inspired by Mandal’s article to conduct an expanded analysis that examines every story published by the five media outlets over the past 12 months. Look for that expanded analysis in Oakland Report in the coming days.)

On August 24, five people were stabbed at several locations in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood over a period of about 30 minutes. One person was killed and four others were injured.

The incident received standalone coverage from multiple local media outlets, including KQED,1 KTVU,2 East Bay Times3 and San Francisco Chronicle4 — except for Oaklandside.

There is nothing particularly unusual about a news organization deciding not to cover an individual crime. Newsrooms make those decisions every day based on staffing, resources and editorial priorities.

But those choices also determine which events their readers encounter. As traditional local news has become increasingly divided among publications with different approaches to journalism, relying on a single outlet may provide only part of what is happening in a community.

The Fruitvale stabbing raised a question: what picture of serious violence would someone receive if they relied primarily on Oaklandside for public safety news? I reviewed a year of its coverage to find out.

Reviewing a year of violent incidents

The review covered August 27, 2025 through August 29, 2026. Rather than trying to determine which crimes were important enough to warrant a story, I used both an objective severity threshold and coverage by other news organizations.

The analysis included homicides and suspected homicides; police shootings resulting in injury or death; shootings or stabbings involving multiple victims; shootings at a school or college; and traffic collisions resulting in multiple deaths.

An incident was then included only if at least two of four comparison news organizations (KQED, KTVU, East Bay Times and San Francisco Chronicle) published standalone coverage.

This produced 41 incidents during the twelve-month period, of which Oaklandside published standalone coverage of seven, or 17%.

(The complete methodology and list of incidents are included in the appendix.)

The seven incidents were concentrated in several categories. Oaklandside covered all three police shootings that met the criteria for the review.567 Two other incidents involved shootings at a school or college,89 while another was a mass shooting that killed two people and wounded five.10 The remaining incident was a traffic collision that killed three people.11

These differences show which incidents were selected, but not why. Oaklandside is not a traditional breaking news operation and does not attempt to report every homicide in Oakland. Comparing it only with a television station or regional daily newspaper could therefore create a misleading expectation about the type of journalism it is trying to provide.

KQED provides a more useful comparison. Both are nonprofit, mission-driven news organizations that emphasize public service journalism rather than comprehensive coverage of individual crimes. Oaklandside focuses specifically on Oakland, while KQED is a much larger public media organization serving the Bay Area across radio, television and digital platforms.

Despite those differences, KQED provides a useful benchmark for whether Oaklandside’s selectivity is unusual within this type of journalism.

Comparing Oaklandside with KQED

KQED covered nine of the 41 incidents (22%), compared with seven for Oaklandside. Their selections were nearly identical: every incident Oaklandside covered was also covered by KQED. The only two additional incidents covered by KQED were the July 31 shooting at the OUSD adult school12 and the August 24 Fruitvale stabbing spree.13

The comparison puts Oaklandside’s 17% coverage rate in context. Both publications were highly selective about reporting individual violent incidents, and they made almost all of the same selections.

KQED and Oaklandside also have an existing editorial relationship: KQED has republished Oaklandside reporting, and Oaklandside journalists regularly appear on KQED programs.14

Shared or republished stories did not affect which incidents qualified for this analysis, and I found no evidence that the newsrooms coordinate coverage decisions. Still, their relationship makes it difficult to view their similar selections as entirely independent.

Different approaches within Cityside

Selective incident coverage is not universal among nonprofit local news organizations. Oaklandside, Berkeleyside and Richmondside are all operated by Cityside,15 but take different approaches.

Richmondside regularly publishes standalone reports on individual homicides and tracks the city’s homicide count.16 Richmond has substantially fewer homicides than Oakland, making a direct comparison of coverage rates inappropriate. However, its coverage shows that routine incident-level homicide reporting is not outside Cityside’s editorial model.

Berkeleyside also publishes standalone reports on individual homicides, although Berkeley had too few during the study period for a meaningful quantitative comparison. The three publications therefore appear to make different decisions about how much incident-level reporting is part of their local news function.

A changing local news landscape

These different approaches are part of a much larger change in local journalism.

Traditional metropolitan newspapers once attempted to provide a broad community record, with reporters covering police, courts, city hall, schools, neighborhoods, business and other subjects.

That model has substantially contracted.

Nearly 40% of local U.S. newspapers have disappeared since 2005, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative,17 while newspaper employment has fallen by more than 75%.

Other forms of local journalism have grown during that decline. Local outlets are now the largest segment of the Institute for Nonprofit News network,18 while the share of Americans who say they at least sometimes get local news from online-only sources increased from 15% in 2018 to 42% in 2025.19

The result is not simply that one type of journalism has replaced another. The functions of local news are increasingly divided among publications with different missions and editorial priorities.

What readers see

There are advantages to this model. Smaller publications can develop expertise in particular subjects, neighborhoods or institutions and produce reporting that might otherwise not exist. But it also means that no single publication necessarily provides a complete picture of what is happening in a community.

Individual violent incidents are only one part of public safety reporting. Oaklandside also reports on policing, accountability, surveillance, crime trends and other public safety issues. But individual incidents are also part of the information readers use to understand public safety in their community.

Research has found that media coverage can influence how important people perceive crime to be as a public issue.2021

This review does not establish that Oaklandside’s coverage affected its readers’ perceptions. It does show that in a fragmented local news environment, the picture readers receive of public safety depends in part on which outlets they follow, and which events those outlets select for coverage.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Appendix: Methodology and Data

Study design

This was a retrospective review of standalone news coverage of serious violent and public safety incidents in Oakland between August 27, 2025 and August 29, 2026. The unit of analysis was the incident, not the article. Multiple articles or follow up reports concerning the same event were treated as one editorial selection.

Selection of comparison outlets

Four Bay Area news organizations were selected as comparison outlets: KQED, East Bay Times, KTVU and San Francisco Chronicle. They were selected to provide established news organizations with substantial Oakland or regional coverage while representing different organizational and distribution models.

• KTVU is a major commercial television news organization based in Oakland.

• East Bay Times provides longstanding newspaper coverage of Oakland and the East Bay.

• San Francisco Chronicle is a major regional newspaper with regular Oakland and breaking news coverage.

• KQED is the Bay Area’s public media organization and provides a useful comparison with Oaklandside’s public service-oriented model.

Incident criteria

To avoid making subjective judgments about which crimes were sufficiently serious to warrant news coverage, incidents were eligible for review if they fell into one of five predefined categories:

1. Homicides and suspected homicides.

2. Police shootings resulting in injury or death.

3. Nonfatal shootings or stabbings involving multiple victims.

4. Nonfatal shootings at a school or college.

5. Traffic collisions resulting in multiple deaths.

Other public safety events — including single victim nonfatal shootings outside schools, robberies, assaults and other crimes — were not included.

Peer coverage threshold

Meeting the incident criteria alone did not place an event in the final dataset. An eligible incident also had to receive standalone coverage from at least two of the four comparison outlets. A substantive follow up story could count as selection if the underlying incident remained a substantial subject of the story. A passing reference in an article principally about another subject did not. Other news organizations could be used to verify factual information but did not count toward the two outlet threshold.22 Stories were also reviewed for republication or syndication so that the same underlying editorial selection would not be counted as two independent selections.

Oaklandside review

Oaklandside’s public safety articles during the study period were manually reviewed. For each incident in the final peer-selected dataset, Oaklandside was coded as having selected the incident when it published at least one standalone article substantially concerned with that event. Policy reporting, crime trend stories, government accountability reporting and other thematic journalism were not counted unless the article constituted standalone coverage of the qualifying incident.

Results

Forty-one incidents met both the substantive criteria and the two-of-four peer coverage threshold. Oaklandside selected 7 of 41 (17.1%). KQED selected 9 of 41 (22.0%).

All seven Oaklandside selections were also selected by KQED. KQED selected two additional incidents that Oaklandside did not.

Complete incident dataset

H: Homicide or suspected homicide.
P: Police shooting resulting in injury or death.
S: Qualifying school or college shooting.
T: Traffic collision resulting in multiple deaths.

Limitations

This analysis is an observational review of editorial selection, not a measure of editorial intent.

The peer coverage threshold does not represent every serious crime that occurred in Oakland. It identifies incidents meeting predefined severity criteria that also received coverage from multiple comparison news organizations.

News archives and search systems can be incomplete, and some deaths may subsequently be reclassified.

The analysis does not measure story prominence, article length, number of follow-ups, sourcing, framing or the quality of reporting.

Finally, news organizations do not operate in complete isolation. KQED and Oaklandside have a documented content-sharing relationship, and Bay Area newsrooms routinely cite one another, employ journalists who have worked at competing publications, and participate in a broader collaborative journalism ecosystem.

No evidence was found that this caused an incident to enter the dataset through duplicate publication, but the direct KQED/Oaklandside comparison should be interpreted as descriptive rather than as a test of independent editorial decision-making.

Sources for the full data tables are available upon request.

Read this related article:

Postscript: Disclosure

Oakland Report is another part of Oakland’s changing local media landscape. It began as a volunteer project in 2023 and is now operated by the nonprofit Citizens Oakland. It describes itself as an independent, citizen-led publication focused primarily on fact-based reporting and analysis of local government, rather than comprehensive daily news coverage.

I have contributed articles to and had articles republished in Oakland Report, including reporting and commentary on public safety and local government. Oakland Report was not included as a comparison outlet in this analysis.

Financial disclosure: I am a current paid subscriber to KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Report and East Bay Times. I was a paid subscriber to Oaklandside in 2024.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to author Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we look at the Interstate 580 Truck Access Study — and the trucking industry’s decades-long push to open the MacArthur Freeway to heavy trucks.

Why Caltrans is studying the ban on heavy trucks on I-580

Since 1963, trucks over 4.5 tons have been barred from a nearly 9-mile stretch of Interstate 580 between Grand Avenue in Oakland and Foothill Boulevard in San Leandro — also known as the MacArthur Freeway.

The agency describes the question as one of environmental justice:1

“Since 1951,2 large trucks have been prohibited on part of I-580... As a result, truck traffic has been routed to I-880, contributing to health and environmental impacts in nearby neighborhoods.”

— Caltrans I-580 Truck Access Study fact sheet, Nov. 7, 2025

The burden on the I-880 corridor is real. More than half of the people living along I-880 are classified by the state as environmentally burdened. Along I-580, the figure is about 9%.3

The study’s first results, released in July 2026, let us test that premise against the state’s own numbers.45

Oakland Report reviewed the study’s preliminary traffic and air quality memos, technical advisory committee (TAC) notes, Caltrans’ published history of the ban, state campaign finance and lobbying records, and the research on what happens when roads open to more traffic.

Key findings

• The California Trucking Association has pushed to lift the ban since at least 1967, and it now holds the Caltrans study’s only industry seat. Its political committees have given $671,700 to state campaigns since 2001. Some of this money has gone to Sacramento’s transportation-policy leadership, to the 2010 campaign to suspend California’s climate law, and against that law’s author.

• Caltrans describes the study’s purpose in conflicting ways. Caltrans told its advisory committee the study will make no recommendation on the ban, and its public fact sheet answers “No” to whether the ban will be removed as a result of the study. But its project page also says the study creates an opportunity to find “common ground for its potential repeal.”

• The model assumes — without evidence — that truck traffic will not grow when a new freeway opens to trucks. Caltrans’ own ‘induced demand’ traffic research contradicts this, and Caltrans’ research division is currently paying to find out whether that holds for trucks.

• The projected health gain for I-880 communities is negligible (one cancer case per 1,000,000 people) — and within the model’s margin of error. Removing the ban would lower 2035 excess cancer risk for environmentally burdened communities from 9 cases per 1,000,000 people to 8 per 1,000,000.

• Total diesel pollution across the study area will go up, not down, if the ban is lifted. The 2035 model shows 1.09 tons of diesel particulate matter (DPM) per year with the ban and 1.20 tons without it — about 10% more if the ban is lifted.

• Almost all of the projected improvement will come from cleaner trucks, not the ban decision. Regulations for newer diesel engines are projected to cut cancer risk by 19 cases per 1,000,000 people by 2035 either way. The ban decision changes it by one.

‘How come my trucks are banned on this stretch of 580?’ The trucking industry has pushed to lift the ban for nearly 60 years

Caltrans says the current study was initiated in response to community air quality concerns in 2019 and 2021. But the trucking industry’s push to lift the ban began long before then.

When the 1963 ban came up for renewal in 1967, the California Trucking Association’s (CTA’s) Richard Zeller argued that truck taxes had helped pay for the freeway. He called the restriction “discriminatory against the people who live near the Nimitz Freeway [I-880] or must use it,” and he asked whether the schools and hospitals along the MacArthur Freeway were more valuable than those elsewhere.

The trucking industry’s argument in 1967 was similar to the environmental fairness argument that frames Caltrans’ study today.

Caltrans’ own history records what came next. CTA proposed a study of lifting the ban in 1990 and asked again in 1996. Then in 1999, a new study was proposed — with CTA to take part.6 The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Caltrans ultimately shelved the plan after strong opposition from Oakland and San Leandro residents.7

The man behind the 1999 request, Robert Ramorino, ran Roadstar Trucking and later became CTA’s president. He framed the request with a blunt question: “How come my trucks are banned on this stretch of 580?” Ramorino asserted that he was paying federal highway taxes on trucks that could not use the freeway near his business, and said that opening it would be convenient for his company and for freight movement generally.

Caltrans officials indicated at the time that if they found good reasons to lift the ban and Oakland agreed, they would recommend opening the freeway to trucks.

The study never happened. Residents along I-580 pressed their representatives to stop it before it began. The Oakland City Council passed a resolution affirming the ban.

That fight produced the law now at issue. Assembly Bill 500 began in 1999 as an unrelated bill about state buildings. It was rewritten that spring and summer to put the truck ban into the state’s Vehicle Code.8

Gov. Gray Davis signed it into law in August 2000, barring vehicles of 9,000 pounds or more from the I-580 freeway segment.9

CTA opposed the bill. Charles Ramorino, CTA’s president in 1985 and later chairman of the American Trucking Associations called the ban unfair because I-580 is an interstate paid for with federal highway taxes.1011

Robert Ramorino, the man behind the 1999 request to lift the ban, is Charles Ramorino’s son. Both Ramorinos have led the trucker’s association; Robert is listed as a past president in CTA’s 2023 directory.12

Governor Davis wrote in 2000 that he did not favor bans on commerce, but since the ban had stood since 1963, and a Caltrans study had found no reason to lift it, doing so “would be a breach of faith with the residents of Oakland.”

Because the ban is state law, Caltrans cannot remove it — only the legislature and governor can.

The residents who opposed the 1999 study supplied the argument that has anchored the ban since. Ellen Corbett, then a newly elected assemblymember whose district covered much of Oakland, told KQED she fielded dozens of calls from angry constituents and convened a meeting with Caltrans that drew hundreds of people, with the overflow spilling into the parking lot. Corbett said her research indicated I-580 had not been built for trucks. Caltrans disputed this, saying the freeway “was designed to be safe for all vehicular traffic.”

For her part, Corbett also told KQED that residents believed lifting the ban would break a promise:13

“People were actually displaced and homes were taken from people. There was a commitment made that trucks would not be on that freeway because these neighborhoods had been destroyed.”

— Former assembly member Ellen Corbett, Jul. 1, 2021

That account is the source of a claim the ban’s defenders still make today: that the state promised to keep trucks off I-580 when the freeway was built.

Caltrans’ history describes it differently. The ban was a 1963 Oakland city ordinance, approved by the state and federal governments, set to expire in 1968. It was extended after local governments asked governor Ronald Reagan to renew the state’s approval. The promise was real to the people who believed it. The legal tool was a city ordinance with an expiration date, and it did not become permanent state law until Corbett’s bill passed 37 years later.

Corbett, in 2021, also described the one-sidedness the current study is meant to address. She said she did not hear from any constituents who lived or worked along I-880, the corridor most impacted by heavy trucks.

California Trucking Association now has a seat in the cabin

A quarter-century later, the CTA is now a key player inside the process to study lifting the ban. CTA holds the only industry seat on the Caltrans study’s advisory committee, and sent two representatives to its first meeting.14

Minutes from the committee’s February 2026 meeting record the Port of Oakland asking whether some metrics could be presented as benefits. The meeting’s key takeaways include a suggestion to frame a projected reduction in trucking hours of delay as a benefit.15 But two Caltrans web pages describe the study’s purpose differently.

Caltrans’ project page says the study is a chance to “reevaluate the purpose of the truck ban, find common ground for its potential repeal,” and “address existing issues of inefficient traffic flows for the impacted communities and logistics industry.”16

Caltrans’ public engagement portal, describing the same study, speaks of finding “consensus for its future status” and refers to “the freight industry.”17

Its November 2025 fact sheet lists three study focuses. One is “addressing existing issues of inefficient traffic flows for the logistics industry.”

The industry’s practical stake is modest, by the study’s own numbers. Total truck delay would fall by about 100 hours a day, just over 2%, if the ban is lifted. More than 80% of the westbound trucks and 90% of the eastbound trucks that would use I-580 would be passing through to destinations outside the region. Port of Oakland trips are around 5% of the area’s heavy truck trips.18

Following the money

CTA is a trade group with about $3.6 million in annual revenue.19 Oakland Report reviewed California Secretary of State records for CTA’s two political committees: CARGO PAC and Truck Unit PAC.

We used a Cal-Access PowerSearch export of every itemized contribution reported from CARGO PAC, and found 229 contributions totaling $671,700 across the 2001 through 2025 political cycles.2021

Here’s the pattern we found in its verified political spending:

• No donations to the campaigns of the corridor’s state legislators. No reported contributions went to Ellen Corbett (AB 500’s author), Nancy Skinner, Buffy Wicks, Mia Bonta, Liz Ortega, Aisha Wahab, nor to current Oakland-based legislators. Rob Bonta, now attorney general, received $1,500 in 2014.

• Steady money to transportation committee leaders. Lori Wilson, who chairs the Assembly’s transportation committee, has received $20,300. Her checks rose to the legal maximum after she became the chair. Former Assembly transportation chair Jim Frazier received $11,400 while chair; and former Senate transportation chair Jim Beall received $6,200.

• Spending to defeat a state climate law. In 2010, CARGO PAC gave $50,000 to Yes on Proposition 23, the failed measure to suspend AB 32, California’s climate law, plus it gave $70,000 during that cycle to business coalition PACs. Then in 2012, the Truck Unit PAC spent $28,379 opposing state senator Fran Pavley, AB 32’s author, and $42,747 supporting her opponent.

• A quarter-million-dollar industry lobbyist. CTA pays its lead outside lobbying firm, Shimoda Government Strategies (founded by CTA’s former government affairs chief, Chris Shimoda) $53,697 per quarter — $269,426 from March 2025 through June 2026 — for work its filings describe as focused on state climate and clean truck rules.22

• No filing lists Caltrans as a directly lobbied agency, and no repeal bill has been introduced. The electronic record only goes back to 2001; earlier giving, including during the fight over AB 500, would require additional research.

The political spending reports suggest a steady, state-focused effort, not a local pressure campaign. CTA’s verified influence spending primarily goes through Sacramento’s policy chokepoints, the courts, and its advisory seat on the current Caltrans study group.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that the $600,000 Caltrans study is the latest move in a six-decade campaign: a state-funded analysis, with the industry at the table, that could become the evidence for a repeal bill only the legislature and governor can pass.23

It also stands to reason to ask who benefits if the study’s framing holds and the ban is lifted: an industry whose trucks would gain nearly nine miles of interstate access, and whose decades of requests are recorded on Caltrans’ own website.

Whether that framing holds is a question the study’s own numbers can answer. They rest on a traffic model — and the model begins with an assumption.

Donate to Oakland Report. Your monthly or one-time contribution in any amount helps us to continue to produce accurate, deeply researched, data-driven articles like this one.

Become a supporting member

The assumption doing the heavy lifting: that trucks won’t multiply

Every pollution and health number in the Caltrans study depends on a key assumption in its traffic model: that some trucks will shift to other freeways, but their total will not grow when a major new freeway opens to them.

When residents and advisory committee members raised concerns about ‘induced demand’ — the well-documented tendency of new road capacity to create more traffic — the project team answered that truck demand follows consumer behavior, not added capacity.

The consultant, Fehr & Peers, repeated the assumption, telling the committee that the amount of truck traffic moving through the study area “does not actually change.”

The research on induced demand rejects that assumption for roads in general. A 2015 policy brief by UC Davis professor Susan Handy — sponsored by Caltrans — devotes a section to it. Adding capacity increases total driving rather than shifting it between roads. Of the “shifting” argument, the brief states: “Evidence does not support this argument.”24

The study Handy relies on, Duranton and Turner’s “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion,” found that driving rises about one-for-one with increased interstate capacity. It named commercial traffic as one of three causes: “commercial driving and trucking increase with a city’s stock of roads.”25

California wrote this into policy. The state’s official calculator of induced travel, adopted by Caltrans in 2020, assumes that a 10% increase in interstate capacity produces a 10% increase in driving.26 A 2025 California Air Resources Board brief found that the most rigorous studies agree.27

Opening nearly nine miles of interstate to trucks is not the same as building new lanes, and induced demand for trucks is less studied than for cars. Caltrans’ own research division admits it doesn’t have sufficient data to assume that truck traffic would not increase. An October 2025 research note for an active Caltrans project lists “updating elasticities to exclude truck VMT [vehicle miles traveled]” as a priority, because the truck-specific effect has never been separately measured.28

In other words, one arm of Caltrans was accepting its consultant’s assurance that truck traffic will not increase with increased road capacity. Another arm was paying for research because the scale of that specific assumption is unknown.

Two more limitations appear in the study’s findings to date.

Fehr & Peers, the Caltrans study consultant, told the committee the analysis covers the near to medium term, and may not capture long-term impacts. Additionally, research finds the full effect of new capacity takes five to ten years to appear.

Caltrans’ study model appears not to account for these limitations. It is reasonable to consider the possibility that their model understates future truck traffic on both freeways.

The assumption that overall heavy truck traffic won’t increase matters because of what the data show, even when one accepts it as true.

Even on the study’s own assumptions, the health benefit to I-880 is small

The health numbers are where the study’s premise appears to be weakest — largely because regulations for cleaner trucks will account for the bulk of the projected health improvements by 2035, whether the ban changes or not.

Even with the assumption that heavy truck traffic will not increase overall when a new freeway is opened to them (the ‘induced demand’ effect), Caltrans’ own data show that the projected health gains for the I-880 corridor that carries the heaviest health burden would be remarkably slight — while the health burden to the whole study area would increase.

Diesel particulate matter (DPM) is the fine soot from diesel engines that the state of California links to cancer. On I-880, DPM would fall about 28% if the ban is lifted, compared to keeping the ban. On I-580, it would roughly quadruple from a small base.

Notably, when looking at the entire study area, lifting the ban would mean 10% more diesel soot across Oakland and San Leandro. If the ban is lifted, total study area DPM is projected to be 1.20 tons per year by 2035. If the ban stays in place, it is projected to be only 1.09 tons per year.

In other words, the study’s air quality memo describes the ban’s effect on total emissions as small, and its own math shows total emissions rising if the ban goes away.

Projected change to cancer risk from diesel emissions would be slight — and the risk would increase among key populations

For environmentally burdened communities, projected excess cancer risk would fall from 28 per million today to 9 per million in 2035 if the ban is kept, and to 8 per million if it is lifted. The one extra point from the ban decision is, in the study’s own words, likely “within the error of the model.”

According to the study’s own data, the bigger reduction will come from cleaner trucks, which is expected to happen either way.

Several groups’ projected cancer risk actually would increase slightly if the ban is lifted, including Black residents, children under 10, and residents below 200% of the poverty line.

The study also counts 72 schools, day cares, senior centers and hospitals within 1,000 feet of I-580, compared with 41 along I-880.

How many heavy trucks would travel I-580 and connecting freeways?

The study projects that removing the ban would shift about 3,800 heavy trucks a day onto I-580 by 2035. I-880’s daily volume would fall from about 9,300 to 6,200, a one-third drop.

I-238’s daily volume would fall from 6,400 to 2,900. Trucks would also appear on State Route 13, rising from about 300 to 700 a day.

Notably, the one-third drop on I-880 is measured against the study’s 2035 forecast, not against today. Perhaps more notably, Caltrans’ model expects I-880 and I-238 to carry fewer trucks in 2035 than they do now, even if the ban stays in place.

Other considerations and counterpoints

Here we offer several counterpoints, largely without further rebuttal, for readers to consider:

• The I-880 burden is real and severe. Caltrans deputy district director Cameron Oakes has said West Oakland’s diesel exposure ranks in the state’s 95th percentile.29 The data backs this up. A monitoring study by the Environmental Defense Fund and partners found black carbon about 80% higher, nitrogen dioxide 60% higher, and nitric oxide more than double in neighborhoods along I-880 compared to those along I-580. Two community-rooted plans, from West Oakland in 2019 and East Oakland in 2021, recommended examining the ban.

• The latest push to lift the ban was publicized by East Oakland students, not the industry. Sixth graders at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience, studying air pollution, learned about the ban and asked why trucks ran through their neighborhood. At the time, then-Oakland council member Rebecca Kaplan called the ban “a troubling example of environmental racism.” Alameda County supervisor Nate Miley, who backed the ban in 1999, changed course and said he would now work to phase it out, but not at the expense of air quality along I-580.

• Community voices have conflicting views of the issue. Communities for a Better Environment told the committee the ban has been good for East Oakland and projected a doubling of truck traffic there without it. But the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project has long documented how the ban concentrates trucks at West Oakland’s doorstep.

• The study says it will not recommend an outcome, and Caltrans cannot lift the ban itself. The project team told the committee in June 2026 that the study has no predetermined conclusion and is funded by a state planning grant, not trucking industry interests.30

• Some trucks really would move off I-880 in the near term, and banning heavy trucks is uncommon. The Federal Highway Administration counts nine such bans nationwide. Seven exist because of structural limits. I-580’s ban is the only one that was adopted primarily to address residents’ concerns. Reasonable people can assert that an interstate closed to interstate commerce is an exception that needs justifying.

• The clean truck fleet turnover finding cuts both ways. If cleaner trucks deliver most of the health benefit regardless, the cost of lifting the ban is also likely smaller than today’s numbers suggest.

Additional considerations and caveats

• These are preliminary Caltrans memos, not the final report. Figures may change in the revised draft due this fall.

• The traffic model has a stated margin of error of about 1%.

• The air quality model assumes older diesel trucks will be mostly replaced by new diesels rather than electric trucks, which could change in the future as the electric vehicle industry evolves.

• Our analysis of trucking industry spending on lobbying and political contributions examined only itemized state contributions filed electronically since 2001. It is a floor, not a ceiling, and we have not yet searched Oakland and Alameda County local filings.

• Correlation is not causation. Nothing in the record proves that industry pressure, rather than the health concerns and community plans Caltrans cites, prompted the study. Both are documented, and the record supports “both/and,” not a single motive.

What the record supports

The fairness case for lifting the I-580 ban, as measured by Caltrans’ own study, delivers little projected health improvement to the corridor that bears the heaviest burden — within the study’s 1% margin of error — while markedly increasing total diesel pollution across the study area.

Caltrans and its consultants use a traffic model that assumes zero growth in heavy truck traffic, contrary to research about traffic growth in general — and its own research program says the extent of traffic growth is unmeasured for trucks.

The trucking industry that has sought to lift the ban since 1967 now sits on the study’s advisory committee and has donated to several of the legislators who would referee any potential repeal.

None of that proves the study wrong, and none of it lessens the burden on I-880’s residents. But based on Caltrans’ current data, the two decisive claims for lifting the ban — that health outcomes along I-880 would meaningfully improve, and that the study area as a whole would not get more pollution — appear to be unsupported.

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven analysis focused on verifiable evidence. We present the facts and let the reader decide. If you value our work, please donate.

Donate to Oakland Report

Learn more

Oakland Report is expanding with Newsstand

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: deep-dive, data-driven reporting and analysis on the decision-making that affects Oaklanders’ lives.

Building on the success of our signature original articles, today we’re launching Newsstand, a daily roundup of Oakland news and stories from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for our readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town.

Take me to the Newsstand

In today’s fragmented media environment, it’s challenging to keep up with local news — especially here in Oakland. Clicking through dozens of sites to scrape together a complete understanding of Oakland’s vibrant, complex scene is a time-consuming and, frankly, painful process.

Newsstand curates and highlights news items to help Oaklanders quickly understand the issues and events that affect our lives.

We review over 200 publications for items that our readers want to know or may find interesting, especially on the local topics we cover in Oakland Report: government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. We also accept suggestions from readers.

Newsstand’s headlines are written by Oakland Report editors. We link; we don’t republish. No article text is reproduced in Newsstand. Follow each link to read the original reporting at its source.

How is Newsstand funded?

We're glad you asked. We rely on donations from readers like you. Oakland Report is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in beautiful Oakland, California. (Citizens Oakland, federal tax ID #99-4577680.)

One hundred percent of your donation goes directly to producing Oakland Report's original articles and maintaining Newsstand. If you like our work, please consider signing up for a monthly or one-time donation.

Become a supporting member

Our goal is to restore accountability journalism to Oakland. As we continue to grow through new ventures like Newsstand, we also take on new costs in order to keep Oakland Report and Newsstand free to read.

Your donation in any amount helps us continue our nonprofit work.

We also now offer sponsorships for Oakland-based organizations to support our work and get their message out — see below to learn more.

Opportunity knocks — get your message out with Newsstand

Our readers run the gamut from urban professionals to business leaders, political figures, journalists, influencers and everyday residents, with over 1.2 million views per year — and we’re growing fast.

Get in on the ground floor with Oakland’s hottest new media venture. Join our inaugural Sponsorship cohort today, and your organization will be featured in Newsstand through sponsored links, photos, and featured advertisements.

Newsstand will only accept promotions from local organizations, and will display only two sponsored links and two sponsored photos per week — less than 7% of the overall content. This gives our readers a rich reading experience, while letting your message stand out. (Oakland Report’s original articles never display promotions, and never will.) See our sponsorship page for more details and rates.

Follow us on social

This year, we significantly expanded our footprint on social media, and we’re pleased to report that over the last six months, we’ve received over 2.2 million impressions across social platforms. And we’ve only just begun.

You can help us continue to grow our reach — follow, like and share us on your preferred platforms:

• Instagram

• X / Twitter

• Nextdoor

• Reddit

• YouTube

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

Write for us

We encourage submissions (articles, letters, comments, ideas, research) from civic-minded writers based in Oakland and neighboring communities.

Our contributing writers include Oakland business leaders, elected officials, government executives, community organizers, media personalities, and civic-minded residents like you.

Articles are reviewed and collaboratively edited for adherence to our editorial guidelines. Opinions must be explicit, well-reasoned, and supported by evidence our readers can examine for themselves. Superfluous adjectives (implicit judgment) will be removed.

Or share your reflections and ideas in the comments, or with a letter to the editor (some of which we may publish, with your permission).

We welcome story leads, bits of information, and primary research too.

• Letters to the editor: letters@citizensoakland.org

• Article submissions, leads, and story ideas: oaklandreport@citizensoakland.org

Confidential tips

Do you have a confidential tip with documentation or evidence about local governance in Oakland? Let us know at oaklandreport@citizensoakland.org.

Oakland Report adheres to ethical journalism best practices for protecting our confidential sources.1

The road ahead

We’re incredibly grateful for our readers’ support. Oakland Report was founded in 2023 as a volunteer endeavor to fill a critical gap in local independent media by producing high-quality, data-driven, unflinching articles by and for the citizens of Oakland and neighboring communities.

Our extended team includes a scientist, a librarian, physicians, journalists, attorneys, technology executives, housing providers and media personalities — all from Oakland, and all deeply committed to helping Oakland achieve its true potential as a world-class city.

We’re excited about our newest public service, Newsstand, and we hope you enjoy it, too. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or by writing to us.

Go to the Newsstand

Thank you.

— The Oakland Report team

Oakland Report is growing — thanks to our readers’ generous support — and we’re launching a new service for our readers this weekend.

Stay tuned for an announcement and more details tomorrow.

Thank you!
— The Oakland Report team

The views expressed in our Letters column do not necessarily reflect the views of Oakland Report or its contributing authors. Letters may be edited for clarity, length, and conciseness.

Global shipping access creates more crime opportunity for stolen goods?

Re: Oakland has the #1 property crime rate in America, Aug. 2

You did it again!! I’m going to have to read this again to digest the data. I have always wondered if transportation hubs — port cities and cities with big cargo airports — have higher property crime because it’s so easy to supply international markets with stolen goods.

There is a great episode of Trafficked that focused on high end cars being stolen in the eastern US and sold in West Africa. It’s a fascinating episode. Do we sense that the high property crime is part of an organized effort (stolen yoga pants ending up on Amazon) or is it a sense of desperation (people who have been shut out by the system seeking to survive)?

Perhaps both?

I do have a hypothesis for a 100% effective solution to preventing car theft. Sell your car. Ride the bus.

At the end of the day, I do take encouragement in having the right leadership at OPD. Chief Beere was an excellent choice. These types of challenges do not have simple or immediate solutions. I’m swimming out of my lane with crime, but it’s fascinating. I do believe there is a strong connection to global transportation though.

Josh Rowan
Oakland

People don’t bother to report property crime

Re: Oakland still has the #1 property crime rate in America, Aug. 15

No one who actually lives in Oakland will believe any crime statistics. Why? Because they know that since OPD admits they don’t investigate or act on residential property crime, people don’t bother to report it.

Victor Gold
Oakland

Oakland’s police staffing continues to be its Achilles heel

Re: Oakland still has the #1 property crime rate in America, Aug. 15

Another great analysis by Oakland Report. Clearly, Oakland police assign priorities to certain crimes, hence the abysmal recovery rate for stolen cars.

Police staffing continues to be Oakland’s Achilles heel, but closely following is the use of technology as a force multiplier. There are many tools available to enhance the police department’s abilities to police but due to budget — or more likely anti-police rhetoric — they’re unable to institute these tools. Recently, Oakland’s rogue Privacy Advisory Commission also has been a blocking entity.

That being said, there’s a balance to policing and privacy rights, and one need not look far to see San Francisco’s successes with the implementation of technology and ‘real time’ crime centers.

If Oakland truly wants economic recovery, its political leaders must evaluate and implement technologies that make Oakland not only safer but more economically viable. I have my doubts that our current elected leadership has the political courage to do what is simply right for OPD and the citizens of our beloved city.

A. Cohen
Oakland

Subscribe for free to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

Crime is not evenly distributed across the city

Re: Oakland still has the #1 property crime rate in America, Aug. 15

Oakland’s overall crime statistics don’t necessarily equate to the risk faced by residents of some neighborhoods — for example, Temescal — because crime is not evenly distributed across the city.

The citywide crime numbers are real, but they are averages across a city with very different crime environments. Oakland Report’s analysis found Oakland’s violent crime rate was extraordinarily high compared with the other cities you examined. But that doesn’t mean that a typical Temescal residential block experiences anything remotely like those rates.

Temescal is in a distinctly different part of the crime map. OPD puts Temescal, Rockridge, Piedmont Avenue, and Uptown in Police Area 2. Whereas historically, crime has been most pronounced in parts of East Oakland, Fruitvale, Downtown, West Oakland, and around major commercial corridors.

Oakland Report’s analysis of the 2023 crime wave identified three particularly intense areas: Downtown, Fruitvale south of Foothill, and East Oakland around International Boulevard between 82nd and 98th.

It also noted that many of the most conspicuous property crimes were concentrated around commercial areas rather than residential neighborhoods.

Read this related article from 2024:

A stolen car parked on the street is very consistent with Oakland’s property crime problem, but it doesn’t mean every neighborhood has the same exposure to violent crime as the areas generating the city’s worst statistics.

The really striking part of the data is how much crime has fallen overall. As of June 7, 2026, violent crime was down 18% from the same point in 2025; burglary was down 33%, auto theft 37%, and carjacking 30%.

One can live for years in a part of Oakland that is substantially less exposed to the city’s most serious crime, while still being exposed to some of the city’s pervasive property crime.

The distinction between “Oakland has an extremely high crime rate” and “my particular Oakland neighborhood is dangerous” is a very important one. The former can be true without the latter being true.

Bonnie S.
Oakland

Bonnie, thank you for your comments, and for reading Oakland Report.

You’re correct that crime in Oakland varies significantly by neighborhood. Statistically speaking, the Temescal district is far less impacted by crime than, say, the Hegenberger corridor in East Oakland. But even within Temescal, crime varies from block to block.

Furthermore, the city’s understaffed police department results in very low crime clearance rates citywide, which affects every Oakland resident regardless of their neighborhood.

At the end of the day, we are all Oaklanders who share the same public resources and government, at least in theory.

Oakland’s crime issues do not have to be this way. The FBI data shows that other cities with similar characteristics do not have the same intensity of crime problems as Oakland has. There’s something unique about Oakland’s approach to crime.

Thank you again for your comments, which have inspired us to look at the data from a geographic perspective within Oakland itself.

Share Oakland Report with someone you know. (It’s free.)

Share Oakland Report

A simple solution to the federal monitor’s perverse incentive — but the judge ignored it

Re: Oakland police could exit federal oversight soon. What comes after?, Aug. 18

Judge Orrick’s opinion on ending federal oversight of OPD is decisive because of his power, but it is a shabby opinion nonetheless.

The simple solution to federal monitor Robert Warshaw’s incentive to keep finding one more unfulfilled “task” would have been to limit the monitor’s contract to two years. The idea floated around for years, but Orrick ignored it.

The city’s latest efforts might be a tactic to butter him up for a month or so, but no more.

Charles Pine
Oakland

OUSD’s gross mismanagement and favoritism

Re: Oakland Unified spent over $28,000 per student — more than any nearby district, Aug. 7

Thanks for your excellent reporting. I have volunteered in OUSD schools over many years and have observed gross mismanagement, favoritism, and generally sloppy management.

It’s a real tragedy.

I’m curious about where charter schools fit into this picture. Are they included in this data? What about per pupil costs? Are they the same as OUSD?

Given the high percentage of children in charter schools in Oakland, a breakout of these pupils would be useful. Can we compare OUSD with charter school testing reports?

Susan S.
Oakland

Voters keep voting the same way

Re: Six schools closed in Oakland in 2026. All were charter schools, Aug. 20

Charter schools in Oakland (and most everywhere else) are not unionized. Regular Oakland school teachers are all union members. Like all other elected officials in Oakland and throughout most of California, the OUSD board first takes care of its public sector unions.

The voters keep voting the same way. It’s not like the candidates or unions are hiding anything — both trumpet their mutual affiliation, and, pretty much throughout California, that relationship reliably delivers votes.

@Circleglider
via Substack

Kaplan and Fife are notably absent from Sheng Thao trial witness list

Re: Flashback: There’s something about Rebecca, Aug. 4

City council passed legislation allowing the city of Oakland to pay the legal fees of staff and elected officials accused of crimes.

Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Carroll Fife, who both had extensive dealings with former mayor Sheng Thao — especially around Evolutionary Homes — are notably absent from the witness list. That could mean they are targets instead.

Months ago, I reported on Gotham Oakland that the FBI raided Kaplan’s home. Kaplan has never publicly denied that, and no media outlet seems willing to ask serious questions about it.

She’s now in a no-show city job where taxpayers could end up footing her legal bills if charges are eventually filed.

Seneca Scott
Oakland

Sadly laughable: Kaplan was hired under the current mayor

Re: Flashback: There’s something about Rebecca, Aug. 4

I thought the same when I saw the witness list given Kaplan’s incontrovertible connections with that company and Sheng Thao as well. It’s sadly laughable that she’s in a well-paid position to curb illegal dumping at a time I see more of it than ever — especially since she was given this position under our current mayor.

Kaplan and Lee are examples of cronyism over competency. I see that every day — not only with dumping, but the countless potholes I need to maneuver, along with all the glaring lack of governance in this city.

Edward L.
Oakland

Big of you to answer some overly sensitive feelings

Re: Rough cut: our video montage missed the mark, Jul. 31

Nothing wrong with the truth, or how you showed it — the video was from council member Janani Ramachandran’s own social media page. Big of you to answer some overly sensitive people’s “feelings,” and honestly try to address that.

Shelley Albar
Oakland

Doesn’t get the whole nightclub act / council member thing

Re: Rough cut: our video montage missed the mark, Jul. 31

While it appeared to be a mistake or miscalculation, I thought the video was a brilliant juxtaposition — but maybe that’s because I don’t get the whole nightclub act / serious council member thing. That was as good an explanation as any.

Pamela Drake
Oakland

Pamela, thank you for your message, and for reading Oakland Report. We appreciate the feedback about the video — both pro and con. We’re working on an article examining council member Ramachandran’s use of her elected position to promote her private interests, and we may include a revised version of the video.

Takes strong issue with the video, offers suggestions to improve it

Re: Rough cut: our video montage missed the mark, Jul. 31

I’ve been reading many articles from Oakland Report for many months now and have been really enjoying your coverage, and sharing it on communities like Reddit. I regularly share your article on GPS dispatch on Oakland police department vehicles, and won’t stop until that policy is changed. Your article brought that problem to my attention.

But I take strong issue with the edited video in your open letter. I understand it was Oakland Report that made that sensationalist video edit.

The original video on Instagram did NOT include the singing. Yes, the council member may be promoting her own music career on her Instagram page that covers council business, and this should be called out.

But the edit needs to properly represent the fact that it’s not a single video but multiple videos. On a Reddit thread, many people thought she added a promo for her own singing career to the end of the video, even the moderator of that community.

Such sensationalist edits actually makes me lose faith in Oakland Report’s unbiased reporting. It’s “rage bait” rather than informing and calling things that are wrong (such as mixing singing career and council business) in a more factual, unbiased way.

I hope you take this feedback and adopt it in future reporting. Even updating the video to be less biased by perhaps putting more gaps between each segment and not overlapping them. Maybe include the Instagram video URL or post date as a source text at the bottom of the video, to make it more clear they’re different videos.

@Shazmosushi
via email

Thank you, all, for writing to us, and for reading Oakland Report.

Editors’ note

We recognize and love that Oakland is a complex city of nearly half a million people with so many unique lived experiences and perspectives. It’s what makes Oakland so beautiful. In that spirit, we don’t need to agree with every viewpoint we share in Letters. However, we also don’t have the time, space, or inclination to publish letters that are not helpful or that don’t meet our standards.

We appreciate readers’ comments on the topics we cover in Oakland Report, and observations about Oakland politics and governance in general. We welcome letters that are grounded in reason and evidence that can be rationally examined. We may respond to some letters. We may reject some letters. We may fact-check some letters. Other letters we may let speak for themselves. Write to us at letters@citizensoakland.org.

WE RELY ON YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT

If you like our work, please consider donating.

We are a volunteer-run, 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organization based in beautiful Oakland, California. Our mission is to produce deep-dive analysis and insight into the government decision-making that affects Oaklanders’ lives.

Your donation in any amount helps us continue to produce articles like the ones our readers wrote about in this column.

Become a supporting member

Thank you.

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.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Oakland’s 911 call-answering times have improved significantly over the past two years.

In July, 79% of calls were answered within 15 seconds,1 compared with 54% in 2024.2 While this remains below the state standard of 90%, the improvements follow efforts to address longstanding dispatcher staffing and hiring problems, along with upgrades to Oakland’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.3

However, answering a 911 call is only one part of emergency response. Once a call is received, dispatchers must identify and send the appropriate police, fire, or medical resources to the scene.

Oakland’s CAD system includes an automatic resource location (ARL) feature that uses global positioning system (GPS) data from emergency vehicles to determine their real-time locations — and allows the system to recommend the closest appropriate resource.

The Oakland fire department has now been using this capability since 2025,4 while the same feature remains unavailable for routine police dispatch.

Implementing GPS-based dispatch at the fire department

The fire department began testing ARL in March 2025,5 and moved to an extended field evaluation in June 2025.6

Instead of relying solely on traditional “first-due” districts, which generally determine which fire company responds based on geographic boundaries, ARL allows the CAD system to recommend units based on their actual locations at the time of a call.

The fire department identified faster response times, improved situational awareness and enhanced safety as benefits of the change.

The transition required adjustments to routing, mapping and unit recommendations, with the department using feedback from firefighters to refine the system.7

By October, the fire department reported that ARL had been “significantly improved,” although additional geolocation and routing updates were still underway.

Whether those changes have translated into faster response times has not yet been independently evaluated. The city auditor is currently reviewing fire department response times from call intake through turnout and arrival on scene.8

While ARL was designed to improve emergency response, the collection and retention of employee location data also raised questions about how that information could be used outside of dispatch, particularly in employee investigations.

Video clip 1. Zac Unger, then-president of the Oakland firefighters union, addresses the city’s privacy advisory commission on July 9, 2024. (Video source: City of Oakland. Clips assembled by Oakland Report.)

GPS and employee investigations

Oakland’s use of GPS to track city employees is not new.

As far back as 2004, ABC News reported that Oakland’s public works department was using GPS devices on road crews and street-sweeping vehicles as part of an effort to improve worker accountability — allowing supervisors to monitor vehicle locations, stops and employee activity.9

The Oakland fire department’s policy takes a more limited approach.10

When the proposed fire department policy came before the city’s privacy advisory commission on July 9, 2024, then-Oakland firefighters union president Zac Unger raised concerns about GPS data being used in employee investigations:11

“They could use the [GPS] data for discipline. But then if I tried to find out... think of an example where they are disciplining our members for not being on the freeway when they were supposed to be on the freeway, but if you look at the data five minutes beforehand, it’s because the freeway was closed and they made a detour.”

— Zac Unger, July 9, 202412

The final version of the policy allows ARL data to “aid in internal investigations where ARL data is relevant to the allegations.” It also provides employees access to relevant ARL data after an investigation is complete.

The policy identifies emergency response as ARL’s primary purpose, using real-time location data to help dispatch appropriate resources and meet response-time objectives. Its use is limited to specific authorized purposes, rather than general employee monitoring.

The privacy advisory commission recommended extending the proposed retention period from 30 days to one year to ensure GPS records would remain available for potential investigations. The final policy incorporates that change, with longer retention allowed for an internal investigation or when otherwise legally required.

What this means for Oakland police department

The Oakland police department proposed using the same CAD-based ARL capability as the fire department, but its policy has still not been finalized.

The police department policy version presented at the same July 9, 2024 privacy advisory commission meeting described uses such as identifying vehicles near an incident, improving deployment, and coordinating responses to critical incidents.13

Unlike the fire department’s policy, the proposed police department policy does not expressly identify internal misconduct investigations as an authorized use.

City officials and the city auditor have attributed the delay in finalizing the police department policy to the required labor meet-and-confer process.14 Importantly, this does not involve only the Oakland Police Officers’ Association (OPOA). Because the ARL policy applies to both sworn and civilian OPD employees, the city must meet and confer with two employee unions: OPOA and Service Employees International Union Local 1021 (SEIU).

The specific issues being negotiated with either union are not part of the public record, making it difficult to determine exactly what has prevented the parties from reaching an agreement.

A possible path forward for the police department GPS policy

The fire department’s policy may provide a model for resolving the not-yet finalized police department policy. It allows GPS data to be used when relevant to an internal investigation, while limiting the technology to specific authorized uses rather than routine employee monitoring.

With both OPOA and SEIU currently negotiating new contracts with the city,15 there may be an opportunity to reach a similar agreement for the police department policy.

The city auditor’s forthcoming review should also provide a clearer picture of whether ARL has improved fire department response times.

With Oakland continuing to struggle with emergency response times, making full use of technology already available through the City’s dispatch system should remain a priority.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to author Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board president Jennifer Brouhard wrote a July 5 opinion column that said the school board would not solve its budget gap by closing schools.1

“In December, the board gave clear direction: bring forward a budget proposal that did not include a state loan and did not include school closures. [Interim superintendent Denise] Saddler and her team did exactly what the board asked them to do.”

— OUSD board president Jennifer Brouhard, Jul. 5, 2026

A few weeks later, EdSource reported that 73 public schools closed statewide in 2026, and noted that OUSD tied for second-most schools closed, at five.2

Oakland Report checked records on school closures, plus 27 years of statewide enrollment data. We counted six school closures in Oakland — the sixth was a school operated by the Alameda County Office of Education.

Our key takeaway: OUSD’s district-run enrollment has fallen by more than a third since 2000-01, yet 49 of its 78 schools have fewer students than the largest charter school that closed this year.3

Meanwhile, charter enrollment grew twelvefold over the same span — yet it is the charter sector, not the district-run sector, that closed schools in 2026.

Key findings

• All six schools closed in Oakland were charter schools. The six schools enrolled 1,451 students combined. Five of the closures were approved by OUSD, and one by the county office of education.

• Their students were poorer than average: 88 percent of students in the closed schools qualified for free or reduced-price meals, compared to 80 percent across Oakland’s public schools, 73 percent at California schools that closed in 2026, and 62 percent statewide.4

• District-run enrollment has fallen around 36 percent since 2000-01. Its enrollment has declined far more than the number of school-age children in Oakland has.5

• Charter enrollment grew significantly over the same time span, from about 1 percent of Oakland’s public school students to 22 percent — though it has fallen in more recent years.

• Oakland averages 430 students per school, compared to 628 students per school in San Jose Unified and 773 in Fremont Unified.

• OUSD’s schools are only 60% full. The district’s recent Facilities Master Plan confirms that enrollment fills only around 60% of the planned-use capacity the district was built for — an efficiency gap we estimate costs Oakland schools $11 to $21 million per year.

Subscribe for free to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

OUSD’s enrollment decline was concentrated in district-run schools – not charters

OUSD’s total enrollment decline has accelerated over the past ten years — roughly nine percent since 2015-16, a figure that includes charter schools the district approved.

But when examining district-run and charter schools separately, the two school types’ enrollment totals moved in opposite directions.

Oakland’s total public enrollment fell about 21 percent between 2000-01 and 2025-26, but that single number obscures the more detailed enrollment trends beneath it: district-run schools lost more than a third of their students while charters grew more than twelvefold.6

The six schools that closed

All six of the Oakland schools were closed after their governing agencies refused to renew their charters, mostly over test scores. For example, on the 2025 state tests, only around seven percent of students at Aspire Golden State College Prep met the math standard.7

In July, the State Board of Education let the closures stand, faulting OUSD’s methods but citing a 2019 charter school law.8

The education code says cost findings against a new charter “shall not be used to deny a renewal of an existing charter school.” But another section of the code says a district “shall not renew” a charter scoring in the two lowest levels on every state measure two years running, unless it puts in writing that the school is fixing the problem.9

In other words, for the weakest schools, refusing charter renewal is what the law expects. So the governing agencies (OUSD and ACOE) were following the law.

The students at the closed schools were poorer than average

Studies have shown that school closures tend to fall hardest on low-income schools with low test scores.10

Oakland’s six closed schools fit that pattern, but most of the gap compared to the state average is because the district’s schools are already 80 percent low-income. Even compared to that baseline, the closed schools were 8 points poorer than Oakland’s public schools overall.

Note: six schools is a small dataset, so these data suggest a direction, not an absolute trend.

Read this related article:

Every dollar spent carrying empty buildings is a dollar not spent on students

Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) superintendent Alysse Castro has said OUSD runs more schools than its enrollment can pay for.11

The district’s own 2026 Facilities Master Plan confirms: enrollment fills only about 60 percent of the space OUSD was built for, and 71 percent of the space it now schedules, leaving some 23,000 empty seats.12

At the fill rate of similar districts, Oakland’s students would fill around 43 to 53 schools. According to public records, OUSD currently operates 78 schools.

According to OUSD’s facilities master plan, its excess square footage “forces the district to divert funds into utilities, custodial services, and administrative staffing for underutilized buildings rather than direct student services.”

The district’s own reports estimated potential savings of $3 million if it merged 10 schools into five in 2024.

Based on those district-produced numbers, Oakland Report estimates that continuing to operate 25 to 35 more schools than its enrollment supports costs the district somewhere between $11 million to $21 million per year.

The district’s budget plan counts on raising about $10 million a year from better attendance (the state gives school districts funding based on attendance). In Oakland, running a school footprint the size of its peers’ students-per-school footproints would be worth one to two times that. By the board’s own math, where a percentage point of attendance is worth $5.25 million, it would result in budget savings equivalent to raising attendance by two to four points.13

The district’s 2026-27 budget shows $841.0 million coming in against $874.3 million going out, and a $37.2 million drop in fund balance — down 62.9 percent, from $100.2 million the year before.14

To be clear, closing more schools would not fix all of OUSD’s budget woes. Even the high end of the estimated savings would not close the OUSD’s structural budget deficit without additional budget changes.

But the public record suggests that the cost of not closing underenrolled schools is and will continue to be substantial.

As board president Brouhard herself stated, the board directed its staff not to consider school closures or mergers. As a result, the budget savings plans staff presented to the board in November found less than $22 million of the $100 million needed to close the gap. In February, the board cut 421 jobs while keeping schools open.15

Then in June, the board adopted a 2026-27 budget projecting an $8 million surplus — but only if it finds $30 million in cuts — this year and again the year after — but it still has not identified exactly what those cuts will be.16

Other considerations and caveats

• The board has valid reasons for caution. Closing schools is one of the most difficult, controversial, and emotionally charged steps a district can take.

• The six charter school closures in 2026 were real, potentially devastating losses for the 1,028 affected students and their families.

• The state attorney general warned in 2024 that OUSD’s 2022 closure plan would have fallen hardest on Black students, low-income students and students with disabilities.17

• The district has also made progress in some areas: for example, its attendance rose to 91.8 percent.

• The enrollment data does not flag charters separately in long-past years, so the 2000-01 split between charters and district-run schools is a range.

• The school counts exclude adult education, preschool and child development centers; counting them raises Oakland’s total number of schools to 86.

• The $11 million–$21 million savings figure is our estimate, built from the district’s past savings estimates rather than by direct study of the district’s individual buildings and enrollment patterns.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Conclusion

Neither the data nor this analysis pass judgment on the value of charter schools versus district-run schools. Each type of school — public, charter, private, homeschool — has its benefits and drawbacks for parents to consider. Such an examination is beyond the scope of this report.

It is understandable, to a degree, that public school districts tend to be hostile to charters, as they draw resources away from district-run schools.

It also is reasonable to consider the possibility that when a public school district is underperforming, the added competition from charter and private schools is even less likely to be welcomed by the district nor by supporters of district-run public schools.

The above considerations raise another question: When district-run schools perform to high standards that compare well to both charter and private school options, does that result in stronger enrollment at district-run schools? Oakland Report may examine the data behind that question in a future analysis.

What this analysis does show: Six schools closed in Oakland this year, and all were charters. But for the district’s own schools, leaving closures off the table was a specific direction by its board, even as it implemented substantial cuts elsewhere and faces yet more cuts to be determined — and OUSD continues to operate far more schools per student than other large districts.

Read this related article:

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.

BECOME A SUPPORTING MEMBER

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. If you value our work, please donate. We are a citizen-led nonprofit organization based in beautiful Oakland, California. Your contribution in any amount helps us continue to produce articles like this one.

Donate to Oakland Report

Learn more

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.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Making reform permanent

Within weeks of taking office in 2025, mayor Barbara Lee told the federal court that she intended to end Oakland’s federal police oversight “under my watch.”1

In November 2025, she announced the creation of a new position within her administration: the constitutional policing administrator.23

The position was designed to serve as an “internal and embedded monitor and guidance role to improve accountability” within the Oakland Police Department (OPD).4

The position sits within city administration under the direct supervision of the city administrator, works closely with OPD leadership, and advises the mayor.

The city has begun a national search for a permanent constitutional policing administrator, a role that assistant city administrator Michelle Phillips has filled on an interim basis since last November. The city council approved the creation and funding of the permanent position earlier this year.5

Phillips has described her close working relationship with OPD leadership to the federal court.6 She has worked with OPD on streamlining intake and investigative processes for Internal Affairs. She has also worked with OPD, the mayor and city administration on staffing and recruitment, as well as interdepartmental public safety strategies for events such as First Fridays.7

Phillips explained this close coordination to the court as:

“… Continued communication, folks going from office to office, really engaged in talking about police reform efforts in a way that is ingrained in the fabric of the department, and not just a concept.”

— Michelle Phillips, Jan. 27, 2026

Although at first glance this may appear to be yet another layer of police oversight, the position instead appears designed to provide administrative guidance and coordination within city government after federal oversight ends.

A role separate from civilian oversight

The new position has also drawn the attention of the police commission, which is part of Oakland’s civilian oversight system for the police department.8

Created by voters in 2016 and expanded to include the Office of Inspector General in 2020, this system provides independent oversight of certain OPD policies, audits, and investigations of police misconduct; functions that can also relate to constitutional policing.

Civilian oversight provides an independent pathway of accountability, separate from the mayor and city administration’s responsibility for the management and operation of OPD.

Oakland’s civilian oversight structure is unusual in the degree of independence and authority granted to it by the city charter. Police commissioners are appointed volunteers, yet the commission has significant powers that include the authority to terminate the police chief for cause.

At the most recent police commission meeting, commissioner Angela Jackson-Castain proposed that the commission issue a formal statement regarding the constitutional policing administrator position.9

“I think this is undermining the role of the police commission, IG [Office of Inspector General] and CPRA [Community Police Review Agency],” Jackson-Castain said, describing the role as “a redundancy”:

“But when it’s to the point where our goals are being undermined, our charter mandate is being undermined, we’re being defunded actively, and the city administrator’s office has managerial influence on the work that we do in providing constitutional policing oversight — then I do believe it is our duty to stand up for not only the commission but for all the offices that fall under us.”

— Angela Jackson-Castain, Aug. 13, 2026

Commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta disagreed. He described the benefit of “having a point person” who could “be the connective tissue between all the different city departments.” He cited efforts such as transferring misconduct investigations from Internal Affairs to CPRA, establishing a mediation program, and tracking deadlines for misconduct investigations.

The city’s recruitment announcement explicitly distinguishes the two functions: “While internal accountability and civilian oversight share many core priorities, their roles do not and cannot replace each other.”10

The police commission exercises independent oversight through the specific authorities granted to it by the city charter, but it does not direct or administer OPD’s operations.

The constitutional policing administrator serves a different function, working directly with OPD leadership, the city administrator and mayor to coordinate and implement reforms from within city government.

A position endorsed by the court

While some members of the police commission have questioned the role, Judge William Orrick, the federal judge overseeing the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA), has emphasized its importance, stating:

“I would like to think that we’re on the threshold of the institutionalization of constitutional policing in Oakland for the first time since I’ve been involved in this case. And I suspect for the first time ever, the city has prioritized constitutional policing in word, deed and resources.”

— Judge William Orrick, Jan. 27, 2026

Orrick described the constitutional policing administrator role as “pivotal for the long-term success of constitutional policing in Oakland.” He also described the City’s approach as “probably the first recognition that the city and OPD succeed together and they fail by pointing fingers at each other.”

The federal monitor’s March report also recognized the mayor’s personal commitment and involvement in efforts to achieve compliance.11

Then, in May 2026, the monitor and court concluded that the city was in full compliance with the NSA for the first time.12

What’s next

The next case management conference is scheduled for September 29.13 The court ordered the city to provide a compliance update on all 51 tasks of the NSA, as well as a reflection on the lessons learned from the case, including “failures as well as successes.”

The September hearing could mark the next step in Oakland’s transition away from federal oversight. After more than two decades of oversight by the federal court and monitor, responsibility for maintaining these reforms would finally rest with the city.

The constitutional policing administrator is a key part of that plan, creating an internal structure to coordinate reform and maintain accountability after federal oversight ends.

As the mayor has emphasized, the city’s work does not end with NSA compliance:

“Constitutional policing is no longer an aspiration. It is a standard…compliance is a milestone, not a finish line.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, May 27, 2026

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to author Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates.

Subscribe to Rajni's updates

Video: Driving by the Laney College tower on Mar. 5, 2026. (Video: Oakland Report. Song excerpt: “Laney” by Healing Potpourri.)

Oakland Report examines the data behind the decision-making that affects Oaklanders’ lives. Today we look at the Peralta Community College District’s plan to downsize and relocate Laney College’s art gallery — and at the two pop-up galleries students opened to preserve spaces for student art.

The college stepped back — and students stepped up

Every Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m., the doors of the Werkshack Gallery at 481 25th Street give way to a bustling crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder, laughing, conversing, expressing themselves amongst the artworks that adorn the walls.12

From vividly colored paintings, to intricate sculptures, to lively woodworks and ceramics, students from across the Peralta Community College District gather to display their work as people from all over Oakland come together to experience it.

Raha Banoo, Kiki Reitano, and Finn Jordan, and a group of Laney College students who organized this exhibit, did so in reaction to the decommissioning of the June Steingart Art Gallery — also known as the Laney Gallery — which closed in May after nearly three decades.3

Mourning the loss of another art space in the Bay Area — and what they described as an administration that remained passive in the aftermath of such a decision — they founded their club, The Society of Artists and Makers, with the goal of continuing to display student creations.

Almost immediately, their cause gained traction: alongside a second exhibition at Golden Outside Cafe at 543 Athol Avenue, they received hundreds of submissions from student artists, the organizers said, and an enthusiastic, diverse reception at both venues.

The Werkshack show, which runs through Aug. 29, displays artwork by 23 students enrolled at Berkeley City College, College of Alameda, Laney College and Merritt College.

Key findings:

• The Peralta district’s relocation plan cuts the gallery from 922 assignable square feet to 200 — a 78% reduction. That is the deepest proportional cut of the 18 users in the campus’ landmark administration tower — and the gallery is the only space being moved off the Laney campus.4

• The gallery’s dedicated exhibition storage — 290 square feet — is eliminated entirely. Exhibition space itself falls from 632 square feet to 200, in an atrium the plan says will be set up “TBD based on exhibition.”

• The plan lists one benefit and one drawback for the move. Under “Pros” it records “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” it reads in full: “Not on-campus.”

• Six of the tower’s 18 users gain space in the plan. The overall reduction across the building is 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383 — and the gallery’s 78% cut is the steepest on a percentage basis.

• The district’s facilities problem is real and documented. An independent consultant told the Peralta board in April that 38 of the district’s buildings (40%) are rated “deficient,” and that Laney has more of them than any other campus.

Subscribe for free to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

The Society of Artists and Makers is not merely a story about individual artistic passion that has blossomed far beyond expectation.

Theirs also is a story of an energetic community’s initiative, anchored in a pursuit to continue to keep the arts alive and creators uplifted, while the district’s own plan assigns their gallery the smallest remaining footprint.

A history behind Laney Gallery, and why it is being shut down

Founded in 1998, Laney Gallery was named after June Steigart, one of the first female instructors of the college’s art department, who taught from 1966 until her death in 1991 and was described by the college as “the soul of the Laney Art Department.”5

Since then, it has been a center for professional development, artistic expression, and student culture on the Laney campus, with a wide range of exhibitions in various mediums: traditional painting, printmaking, woodworking, mixed media, and more. Some notable recent displays include their Spring 2025 Clay Paper Wood show,6 the Stoked wood-fired ceramics exhibition,7 and an Annual Juried Student Show.8

The gallery’s final exhibition, Here & Now, was on display from March 23 to May 14, displaying art from students across the Peralta district’s four community colleges. Artists, faculty, and community members gathered both in celebration of Laney Gallery’s almost 30-year existence, and in grief at its pending closure. The show was curated by gallery director Susanna Stromberg with support from student artists — among them Banoo and Jordan.9

The June Steingart Gallery’s retirement, however, wasn’t an event done in isolation. It was a part of a larger decommission of the Laney College Tower, which hosts not only the gallery space, but student services, administrative offices, and the campus’ counseling and wellness centers.10

The landmark Laney College tower is set to be decommissioned

The decision to shut down the tower was made by the Laney College interim leadership, including interim president Becky Opsata and the Peralta Community College District administration.

District administrators have cited the building’s unreliable facilities — specifically its elevators — its recurring need for servicing, and overall difficulty in maintenance as primary reasons for the tower’s closure.11

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

At a March 11 presentation to faculty and classified staff, deputy chancellor and chief operating officer Greg Nelson described the tower as a financial “albatross” and said that during his tenure the district had “put probably $5 million into that building and it hasn’t helped it at all.”

The most recent relocation plan, dated April 16, 2026, continues this narrative, stating that “the building’s structural, mechanical, and building systems are original and have reached the end of their functional life cycle.”

The plan, which covers a nine-story building constructed in 1971 whose occupants use roughly 28,483 square feet, details the proposed changes of location for each service within the tower — most of them elsewhere on Laney’s campus.

The gallery takes the deepest cut of any use in the building

Oakland Report examined the plan’s four relocation summary tables and recomputed each user’s change in assignable square feet.

Across all 18 users, the tower’s occupied space falls 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383. But the reduction is not evenly distributed.

Six users — business and administrative services, counseling, mental health, social sciences faculty, part-time faculty, and career technical education staff — gain space. Twelve users lose space.

The June Steingart Gallery loses the most, proportionally, of any of them.

The gallery currently occupies 922 assignable square feet on the tower’s ground floor, split between 632 square feet of exhibition space and 290 square feet of dedicated exhibition storage.

The plan reduces exhibition space to 200 square feet and eliminates the storage entirely.

The gallery also is the only occupant leaving campus. The plan relocates the gallery to the atrium of the Peralta District Service Center at 333 E. 8th Street, several blocks away, with setup “TBD based on exhibition needs.”

Under the heading “Pros,” the plan lists a single line: “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” also a single line: “Not on-campus.”

The move was scheduled for completion by the end of summer 2026. A separate phasing page directs that “Art Gallery supplies packed, labeled and moved to storage” at the end of May. The off-campus destination has been in the plan since at least its March 4 draft.

When asked about this relocation, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan stated that they were given no formal updates on the Laney Gallery other than its decommissioning, which left the summer an empty node of artistic exhibition— and, to them, left the gallery’s future unknown. This, they said, was a common sentiment among staff members and students alike.

The plan itself was not secret. A draft was presented to the Laney Facilities Planning Committee on February 2. Opsata circulated a feedback form afterward, and successive versions have been posted publicly on the college’s website.

The feedback form, however, was open only to faculty and staff.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a document published as a facilities schedule, and consulted primarily through governance committees, would not reach the students whose exhibition space it reassigns.

Oakland Report is a citizen-led nonprofit. If you like our work, please consider donating.

Donate now

“The palpable feeling of love”: a want for humanity and connection

The driving force of The Society of Artists and Makers’ project was a sentiment of Oaklanders building something for themselves, by themselves, free from the constraints of bureaucratic limitations and reductions. The closure of the Laney Gallery came as a devastating shock to many, but the students felt that remaining passive was not an option.

Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all said that they, along with many other students and faculty members, could no longer wait for updates that they didn’t know would come. The uncertainty only deepened their own commitment — and as they would later learn — the campus community’s commitment to band together and independently forge an artistic space of their own.

Above all else, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all commented on the “palpable feeling of love” that emanated from their pop-up galleries — not only from their friends and family, but also people from the other Peralta district colleges and the greater Bay Area who care about the arts. Banoo said that many visitors who only planned to stop by briefly to see the pieces lingered for hours, basking in the conversational and animated atmosphere.

The student organizers expressed that beyond appreciating the student artworks, the greatest outcome of their club was being able to feel the genuine human connection, both interpersonally between people who visited the galleries and even more so, between the people and the art.

Banoo emphasized that in a tumultuous era for creativity — including the evolving world of AI in the technological hub of the Bay Area — handmade artwork conveys lived experience that builds the groundwork for authenticity and real kinship: all things that a machine cannot do. To them, it was clear that this is what the community needed by how they showed up and stayed. Reitano described it as a statement on today’s isolating times where “we are craving nothing more than being around real people and something actually tangible.”

Other considerations and counterpoints

• The Peralta district’s plan is a proposal and a schedule, not a completed action; square footages describe assignable space, and a 200-square-foot allocation in a shared atrium is not directly comparable to a 632-square-foot dedicated room in either direction — an atrium may accommodate a larger reception than the floor plan suggests, or a smaller one.

• The plan’s four section totals sum to 26,476 assignable square feet, about 2,000 short of the 28,483 square feet the same document says tower users occupy; that gap is unexplained in the text and likely reflects a difference between assignable and gross measurement.

• The percentage cut is a measure of space, not of programming: nothing in the plan states how many exhibitions the gallery will mount at the district office.

• The district’s facilities problem is documented and expensive. An independent consultant told the Peralta board on April 28 that 38 buildings districtwide (40%) are classified “deficient” under Division of the State Architect assessments — the “strongest candidates” for renovation or replacement — and that Laney has 13 of them, more than any other campus.

• Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson noted that the term “deficient” is a decision-making tool rather than a safety finding, and the consultant agreed the buildings currently are safe to use.

• The consultant also reported that Peralta’s building footprint exceeds what its enrollment and its shift toward online instruction require, and cautioned that “the District cannot approach every building as though long-term reinvestment is equally viable.”12

• Not everyone in the art department describes the move as a loss. Beth Maher, Laney’s dean of liberal arts, told The Citizen (the district’s student newspaper) that the district office is in some ways more public — “there’ll be eyes on it at every board meeting, every event” — and that it offers better air conditioning, more open hours, and room to “spill out and have 100 people for a reception if we wanted to.”

• Art department chair Mary Catherine Bassett, who said “it’s sort of like the rug’s being pulled a little,” told The Citizen the gallery’s name will not change: “It would be a disservice to the lineage, the heritage, the history and the community to rename it anything other [than after June Steingart].” Bassett also said she hopes the department can host exhibitions elsewhere on the Laney campus, including in the theater building now under construction.

A silver lining

The Werkshack exhibition runs through Aug. 29, with a closing reception that Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.; the Golden Outside exhibition runs on the cafe’s morning hours through the same date.

Though The Society of Artists and Makers currently has no upcoming events planned after that date, they insist that this is only the beginning. With or without help from administrative officials, they say they will continue to pave the way for consistently recognizing student art, forging genuine connections, and uplifting Peralta and the greater Oakland community.

Even though the past few months have been a stressful roller coaster of ups and downs, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan said they are proud of what they have accomplished.

“Initally, it was just wanting to keep having a place to showcase our art. But now, this has become the brightest silver lining possible of the gallery closing.”

— Raha Banoo, co-founder, Society of Artists and Makers

The district’s plan and the students’ response to it are answers to the same question, asked at different scales: what will happen to the June Steingart Gallery after the Laney administration tower is decommissioned?

Peralta’s answer, written into a facilities schedule, is that 922 square feet of dedicated gallery on a campus of 13 deficient buildings is a cost it can no longer carry, and that 200 square feet in a district atrium will have to do.

The students’ answer, worked out over a summer in a shared workspace on 25th Street and in a cafe on Athol Avenue, is that the space was never the point — but that someone has to keep providing one.

Do you have something to say about this topic? We want to hear from you!

Write to us

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phoebe Vo is an incoming second year student at University of California, Berkeley, where she works as a reporter for the Daily Californian university newspaper. She has more than five years of experience in journalism. Her goal is to continue her career covering issues important to the Bay Area. Phoebe is a participant in Oakland Report’s inaugural summer internship program.

DONATE TO OAKLAND REPORT

Oakland Report provides accurate, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. Your contribution in any amount helps us continue to produce articles like this one.

Donate now

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we take a look at new national FBI data to again test Mayor Barbara Lee’s claim that crime in Oakland is down on her watch — and her inference that she deserves the credit.

Oaklanders have long suffered under one of the highest crime rates in the nation, even as crime has gone down overall in recent years — and trended downward nationwide.

Announcing the permanent appointment of police chief James Beere on July 29, mayor Barbara Lee celebrated the hire as an important continuation of the city’s crime reduction strategy — while seeming eager to frame Oaklanders’ concerns about crime as being as much about people’s feelings of safety as they are about the reality of crime on Oakland’s streets.1

“I am proud to appoint Chief James P. Beere to lead the Oakland Police Department. His appointment marks an important step as we continue building a safer Oakland where every resident feels secure and every neighborhood has the opportunity to thrive.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, July 29, 2026

Yesterday the FBI published Crime in the United States, 2025, with new agency-level data that allow direct comparison between American cities.2

At the national level, the data was the best in decades: violent crime fell an estimated 9% nationwide, the largest single-year drop since the FBI began estimating in 1936, and property crime fell 12%.

Oakland’s own decline was steeper still. The city’s property crime rate fell 27% in a single year and 41% from its 2023 peak.

But even these laudable declines were not enough to dislodge Oakland from its standing as one of America’s most crime-impacted cities.

• Oaklanders continue to experience the highest property crime rate in America — and the highest violent crime rate in California.

To help our readers understand the larger picture of Oakland’s crime trends, Oakland Report updated our August 2 analysis with the FBI’s new national city-level crime data to again assess where Oakland stands among other cities on the stated crime declines — not over two good years, but over the past 16 years.

Using Department of Justice (DOJ) crime data for 2025, we compared Oakland with other cities — and against statewide and national averages, from 2010 through 2025.

We also again examined clearance rates, the share of reported crimes police report solving.

Oakland Report is a citizen-led nonprofit organization. We present the evidence for our readers to decide what to think about it. Subscribe for free to get every analysis in your inbox.

Subscribe now

Key findings

• Oakland still has the highest property crime rate of any large city in America. In the FBI’s latest national city data (2025), Oakland again ranked first among all reporting cities over 100,000 residents.

• Oakland also has the nation’s highest motor vehicle theft rate. Oakland’s rate was 1,448 per 100,000 residents in 2025 — 22% higher than second-place Kansas City and more than three times the national average of 459 per 100,000.

• Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate of any California city. Oakland’s rate remains highest at every population threshold we tested: highest among the 369 reporting cities above 10,000 residents, and highest among the 76 cities above 100,000. Its violent crime rate is 44% above Stockton’s, the next-largest city in the top tier.

• Three crime categories rose in Oakland between 2010 and 2025. Larceny-theft rose 70%, aggravated assault rose 37%, and motor vehicle theft rose 26%. Over the same period, California’s larceny rate fell 26% and its vehicle theft rate fell 23%.

• Some crime categories have fallen sharply in Oakland. Burglary is down 57%, robbery 46% and homicide 44% since 2010 — in each case a steeper decline than the state’s.

• Oakland reported clearing only one of the 6,431 vehicle thefts recorded in 2025. Oakland’s crime clearance rate (the share of reported crimes solved) was 0.02% — and its larceny-theft clearance rate was 0.1%. However, its homicide clearance rate (62%) was around average for large cities. The categories Oakland clears least are the categories that grew most.

• Six crime categories rose in 2025 — the year Barbara Lee took office. Rape, attempted rape, arson, assaults with a knife, thefts from buildings, and bicycle thefts all increased from 2024 to 2025.

Oakland still has the highest property crime rate in America

When we published our previous analysis on August 2, the most recent national city-level comparison was the FBI’s 2024 crime data, and we noted that whether Oakland kept the top ranking would depend on how far other high-rate cities fell when the FBI released its 2025 data.3

The newly released 2025 crime data answers it. Oakland’s property crime rate of 5,225 per 100,000 remains the highest in the nation among cities with more than 250,000 residents — and also remains the highest of all U.S. cities with populations above 100,000.

Oakland’s #1 ranking appears to have held because the cities with high crime rates, but still lower than Oakland’s, fell at a similar pace, not because Oakland stopped improving.

The FBI cautions against city rankings, and four large cities — Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville and New Orleans — did not report 2025 data.

Notably, New York and Atlanta, both of which did not report in 2024, did report in 2025 — with property crime rates of 2,273 and 3,100 per 100,000 residents, respectively. Neither approaches Oakland’s rate.

Oakland also has the nation’s highest vehicle theft rate

The crime category in which Oakland’s highest standing is most extreme is motor vehicle theft.

Oakland reported over 6,400 stolen vehicles in 2025 — a rate of 1,448 per 100,000 residents, according to the FBI’s population figure.

That is the highest of any large American city — 22% above second-place Kansas City and 3.2 times the average for cities over 250,000.

Vehicle theft in Oakland also rose over the long run. Oakland’s rate increased 26% since 2010, while California’s fell 23%.

Oakland now reports vehicle theft at about seven times the national rate and 4.6 times California’s rate.

Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate in California

Oakland’s violent crime rate of 1,475 per 100,000 residents is still the highest in California among cities with populations over 10,000 residents.

The California cities closest behind Oakland are far smaller. Barstow (population 24,800) reported 1,332 violent crimes per 100,000 residents and Commerce (11,800) reported 1,274 per 100,000.

Among cities of comparable size the spread is far greater: Stockton (population 326,000), reported 1,027 violent crimes per 100,000 residents — 44% below Oakland — and San Bernardino (population 225,400) reported 892 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.

The crime categories that rose are the categories Oakland isn’t clearing

A crime is “cleared” when police make an arrest and refer charges, or when an identified suspect cannot be charged for reasons outside police control.

Reading Oakland’s clearance rates alongside its crime trends produces a pattern that is difficult to ignore.

Oakland cleared 62% of its homicides in 2025 — below California’s 79% but close to the 69% average for U.S. cities over 250,000.

But in other categories, Oakland’s crime clearance rate lagged far behind other cities.

• Aggravated assaults in Oakland were cleared at a rate of 10%, compared to 52% statewide.

• Robbery clearances were at 8%, compared to 34% statewide.

• Burglary clearances were 0.3%.

• Larceny-theft clearances were 0.1% — 15 clearances against roughly 14,500 reported crimes.

• In motor vehicle theft, Oakland reported only one clearance against around 6,400 reported thefts — a rate of 0.02%.

The three crime categories that rose in Oakland over 16 years are larceny-theft, aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft. Those are also, along with burglary, the categories Oakland reports clearing least.

The categories that fell — homicide, robbery, burglary — include the two categories Oakland clears at rates closest to the average for large cities.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that these facts are related. Crime deterrence research generally finds that the probability of being caught matters more to offending than the severity of punishment — and a category cleared at 0.02% offers close to no probability at all.

It also stands to reason that a department facing over 23,000 reported property offenses with only around 546 active-duty officers — well below the 700 officers Oakland voters approved new taxes in 2024 to fund4 — may clear so few of these crimes because the crime volume is so high and the police department’s capacity is so low.

Note: These data cannot separate the two, and we do not claim they can.

One should not take the near-zero clearance figures entirely at face value

As we noted in our August 2 analysis, clearance numbers this close to zero may reflect breakdowns in how clearances are recorded and transmitted as much as investigative outcomes.

Two features of the 2025 data reinforce that possibility. Oakland’s reported robbery clearance rate increased from 0.5% in 2024 to 8.4% in 2025 — a seventeenfold change in one year, which seems more consistent with a reporting change than with a change in investigative practice.

A single clearance in a category with over 6,400 offenses (motor vehicle theft) is a figure that invites further scrutiny into Oakland’s reporting capacity and practices.

Notably, the city’s information technology department told the council’s public safety committee in July 2024 that Oakland’s police records system was vulnerable to outages and relied on an outdated method of transmitting crime statistics to federal authorities; the committee voted to replace it.5

What the clearance data support without qualification is the comparison at the top of the scale. Oakland’s homicide clearance rate is within range of its peers, but every other crime clearance category is far below both the state and the large-city average, and the gap is widest where Oakland’s crime counts have grown.

Six crime categories rose in 2025 — the year Barbara Lee took office

The recently released 2025 data shows that 35 of the 43 crime categories and subcategories significantly fell in Oakland between 2024 and 2025 — a welcome change, even as Oakland continued to have the highest violent crime rate in California for the 16^th straight year.

Robbery with a firearm fell 50%, forcible-entry burglary fell 48%, street robbery fell 46%, and auto theft fell 35%.

But over the same period, six crime categories went up.

• Rape in Oakland increased 9.5% in 2025. (Rape includes three subcategories measured at different levels — rape, and its two components, forcible rape and attempted rape.)

• Arson rose 14.9%.

• Assaults committed with a knife rose 41.2%, even as assaults with a firearm fell.

• Thefts from buildings increased 35.7%.

• Bicycle thefts rose 8.3%.

• Attempted rape increased 40%

• Forcible rape rose 7.8%.

• Convenience-store robbery also increased but only slightly, from 116 to 118.

Barbara Lee was sworn in as mayor on May 20, 2025, and led the city for roughly seven and a half months of the year — a little over 60% of it.

Marking one year in office on May 20, 2026, mayor Barbara Lee told local television station KTVU that “crime rates are coming down in all categories.”6

Because a partial year invites unfair comparison in either direction, we compared crime data from the months of June through December in 2024 and 2025 — a timeframe when Lee held office in 2025 and her predecessors held office in 2024.

On that aligned comparison, the direction holds and in some cases sharpens: rape rose 13.7% , arson 19.4%, and knife assaults 8.0% in June-December 2025.

Two of the smaller increases reversed — thefts from buildings fell 3.7% and bicycle thefts were flat — indicating that those two were driven by the January-to-May period, before Lee took office.

However, over the same June-to-December window when Lee was in office, citywide violent crime fell 20.1% and property crime fell 22.1%.

We report the alignment because the timing is a fair question for readers to ask, not because these data can answer it. Nothing in this dataset establishes that a mayor’s tenure caused any of these movements, in either direction. As noted before, crime is declining overall nationwide.

Reported rape counts are influenced by victim reporting rates, advocacy, and investigative practice as much as by incidence. Arson counts turn partly on how fire investigators classify causes. The three smallest categories here involve raw count changes of 14 to 19 crimes, well within the range of ordinary year-to-year variation.

It seems unlikely that seven months of any administration could produce a measurable change in the underlying rate of these crimes at all. The same caution applies to the far larger declines Lee has cited in public statements.

If this kind of analysis is useful to you, consider a donation to Citizens Oakland, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports our work.

Donate now

Thank you.

Other considerations and counterpoints

A fair reading includes the following.

• Oakland’s recent improvement is real, large, and faster than the nation’s — even as Oaklanders continue to suffer some of the highest crime rates in America. Its 27% single-year drop in property crime and a 22% drop in violent crime outpace the national declines of 12% and 9%.

• Oakland’s violent crime rank improved from second to third highest among large American cities, and its 55 reported homicides in 2025 were its fewest on record.

• Citywide rates also mask enormous neighborhood variation; a citywide average understates conditions in East and West Oakland flatland neighborhoods and overstates them in the hills.

• Oakland polices a dense freeway-and-port geography with concentrated poverty that most comparison cities do not share, and it attempts to do so with roughly three-quarters of its budgeted sworn force actually active.

• A ranking among reporting cities is not a ranking among all cities. Four large jurisdictions were absent from the 2025 federal data: Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville and New Orleans.

• None of that changes the math. In the most recent year for which national comparison is possible, after the steepest two-year improvement in its recent record, Oakland reported more property crime per resident than any other large city in the United States, and the highest violent crime rate in California for the 16^th straight year.

• This analysis uses the same methodology and has the same caveats as our August 2 article, updated with the new 2025 crime data the FBI released yesterday.

Read this related article:

Is Oakland succeeding against crime? It depends on how you look at the data.

As noted above, mayor Lee told KTVU on May 20 that “crime rates are coming down in all categories.”

Video montage 1: Oakland mayor Barbara Lee claims that “crime rates are coming down in all categories” in a television interview on May 20, 2026. (Video sources: Instagram @mayorbarbaralee; KTVU. Montage by Oakland Report.)

The overall decline in crime to which the mayor referred is real — but it also is part of a nationwide trend. Oakland’s violent crime fell 22% in 2025 and its homicides fell 32%.

However, crime went up in some categories, and the mayor’s comments also did not address how Oakland’s crime rate compares to everywhere else.

In addition to having the highest property crime rate in the nation and the highest violent crime rate in the state, Oakland now reports the highest vehicle theft rate of any large city in the United States: 1,448 per 100,000 residents, 22% above second-place Kansas City and more than three times the average for cities over 250,000.

The mayor’s statements are technically accurate as stated, but they describe a city in which crime has fallen in several categories while eliding the fact that crime is declining nationwide — and the data which show that Oakland still has among the highest crime rates in the country.

Oakland’s property crime rate fell 26% in 2025, roughly double the state and national declines — yet Oakland still has the highest property crime rate in America.

Oakland’s violent crime rate fell 22% in 2025 — yet Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate in California.

Oakland’s 55 homicides reported by the FBI in 2025 were its fewest on record in decades — yet its homicide rate remains nearly four times the state average.

Over the longer term, the picture is even less favorable. Larceny-theft is up 70% since 2010, aggravated assault up 37%, and vehicle theft up 26%, while California’s rates fell in two of those three categories over the same period.

Reported thefts from vehicles in Oakland are up 343% since 2010. In 2025, Oaklanders reported over 17,000 crimes against vehicles — one for every 25 residents.

In addition, Oaklanders continued to experience a reported 90% chance that a violent crime would go unsolved.

The recent declines in many crime categories are heartening, and we hope they continue to decline.

Whether these new data from the FBI support the broader claim that “crime is down” in Oakland is for the reader to decide.

BECOME A SUPPORTING MEMBER

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We are a citizen-led, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization based in beautiful Oakland, California. If you value our work, please consider becoming a supporting membr. Your contribution in any amount helps us continue to produce articles like this one.

Join now

Learn more

PART ONE OF A SERIES

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this series, we will examine the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign — and its mirror image: what Oakland would look like if it was broken into seven smaller cities, one for each council district.

A thought experiment — not a political proposal

I hella love Oakland. The Town is a unique and intoxicating city, filled with nearly a half-million extraordinary people, and gifted with a wealth of culture, entrepreneurship and verve. There is no other city quite like it.

Oakland is my home of many years — my forever home, after growing up in nearby Hayward — and I doubt that I will ever willingly leave it.

I don’t have strong feelings about Piedmont one way or the other. I rarely go there, except to pass through it on my way from one Oakland destination to another, and to occasionally stop by a hardware store I like.

Although Piedmont is a nice place in many ways, I personally would not choose to live there, even if I had the means to do so — which I don’t. This is not to throw shade at Piedmont. It’s just that Piedmont’s vibe is not my vibe. To each their own.

[Editors’ note: Some readers may wonder whether Oakland Report receives financial support from Piedmonters — who are referred to in some circles by the mostly inaccurate pejorative, “Piedmont billionaires.” The short answer is: hardly at all. The vast majority of our donors reside in Oakland — over 85%, to be precise. Only 2.4% of our donors live in Piedmont, and Piedmonters have contributed only 1.5% of total donations received by this publication since its founding in late 2023.]

I personally would not want Oakland to be broken up into smaller cities.

I worked for local governments in San Mateo County, where there are many small cities and towns packed together, for nearly a decade. Some of those cities and towns are wealthier per capita than Piedmont, and some of them have less wealth and fewer resources per capita than Oakland.

From that experience, I came to the personal and professional conclusion that having many separate small cities and towns on the Peninsula (not to mention a multitude of overlapping school and special districts) is nowhere near as efficient as fewer, larger cities would be. But if you were to ask the people who live there, most of them almost certainly would say that they don’t want their cities and towns “cancelled” or annexed into other cities.

As for me, I love Oakland’s geography and scale as it stands now — warts and all. I neither want it broken up nor expanded further.

However, recent articles in the media about the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign led Oakland Report to look closer at the data behind the slogan.12

Oakland is a populous and geographically large city by most measures. In many ways, it’s more like several different cities mashed together than one cohesive place. This led us to the question:

• Rather than annexing Piedmont, what if Oakland were broken up into several smaller, but still fairly large cities — say, seven distinct cities, one for each of its council districts?

This series will look at the main points the Cancel Piedmont proponents raised in recent media coverage: racial demographics, housing, and historic segregation.

It also will look at other nuts-and-bolts aspects of local governance if Oakland were to annex Piedmont, and if Oakland itself were broken up into smaller cities — such as council representation, tax revenues, economic opportunity, crime, infrastructure, and service delivery.

This first installment in the series summarizes our initial findings on some of these aspects.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

Key findings

• Piedmont is a demographic outlier — but Oakland’s council districts differ from each other almost as much. For example, Piedmont is roughly 67% White and 4% Hispanic. By comparison, Oakland’s District 1 (Rockridge / North Oakland) is around 51% White and 13% Hispanic; while District 7 (Deep East Oakland) is around 8% White and 57% Hispanic.

• Piedmont has about 21 times more elected representation per resident than Oakland. Piedmonters have one elected city council member for roughly every 2,200 residents. Oaklanders have one elected official (there are eight city council members plus an elected mayor) for around every 48,800 residents. From the perspective of increasing representation, breaking up Oakland into seven separate cities would result in a sevenfold increase in representative power per resident.

• Both cities exceeded their last round of topline state housing goals. Oakland permitted 128% of its 14,765-unit housing goal — though it fell short in every affordable category. Piedmont permitted 160% of its housing goal — but its goal was a mere 60 units, and nearly everything it built was a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

• The wealth divides result, in part, from historic segregation in both cities. Piedmont’s 1907 incorporation to avoid annexation by Oakland, the 1924 expulsion of the Dearing family from Piedmont, racially discriminatory deed covenants in Oakland hills neighborhoods like Rockridge, and the 1937 federal redlining maps in Oakland largely trace today’s lines of wealth and racial disparity.

• Annexing Piedmont would barely move the needle on most measures. Because Piedmont is such a small city in comparison to Oakland, annexing it would shift Oakland’s demographics by less than one percentage point, add a mere 2.2% to its housing stock, increase its tax revenue by only 2.8%, and leave its state housing goal progress essentially unchanged.

Piedmont is a demographic outlier — but Oakland’s council districts differ from each other almost as much

Oakland’s districts demographically differ from each other nearly as much as Piedmont differs from Oakland.

According to the most recent available Census survey data, Piedmont is 67% non-Hispanic White, 20% Asian, 4% Hispanic, and 1% Black.

By comparison, Oakland overall has no majority group: 29% Hispanic, 28% non-Hispanic White, 20% Black, and 16% Asian.3

But individual districts’ demographics diverge significantly from one another.

• District 1 (North Oakland) is 50.6% non-Hispanic White — the closest thing Oakland has to a Piedmont.

• District 4 (the hills, Montclair, and the Laurel) is 47.2% White and just 9.1% Black — the smallest Black share of any district in the city.

• District 7 (Deep East Oakland) is 8.2% White and majority Hispanic at 56.6%.

• Districts 3 (West Oakland) and 6 (East Oakland) are the most heavily Black (31.2% and 29.5%).

• District 2 (Lake Merritt) is the most Asian (32.3%).

Annexation would barely move the demographic needle. Piedmont holds only 2.4% of the combined population of both cities. Adding it would shift Oakland’s citywide shares by less than one percentage point in every category.

Council representation per resident is more powerful in smaller cities

Annexing Piedmont into Oakland without significantly expanding the number of seats on Oakland’s current council would barely move the representation needle.

Oakland’s roughly 439,000 residents elect eight council members plus a mayor. That is one elected official for around every 48,800 residents.

Piedmont’s roughly 11,000 residents elect five council members — one for around every 2,200 residents.

Put another way, a Piedmont resident has about 21 times more representation on their city council than an Oakland resident has on theirs.

If Oakland was broken up into seven separate cities corresponding to the current council districts, and each new city had eight council members plus a mayor, Oakland’s representation ratio would be about one official per 7,000 residents.

In other words, breaking up Oakland into seven smaller cities would result in seven times as much representation per resident, though still three times thinner than Piedmont’s.

Housing: both cities exceeded their topline state goal — but with vastly different scales and means

California assigns every city housing goals, called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). In the 2015–2023 cycle, both cities exceeded their topline goals.456

Oakland permitted 128% of its 14,765-unit goal — though it fell short in every affordable category.

Piedmont permitted 160% of its goal. But its goal was just 60 units, and nearly everything it built was a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

The current cycle’s goals (2023–2031) will prove harder for both cities.

Per the city’s 2025 Housing Element progress report, Oakland has permitted 13.8% of its 26,251-unit goal — on par with San José and Fremont, but well behind pace.

Oakland would need about 4,528 permits a year for five years to catch up. Its 2025 permits equaled just 0.4% of its existing stock, though 84% were affordable, and city staff anticipated more than 1,000 affordable permits in the first half of 2026.78

Piedmont has permitted 9.5% of its 587-unit goal — all but three units of it ADUs or SB 9 units.910

Once more, annexation would barely move the needle: Piedmont would add 2.2% to Oakland’s housing stock, and the combined city’s progress toward its RHNA topline goal would remain virtually unchanged — from 13.8% to 13.7%.

Over 60% of Oakland’s land, including much of downtown, is classified “lower resource” — and that is where the zoned housing capacity sits. The high-resource hills carry little capacity as currently zoned, and about 70% of the highest-resource areas sit inside the Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a hills district-city (for example if District 1 — Rockridge and North Oakland — were its own city), would build almost nothing, relatively speaking — while downtown district-cities (such as Oakland Districts 3 and 4) would carry the bulk of the region’s growth.

One notable contrast: Oakland largely eliminated single-family zoning in October 2023. Piedmont’s zoning remains roughly 95% single-family.

A history of segregation — in both cities

Piedmont incorporated as a city in 1907. Historic records indicate that the goal was to avoid rapid annexation by Oakland, which was gobbling up numerous nearby towns at the time.11

In 1924, Sidney Dearing — believed to be Piedmont’s first Black homeowner — bought a home in Piedmont. Within months, a mob of more than 500 people surrounded the home and terrorized its residents. The city then moved to condemn the property for a road it never built.

A 1924 Oakland Tribune account reportedly quoted Piedmont’s mayor saying the condemnation was “for the improvement of the city as well as to make the negro move from Piedmont.” A lawsuit filed by Dearing’s great-granddaughter this February is now testing that record in court.12

Around the same time, much of Oakland’s hill districts followed a similar path of restrictive deed covenants that prevented non-White people from buying homes.

For example, a circa-1906 advertisement for new homes in what is today’s Rockridge district promised: “No negroes, no Chinese, no Japanese can build or lease in Rock Ridge Park.”1314

In 1937, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation gave the covenant-protected hills of Oakland an “A” grade (the infamous “redlining” map). One area was rated highly in part because it was “restricted by deed to Caucasian ownership.” The same maps redlined the flatlands for the “infiltration of Negroes and Orientals.”15

In Oakland, the impacts of those color-coded maps persist in today’s districts with striking continuity. The A-graded hills are today’s Districts 1 and 4. The redlined flatlands are primarily in Districts 3, 5, 6, and 7.

The data suggest that Oakland’s current vastly different district demographics are not a natural sorting, but rather, like Piedmont, are partly due to historic, legally enforced segregation.

Share this article with someone you know.

Share

Other considerations and counterpoints

Piedmont’s defenders make fair points, which we present for readers to consider.

• The city is hardly unique among wealthy Bay Area suburbs like Hillsborough, Los Altos Hills, or Atherton — yet it is the only such city to be subject to a “cancel” campaign.

• Piedmont has formally apologized for its history and commissioned the Dearing memorial.

• It has met its topline state housing goals and adopted the controversial 132-home Moraga Canyon housing plan to meet its goals in the next round.

• Annexation would require Piedmont voters’ approval — a highly unlikely outcome — which makes the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign purely symbolic, by its own creator’s admission.

A look ahead

Future installments in this series may examine other aspects of the “Cancel Piedmont or break up Oakland?” thought experiment, including: incomes, home values, crime, economic opportunity, infrastructure, service delivery, and tax revenues.

(Here’s a preview of the tax revenues data: Piedmont collects $2,690 per resident, compared to Oakland’s $2,440 per resident. Annexation would add an estimated 2.8% to Oakland’s overall tax revenue — not accounting for the increased expenses that adding approximately 11,000 new residents would bring.)

The interesting question the data raises may not be whether Piedmont should exist, but what it reveals about both cities: The same forces that created a city surrounded by Oakland in 1907 also helped to create Oakland’s district map.

“Canceling” Piedmont through annexation into Oakland would barely move the needle on Oakland’s demographics, tax base, or housing capacity.

Conversely, breaking up Oakland potentially could multiply its residents’ representation power sevenfold — but only through the virtually impossible change of turning its district lines into municipal borders.

These data tell a story. The reader can decide for themselves what to think about it.

📖

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We present the facts and let the reader decide. Your donation toward our nonprofit work helps us continue to produce accurate, well-researched, deep-dive articles like this one.

Become a supporting member

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean S. Reinhart is a former library director, now retired after 26 years in local government. He served as library and community services director for the cities of Hayward and Menlo Park for a combined 16 years, where he helped build Hayward’s new main library and Menlo Park’s new multi-service community center. His post-retirement endeavors include serving as the managing editor of Oakland Report.

Sean and his family have lived in Oakland for 15 years. He grew up in nearby Hayward. Sean enjoys exploring California’s world-renowned coastline, valleys, deserts and mountains. His creative pursuits include writing, printmaking, carpentry, music and visual arts. He enjoys meeting new people, reading, hiking, gardening, and spending time with his family.

Editors’ note: This article was posted by Oakland resident M. Ballard on his Substack page. Oakland Report is republishing it with Ballard’s permission, with section headers and illustrations added, for our readers to consider.

BY M. BALLARD

What happened to city services after Measure E failed

Oakland voters rejected Measure E, and that much is settled. Certified Alameda County results show the parcel tax failed in the June 2, 2026 election, 54.07 percent against and 45.93 percent in favor.

The measure would have raised roughly $34 million a year for nine years, spread across 911 response, fire protection, police services, violence prevention, homelessness response, and illegal dumping cleanup.

What happened after the vote is harder to pin down, and it matters more.

What survived: Oakland’s budget held core services without Measure E

The easy read is that Oakland lost the money and therefore cut the services. The city’s own records tell a stranger story.

Oakland adopted its FY 2026-27 midcycle budget on June 12 and balanced it with no Measure E revenue assumed.

Baseline police, fire, dispatch, and violence-prevention operations survived. Twenty-five operational fire engine companies stayed in service.

Homelessness outreach, dumping cleanup, environmental enforcement, street sweeping, recreation centers, libraries, and housing staff all remained funded at some level.

For a resident who needs an ambulance, a shelter bed, a cleared lot, an open branch library, or a staffed rec center, that floor is worth something.

Don’t miss a beat. Subscribe to Oakland Report.

Subscribe now

Where the Oakland budget falls short: specialized policing, fire fleet replacement, and shelter beds

A funded floor is not a functioning city, though, and the records make the gap plain.

City staff flagged real limits on specialized and proactive policing: sideshow enforcement, Ceasefire investigations, targeted enforcement, human trafficking, burglary, vice, and commercial-corridor work.

Fire operations held at baseline, but staff warned that fleet replacement has no dedicated ongoing funding behind it.

Homelessness programs faced a $5 million state Continuum of Care gap, with roughly 190 shelter or housing beds at risk across six programs.

One-time money, fund balances, and waived voter mandates

Council patched where it could. Amendments restored money for two fire engines, illegal-dumping equipment, and emergency shelter.

Measure Q fund balance covered park bathrooms, tree and vegetation work, trash and litter and dumping, and more shelter restoration. Useful moves, all of them, and also a map of where the pressure sits.

What the city assembled reads less like a stable system than a set of scarce dollars shuffled from one weak point to the next.

That gap is what the “cuts versus no cuts” argument hides. Oakland avoided an outright collapse, but the fix it chose is fragile by design: one-time revenues, fund balances, and waivers from spending rules that voters themselves approved.