My biggest continued annoyance with Oaklandside is the credulousness with which they treat random advocacy orgs. They had objective falsehoods in a piece on Ceasefire for SIX MONTHS before they corrected it and even post-correction they obfuscated the actual findings of the report they discussed.
You are correct - and there are so many examples of this. Last year, members of the American Friends Services Committee were treated as subject matter experts by the Police Commission, and recommended eliminating militarized equipment such as drones and rifles. Just before a Police Commission vote on those recommendations, those activists falsely accused OPD to the media of illegally acquiring rifles. The article was retracted after I contacted the author.
Thank you for this article - I've been warning my neighbors not to take the Oaklandside seriously because they operate more as a propaganda outfit than a "neutral" newspaper.
Their quote, "...amplify community voices..." is laughable because their platform is given to a select few that share the same opinions, stances, etc...
In my opinion, the Oaklandside stands in the way of residents and small businesses that deserve a functioning city hall that is responsive to all Oaklanders.
Today, our Oakland responds to the unions, non-profits, and politically aligned organizations.
Oakland’s problems with excessive power wielded by public employees unions is similar to that in virtually all large governmental systems in California. Locally at BART, EBMUD, EBRPD and similar agencies the workers hire their bosses. Yes, the employees through their unions' political action committees choose and support the elected officials who then do their bidding.
It doesn't have to be this way. There have been attempts to prohibit this Union dues to PAC pipeline in the past. In 2012 as Prop 32, such a prohibition received 43% of the vote after being massively outspent by the public employees unions. The public should be even more disgusted with the excessively expensive and ineffective local governments of today. There isn't any other means to correct this issue without a new Prop 32 attempt. Otherwise it will just be more of the same.
Another thing regarding the "credibility" of The Oaklandside as a neutral newspaper.
Roselyn Romero wrote an article, "Violent crime in Oakland is way down for the second year in a row" but there is not one word, let alone an entire sentence that mentions the infusion of CHP officers provided by governor Gavin Newsom.
And I am sure you noticed that the Oaklandside has turned off the comments feature for their articles. "...amplifying community voices..."? Really?
Oaklandside and its parent publication, Berkeleyside, are laughably biased. They often place a higher value on the words of the loudest complainers (frequently the employee unions) and the appropriately “liberal enough” City admins and politicians (eg the laughably unqualified Mayor Ishii) over the public interest. Berkeley’s attempt at civilianizing 1st responders to the legions of the City’s mentally ill and drug addicted homeless was a failure. That program was cut by Berkeley as part of their entirely superficial first attempt to address their $30 million budget deficit. Berkeleyside had nary a critical word to say about the City Manager’s meek plan which included only about 20 layoffs, which incredibly they then said they would put the laid off employees in different City positions! How is that a layoff? In regards to the overtime issues at OPD, they should definitely be looked into especially for signs of nepotism in terms of who is getting that extra $$. At the same time, as stated in this article—the OPD has much of the budget for that already in the form of the fully funded vacant positions. And If Oakland takes those positions away to line the pockets of lifers like Kaplan and other highly placed admin positions with no accountability, crime and OPD response time will continue to get worse. And don’t even get me started about civilianizing the work of OPD. Just take a look at how well that experiment on a small scale failed in Berkeley.
The FLSA overtime rate was completely ignored by the previous city administrator. The city auditor did an excellent analysis for DOT and OPW. The same analysis most likely applies to OPD overtime. The short version is the city is paying more than 1.5x for overtime, and the city council never approved this. Aside from that, OPD gets an overtime budget every year. They just need to stick to their budget.
Josh -- Thank you for your comment. As a former long-time department head in other cities, I agree that departments should stay within their budgets. However, I also believe that a city and its police department are obligated to protect residents and businesses from being victimized by crime when it happens -- and crime happens a lot in Oakland, far more than in other comparable cities.
As Mandal's article notes, the city council finance and management committee reported that "overtime is primarily driven by staffing shortages and operational demands." It also notes that OPD's true operational strength is currently only around 546 sworn officers on active duty -- far below the authorized number of 678 officers, even further below the 700 officers promised to voters in Measure NN (2024), and further still below the 877 officers recommended in an official city council study published last year.
Furthermore, the article notes that interim police chief James Beere has explained that "overtime is often less expensive than hiring additional officers because vacant sworn positions generate salary savings that offset overtime costs," and that "overtime paid by third parties, such as the Oakland Coliseum and special events, is reimbursed to the city’s General Fund rather than OPD’s operating budget, making overtime accounts appear more overspent than their actual net fiscal impact."
Yet, as Mandal points out, none of this context—including OPD’s own explanation for overtime spending—is discussed in the Oaklandside article.
Thank you again for your comment; the discussion, as always, is appreciated.
The time to have those discussions is during the budget process too, which I believe is happening now. Chief Mitchell did a nice job projecting OT needs versus just reacting to everything that was in front of him. Chief Beere does a good job as well managing his resources. I’m not a proponent of vacant positions being a financial cushion though. If you need contingency funds, create them. Don’t rely on vacant positions as some sort of deferred spending account.
Too often, “public safety” was used to justify overtime, and the budget would be blown out of the water. That is common in many cities. Who will argue against additional “public safety”? It is quite a business model. If crime is up, more money is needed to bring it down. If crime is down, more money is needed to keep it down. I’m not a cop and will never run a PD. From my vantage point, Chief Beere does a good job with OPD financial operations.
I’m just curious when anyone will pay attention to the FLSA OT issue though. A lot of attention is being given to the number of overtime hours being worked. No attention has been given to the overtime rate being paid. More OT hours could be worked (more “safety” for the people) if the rate had not been inflated without council’s approval.
When can we expect either Oakland Report or Oaklandside to look into that issue? It’s out in the open through the audit of the DOT and OPW FLSA OT.
Thanks for the comments Josh. Here are my replies:
Overtime budget: I think the issue here is whether the overtime budget is actually realistic. I would argue that it never has been. And, about $8 million of overtime reimbursed from third parties is not placed back into the overtime budget but into the general fund, which leads to an appearance of a spending deficit. The last OPD overtime report finally acknowledged this, and noted that when accounting for that reimbursement, OPD was actually below budget.
Staffing vacancies: It has long been city practice to use the staffing vacancy budget to cover overtime expenses. I also don't believe it's "truthful" accounting, and should be re-examined.
Overtime and public safety: I agree with you that "public safety" shouldn't be the only reason to justify overtime. The overtime report shows multiple reasons - but the main reason is a staffing shortage. With only about 30 officers on patrol every shift - and having issues with just staffing patrol - it is definitely an issue. The IFPTE-authored study said staffing increases alone do not automatically reduce overtime without stronger controls. I agree with that - and the City did outline the supervisory and infrastructure changes that are taking place.
FLSA OT: I am not familiar with this topic (I'm not an accounting gal), but would love to learn more! I assume the overtime rate is included in union contracts, but I defer to the experts.
Found it! You are referring to the Whistleblower report which showed that the City pays over $2 million in unauthorized overtime for OPW and DOT (with likely much more $$ if considering all city departments). I know this was called out again a few months ago by Councilmember Ramachandran, with no response from City Administration.
My biggest continued annoyance with Oaklandside is the credulousness with which they treat random advocacy orgs. They had objective falsehoods in a piece on Ceasefire for SIX MONTHS before they corrected it and even post-correction they obfuscated the actual findings of the report they discussed.
You are correct - and there are so many examples of this. Last year, members of the American Friends Services Committee were treated as subject matter experts by the Police Commission, and recommended eliminating militarized equipment such as drones and rifles. Just before a Police Commission vote on those recommendations, those activists falsely accused OPD to the media of illegally acquiring rifles. The article was retracted after I contacted the author.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nYpp-OoMLiSndfkcuZjPfy1EZwVVs4Yn/view?usp=sharing
Thank you for this article - I've been warning my neighbors not to take the Oaklandside seriously because they operate more as a propaganda outfit than a "neutral" newspaper.
Their quote, "...amplify community voices..." is laughable because their platform is given to a select few that share the same opinions, stances, etc...
In my opinion, the Oaklandside stands in the way of residents and small businesses that deserve a functioning city hall that is responsive to all Oaklanders.
Today, our Oakland responds to the unions, non-profits, and politically aligned organizations.
Oakland’s problems with excessive power wielded by public employees unions is similar to that in virtually all large governmental systems in California. Locally at BART, EBMUD, EBRPD and similar agencies the workers hire their bosses. Yes, the employees through their unions' political action committees choose and support the elected officials who then do their bidding.
It doesn't have to be this way. There have been attempts to prohibit this Union dues to PAC pipeline in the past. In 2012 as Prop 32, such a prohibition received 43% of the vote after being massively outspent by the public employees unions. The public should be even more disgusted with the excessively expensive and ineffective local governments of today. There isn't any other means to correct this issue without a new Prop 32 attempt. Otherwise it will just be more of the same.
Another thing regarding the "credibility" of The Oaklandside as a neutral newspaper.
Roselyn Romero wrote an article, "Violent crime in Oakland is way down for the second year in a row" but there is not one word, let alone an entire sentence that mentions the infusion of CHP officers provided by governor Gavin Newsom.
And I am sure you noticed that the Oaklandside has turned off the comments feature for their articles. "...amplifying community voices..."? Really?
Oaklandside and its parent publication, Berkeleyside, are laughably biased. They often place a higher value on the words of the loudest complainers (frequently the employee unions) and the appropriately “liberal enough” City admins and politicians (eg the laughably unqualified Mayor Ishii) over the public interest. Berkeley’s attempt at civilianizing 1st responders to the legions of the City’s mentally ill and drug addicted homeless was a failure. That program was cut by Berkeley as part of their entirely superficial first attempt to address their $30 million budget deficit. Berkeleyside had nary a critical word to say about the City Manager’s meek plan which included only about 20 layoffs, which incredibly they then said they would put the laid off employees in different City positions! How is that a layoff? In regards to the overtime issues at OPD, they should definitely be looked into especially for signs of nepotism in terms of who is getting that extra $$. At the same time, as stated in this article—the OPD has much of the budget for that already in the form of the fully funded vacant positions. And If Oakland takes those positions away to line the pockets of lifers like Kaplan and other highly placed admin positions with no accountability, crime and OPD response time will continue to get worse. And don’t even get me started about civilianizing the work of OPD. Just take a look at how well that experiment on a small scale failed in Berkeley.
The FLSA overtime rate was completely ignored by the previous city administrator. The city auditor did an excellent analysis for DOT and OPW. The same analysis most likely applies to OPD overtime. The short version is the city is paying more than 1.5x for overtime, and the city council never approved this. Aside from that, OPD gets an overtime budget every year. They just need to stick to their budget.
Josh -- Thank you for your comment. As a former long-time department head in other cities, I agree that departments should stay within their budgets. However, I also believe that a city and its police department are obligated to protect residents and businesses from being victimized by crime when it happens -- and crime happens a lot in Oakland, far more than in other comparable cities.
As Mandal's article notes, the city council finance and management committee reported that "overtime is primarily driven by staffing shortages and operational demands." It also notes that OPD's true operational strength is currently only around 546 sworn officers on active duty -- far below the authorized number of 678 officers, even further below the 700 officers promised to voters in Measure NN (2024), and further still below the 877 officers recommended in an official city council study published last year.
Furthermore, the article notes that interim police chief James Beere has explained that "overtime is often less expensive than hiring additional officers because vacant sworn positions generate salary savings that offset overtime costs," and that "overtime paid by third parties, such as the Oakland Coliseum and special events, is reimbursed to the city’s General Fund rather than OPD’s operating budget, making overtime accounts appear more overspent than their actual net fiscal impact."
Yet, as Mandal points out, none of this context—including OPD’s own explanation for overtime spending—is discussed in the Oaklandside article.
Thank you again for your comment; the discussion, as always, is appreciated.
The time to have those discussions is during the budget process too, which I believe is happening now. Chief Mitchell did a nice job projecting OT needs versus just reacting to everything that was in front of him. Chief Beere does a good job as well managing his resources. I’m not a proponent of vacant positions being a financial cushion though. If you need contingency funds, create them. Don’t rely on vacant positions as some sort of deferred spending account.
Too often, “public safety” was used to justify overtime, and the budget would be blown out of the water. That is common in many cities. Who will argue against additional “public safety”? It is quite a business model. If crime is up, more money is needed to bring it down. If crime is down, more money is needed to keep it down. I’m not a cop and will never run a PD. From my vantage point, Chief Beere does a good job with OPD financial operations.
I’m just curious when anyone will pay attention to the FLSA OT issue though. A lot of attention is being given to the number of overtime hours being worked. No attention has been given to the overtime rate being paid. More OT hours could be worked (more “safety” for the people) if the rate had not been inflated without council’s approval.
When can we expect either Oakland Report or Oaklandside to look into that issue? It’s out in the open through the audit of the DOT and OPW FLSA OT.
Thanks for the comments Josh. Here are my replies:
Overtime budget: I think the issue here is whether the overtime budget is actually realistic. I would argue that it never has been. And, about $8 million of overtime reimbursed from third parties is not placed back into the overtime budget but into the general fund, which leads to an appearance of a spending deficit. The last OPD overtime report finally acknowledged this, and noted that when accounting for that reimbursement, OPD was actually below budget.
Staffing vacancies: It has long been city practice to use the staffing vacancy budget to cover overtime expenses. I also don't believe it's "truthful" accounting, and should be re-examined.
Overtime and public safety: I agree with you that "public safety" shouldn't be the only reason to justify overtime. The overtime report shows multiple reasons - but the main reason is a staffing shortage. With only about 30 officers on patrol every shift - and having issues with just staffing patrol - it is definitely an issue. The IFPTE-authored study said staffing increases alone do not automatically reduce overtime without stronger controls. I agree with that - and the City did outline the supervisory and infrastructure changes that are taking place.
FLSA OT: I am not familiar with this topic (I'm not an accounting gal), but would love to learn more! I assume the overtime rate is included in union contracts, but I defer to the experts.
I would encourage everyone to get familiar with FLSA OT. Read the city auditor’s report on OPW and DOT. It came out about one year ago.
Found it! You are referring to the Whistleblower report which showed that the City pays over $2 million in unauthorized overtime for OPW and DOT (with likely much more $$ if considering all city departments). I know this was called out again a few months ago by Councilmember Ramachandran, with no response from City Administration.
News report: https://www.kqed.org/news/12038022/oakland-continues-overtime-payments-2-months-after-city-auditors-probe-called-them-waste
Auditor report: https://www.oaklandauditor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250202_FLSA-Investigation-Report_FINAL.pdf
I believe it’s an important item.
If the wrong ot rate is used, wouldn't it be the responsibility of either upper management of OPD or ultimately the City's HR people to correct it?
The discussions in Finance Committee over the last year have been enlightening and equally confusing.
Check out the city auditor’s report on FLSA OT in DOT and OPW. It’s an excellent report.
Every time I read Rajni Mandal’s posts, I feel like the oxygen mask has dropped down and given my mind much needed support.
Sean et al, Please look at the dollar amounts that outrage New Yorkers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/nyregion/nyc-plumber-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Then compare with Oakland salaries at City Hall!