In the Details: happenings, findings, discoveries and observations of the past week at City Hall, (3)

1) Council Approves Local Citation/Administrative Fines for Sex Work Solicitation

City Council unanimously approved new legislation last week that will create an “administrative” process akin to illegal dumping citations for “loitering” with intent to purchase sexual services on Oakland’s infamous, but ever-shifting, “Blade”. The new law will allow the City to pursue the citations even if the person is not charged by the DA’s office or a conviction obtained. Dozens of advocates for sexually exploited women and women minors spoke in favor of the legislation at the Council meeting and at the Committee meeting where the legislation was first introduced. You can read a thread of the deliberation and vote here. There are more testimonials from the Public Safety Committee here.

The new city structure will leverage a state law that went into effect in January, AB 379, which adds the “loitering” classification and allows the state to seek administrative fines. OPD has already arrested several dozen alleged sex commerce seekers under the state law and existing laws, according to Lt Marcos Campos. What practices OPD will follow to avoid racial profiling and pretextual stops still remains unclear—Campos told CMs that over 70% of the arrests have been of non-Oakland residents, but numbers from the police chief several days later differ, at a little over 50%. Amendments suggested by CM Brown will provide data about arrests, with the first report due in August. As an ordinance, the legislation will require a second reading, which will occur at the next City Council meeting

2) Council Rules Committee Declines to Schedule CM Houston's EAP Directly to Council in Awkward Deliberation

Despite an impassioned, often aggressive, plea from CM Ken Houston from the dais, Rules committee members declined to schedule Houston's submitted "Encampment Abatement" legislation to the next Council meeting in mid-February. After the item, submitted for scheduling consideration by Houston last week, was read in by the Clerk with the target date of the February 17 Council meeting, Rules Chair Kevin Jenkins noted he would be absent for most of the meeting, prompting Janani Ramachandran to suggest that the item should be heard by all CMs if possible. Rowena Brown said she believed the EAP should follow the route of other legislation, going through a subject matter committee before a vote to send it to full Council—in this case, Life Enrichment Committee, chaired by Carroll Fife.

Houston, who is not a member of the committee, but has made it his habit to try to pressure scheduling outcomes from the dais, asked the Rules members if he was being "bamboozled" by what he described as delays in the EAP vote.

"So what I'm saying is, are we gonna keep delaying this EAP...for what reason? I don't know why we're talking about it. Should have been passed back in August. What are we doing here? Are we being bamboozled?"

Houston's mic was cut after his public speaking time ran out, and the Committee went on to schedule the item to the 2/24 Life Enrichment meeting.

Houston's aggressive anti-homeless text has been modified over time after input from the Interagency Council on Homelessness, the state body that reviews applications for the HHAP grant which is the largest single source of county and city homelessness funds. The committee initially questioned whether the policy adhered to the ICH's standards and even after significant changes from Houston. And even after Houston significantly softened the legislation and its language, ICH still said it was was troubled by the lack of sufficient areas of the city where the homeless could live. Houston's legislation would only allow homeless people to set up dwellings in thin slivers of the city with no guaranteed offers of shelter. That saw the legislation pulled in early December right before it would be heard at Council.

A San Francisco Chronicle report suggests that Houston then called in favors at the state legislature to put pressure on the ICH to agree that the legislation meets the bare minimum requirements for the HHAP. ICH sent a letter to the City in late December noting that while Houston's legislation meets the "minimum requirements", it is still not optimal.

Hesitation to schedule the the EAP again directly to a Council meeting may also stem from several conflictual meetings where well over one hundred opponents of the legislation have complained about untransparent scheduling processes seemingly designed to avoid public participation.

At the Rules Committee, about a dozen advocates for the homeless organized with short notice to again speak out against the legislation. Here are some of the more noteworthy comments from Mike Pyatok and Needa Bee, long-time homeless advocates and organizers; and Lily Robles and Brigitte Nicoletti of the East Bay Community Law Center.

3) Recall-Linked "Moderate" Finance Committees Idle or Terminated as '26 Election Approaches, While a Former Mayoral Contender Takes Over a Corporation They Jump-Started

With the Oakland Mayor’s Office and several Council seats in play this November, the independent campaign finance committees that played a significant role in the East Bay’s recall-era electoral politics have either terminated or appear moribund, recent reports reveal. Meanwhile, perennial Mayoral candidate and beneficiary of that interlocking network of committees, Loren Taylor, hasn't filed papers for the Mayor’s race and instead assumed the CEO position with Black Action Alliance [BAA], a mutual benefit corporation spin-off from that same funding network and its principals.

Pivotal Pass-Through Committee Run by Piedmont Landlord Advocate, Foundational Oakland Unites, Shuts Down

Several weeks ago, the last of the Taylor/Recall linked funding constructs, Foundational Oakland Unites [FOU], filed its termination notice. FOU was critical to the recall of Sheng Thao, acting as a pass-through for contributions from Philip Dreyfuss and Revitalize the East Bay [REB].

REB is the most recent iteration of a series of finance committees founded by Isaac Abid and Philp Dreyfus in 2023 which began as the main financing arm for the recall of Pamela Price, "Reviving the Bay Area". Abid took over the original committee, and then founded a successor, REB, which began to focus on Oakland's mayoral recall and its 2024-25 cycle seats. We'll return to that committee in a bit.

FOU’s termination follows the closure of most of the campaign finance committees that sprang up in 2024 to support other center-right Oakland candidates and causes, such as Ken Houston, Brenda Harbin-Forte, Kanitha Mathoury, Len Raphael as well as Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao. FOU's principal officer, Chris Moore, lives in Piedmont, is a former candidate for ALCO supervisor and is one of four non-Oakland residing directors of the landlord-advocacy organization East Bay Rental Housing Association [EBRHA]. The title Foundational Oakland United is also used as the name of another mutual benefit corporation also run by Moore which hasn't been visibly active since its inception.

FOU and REB Jump-Started an Interlinked Finance and Mutual Benefit Network Front that Eventually Became the Black Action Alliance Inc.

Along with supporting the recall and the panoply of "moderates"*, FOU gave $124K to the Coalition to Reclaim Oakland's Committee to Repeal Ranked Choice Voting, run by a member of Loren Taylor’s inner-circle, Pamela Ferran, in 2024.

The committee ostensibly sought to raise funds for a ballot measure to overturn Oakland’s Ranked Choice Voting [RCV], but appears to have never spent money on that goal before folding last June. The committee received no other funds than the FOU contribution. Shortly after the contribution from FOU, the Coalition to Reclaim Oakland's Committee to Repeal Ranked Choice Voting transferred most of the original $124K to a mutual benefit corporation of a similar name, the Coalition to Reclaim Oakland. The mutual benefit corporation was initially filed by Coalition's Treasurer, Rebecca Olson, around the same time as the campaign finance committee. Olson became the mutual benefit corporation's Chief Financial Officer and Ferran its Secretary. Olson is a principal in campaign finance accountancy firm Greenberge Traurig, which serves many of the interlocking committees funding center-right candidates in Oakland. Greenberg Traurig was also the treasurer for the spouse of Ferran, Elias Ferran, in his unsuccessful run for City Attorney in 2020, the first time the campaign finance specialist appears in Oakland's campaign finance records. And Olson was also the filing agent for FOU's fairly inactive mutual benefit corporation of the same name.

Meanwhile, REB jump-started another finance committee which sprung up in the months before the May election, Black Action Alliance [BAA]. BAA received $22K from REB in the first weeks of its existence, which ultimately constituted nearly half of its funding before BAA filed for termination last July. Most of BAA's work as a finance committee was a rushed GOTV campaign with paid Laney students in the final weeks before the May 2025 election. Despite being about four weeks old and having no members, BAA also ended up as the main sponsor of Oakland's only televised Mayoral debate held by KTVU/Fox. BAA got top billing, in an untransparent process questioned by local community groups that were relegated to second tier status.

As the finance committee named BAA folded, it made a civic donation of $15K to a mutual benefit corporation—that corporation was Ferran's Coalition to Reclaim Oakland which rebranded as Black Action Alliance [BAA Inc.] just in time to receive the donation and take on one of BAA's principals as CEO.

After Outsized Contributions to Taylor in First Half of 2025, REB Raises $235K Pot in Second—Only to Give it Away

Revitalize the East Bay [REB] raised $455K in the first half of 2025 and spent most of that trying to help get Loren Taylor elected to the Oakland Mayor’s office, funding pass-through FOU and backing the recall of Sheng Thao. Funders included Holland Partners, PG&E, Jesse Pollack and Phillip Dreyfuss. By the June reporting period, REB had spent all but $8K of those funds, according to filings.

In November, REB received another hefty contribution from Holland Partners, one of Abid’s Oakland development allies, for $135K. That was an even larger sum than Holland gave to REB during the Mayoral race, $100K. Konstanin Richter, gave $100K in October—Richter was a former funder of Families for a Vibrant Oakland Sponsored by the Abundance Network, which also received funds from REB.

REB appeared to be buckling up for the 2026 Oakland electoral period, rebranding itself in 2025 as the “Oakland chapter of the Abundance network”, apparently taking over the helm of the nebulous "Abundance network" when Families for a Vibrant Oakland terminated in late October.

But rather than bank this sizeable sum for the 2026 election cycle, REB gave almost all of the $235K away in ostensible "civic donations", the reporting code for philanthropic giving. In fact, the monies raised in the second half of 2025 from the two sole funders for that period match almost perfectly to the amount of philanthropic spending REB carried out by the end of 2025. Holland’s and Richter’s donations were raised in fall, and in a very compressed timeframe of little more than a month, given away by the end of 2025. After paying off a few bills, REB was left with a balance of less than 200 dollars.

Taylor Becomes CEO of Black Action Alliance Nee' "Coalition to Reclaim Oakland" in an Ouroboros of Campaign Finance Influence

Many observers have expected Taylor to run again in 2026 and to have filed an intention statement for the office by now. Taylor would be the sure front-running challenger to incumbent Lee, and almost certainly the beneficiary of the apparently inexhaustible REB and it's network of funders. But instead Taylor recently assumed the CEO position at Black Action Alliance, the mutual benefit corporation that was originally founded by Ferran under the name Coalition to Reclaim Oakland and jump-started by FOU funding.

Barely a Year Old and with No Visible Membership, BAA Again at the Forefront of Electoral Politics

KTVU/Fox again in an unexplained move, has chosen BAA as its marquee gubernatorial forum sponsor on the eve of BAA's first birthday, just as the television entity did in Oakland's only televised Mayoral debate. Taylor became the CEO of the organization just days before the debate and shortly after an ally with which he campaigned with, San Jose Mayor, Matt Mahan, announced his candidacy for California governor. Again, other sponsoring groups with much older and visible membership and activities were left off the marquee while BAA received an "in partnership" with KTVU/Fox billing.

With months before full blown campaign season and the next reporting period in mid-year, REB could still re-emerge as a front-line "moderates" contributor, and Taylor may still declare. OO will keep you updated.

*candidates with deep relationships to developers, tech and property investors and the Bay Area's center-right