Administration's Layoffs Contested, Eviction Defense Grant in Limbo, as Council Slow to Agendize Growing Budget Problems

In December, Oakland's City Administrator’s Office [CAO] asked the City Council to affirm a plan to lay off 91 city workers in February as a necessary tool for closing Oakland’s sizable budget deficit. The layoffs would follow already brutal cuts to city services and programs, including third party contracts in December and January.

Because the CAO has charter-based powers over the City’s workforce, the Council’s only role was to acknowledge the potential actions—but in the legislation that resulted, the CAO committed to seek input from the City’s unions in the process; to avoid layoffs if possible; and to discuss any layoffs through a process of deliberation with the city's unions.

Now City union officials and members say the City Administrator’s office hasn’t made good faith efforts to discuss the layoff process, and that the City’s intended layoffs may violate the City’s civil service rules. A union document seen by this publication claims that CAO has only released information on 8 of 27 issues brought to the CAO's attention. According to the legislation, the CAO promised "meet and confer meetings" in December with workforce over layoffs and revenue issues but unions contend the CAO never made efforts to schedule them.

Workers Push Back on Layoffs At Council Public Comment Amid Silence from Council on Budget Issues

So far, the new City Council has failed to agendize much legislation of any kind to their Council and Committee meetings, and none about the CAO's budget balancing or expenditures. Regardless, dozens of city workers crowded into chambers last Tuesday during the meeting's open public comments forum to push back against announced layoffs. Many were multi-decade workers who said they had seniority and some said their roles are either revenue generating, and/or not paid for by the General Purpose Fund, thus obviating any layoff benefit.

Jennifer Foster, a civilian OPD employee who works in adepartment permit compliance role, said the revenues she collects pay for her salary and that of others in her department. But after 22 years at the City, she’d also received a layoff notice. Foster likened the layoffs—which many workers contend won’t actually save GPF funds—to similar “chaos” nationally under President Donald Trump.

“This process is not lawful nor just, and these letters must be rescinded immediately. Administration and HR has refused to meet in labor with good faith...[the city has refused] to provide information since December regarding financials, layoffs and job classifications impacted myself and other non general fund and revenue generated workers have been targeted…this chaos and disregard for civil servants and the services we provide is directly reflective of what's happening at the federal level,” Foster said.

Other workers agreed about the CAO's seeming disinterest in the long-term implications of the layoffs, and said it was a continuation of constant winnowing down of crucial City work without regard to outcomes. Another OPD civilian staffer who received a layoff notice, Juanito Rus, works for the OPD’s Bureau of Risk Management. Rus told Council members that oversight crucial to meeting city requirements under Federal oversight will be severely diminished if the layoffs go through.

“Over the last two years, my unit of auditors has lost two people. So we are down to two. The PAS [Personnel Assessment System] unit, the ones who monitor problematic officers, also had all of their civilian employees except for one who received notices. So the OPD internal oversight to comply with the federal consent decree is now down to one person in my unit and one person in their unit, and we are supposed to have oversight over and response to the federal judge for the entirety of the OPD. I do not know how those two people are going to do their job, and I do not know what the city is going to tell the judge,” Rus said.

Rus’ troubling claims add to concerns about police oversight dangling precariously in the budget balancing. As Oaklandside reports, Civilian Complaint Review Agency director Mac Muir, has also warned of the loss of civilian OPD oversight capacity at public Oakland Police Commission meetings.

Union Coalition Letter Alleges "Chaos and Confusion" at City Administrator's Office Over Layoffs

On Monday, a coalition composed of IFPTE 21, SEIU 1021, IAFF 55 and IBEW 1245 sent a letter to the City bringing similar concerns. Characterizing the process led by the CAO and the Finance Department as mired in “chaos and confusion". The letter notes that the CAO first claimed in December that 91 positions would be laid off. That changed to 100 in February in the city-wide notification. But only 70 notices have gone out and at least one was later rescinded, according to the letter. Issues similar to those brought by workers Tuesday are also alleged in the coalition letter, including lack of proper notice and violations of civil service rules with layoffs targeting senior workers ahead of those with less seniority and temporary workers. The letter also contends that some of the layoffs don't save the GPF any money, as they are funded from healthy funds with surplus, obviating the rationale for the layoffs in the first place.

Sources with direct knowledge confirm claims by workers that PERB charges have been filed*, indicating that the budget balancing measures that the City is relying on may be far from secured and leaving questions about whether the City can right its budget imbalance with layoffs as currently envisioned.

Centro Legal Tenant Protection Contract Withdrawn Again

The sense that confusion and chaos reign at the City was further bolstered by the ongoing issues around the City's already committed grants processes last week. The CAO notified grantees and Council about upcoming cuts to grants last week that were already approved and their payments budgeted, an unexpected step in closing the City's budget deficit. Despite appearing on an agenda at last week’s Rules Committee meeting, a $1 MM contract to continue Centro Legal de La Raza’s anti-eviction program was again pulled from scheduling—the second time the item has been removed from Rules, the Council body that schedules legislative items to committees and council meetings. This time Joe Genolio, the Mayor’s Office Policy Director, told the committee that the grant was being pulled as “part of our broader budgetary discussions so that we can have more time to look at this.“

The explanation may contribute to suspicions that the grant is being permanently pulled as part of budget balancing efforts. At the previous Rules meeting, CM Carroll Fife asked if the delay could be related to issues with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund [AHTF], which funded the grant in its last iteration. This budget cycle the AHTF has been tapped through legislation to patch holes in the City’s massive budget gap in the General Purpose Fund [GPF]. There’s no information about whether a shortage in the fund could be the cause of the issues with Centro’s grant.

Tenant protection services grants to Centro Legal have been a consistent City investment since 2013, while the grants to Centro as the umbrella funding for a contingent of other tenant rights organizations to fight evictions and prevent homelessness have been coming to Council since 2018. Samantha Becket, Centro Legal's Co-Directing Attorney for Tenant's Rights, revealed at the meeting that Centro Legal and the other organizations have been performing the work continuously since July without pay. Becket explained that when the current budget with the grant allocation was passed, the organizations continued their work, in expectation that the contract would be signed and payments would begin. But without a contract, the payments never came.

“...the contract has not been finalized due to delays and technicalities in the resolutions, but all five [organizations] have been serving Oakland tenant tenants without pay [since July]. We ask that at minimum, you honor that contract to pay us for the work that's already been done. I urge you to honor the entire contract, because without it, Oakland, tenants are going to be harmed,” Becket said.

The contract is not named in a recent memo listing a series of 13 contract cancellations, but the memo also states that the City Administrator has the authority to carry out more cancellations than those already noted.

Meanwhile, the City Council led by interim President Noel Gallo appears to have apportioned itself no role in the current budgeting conflicts. None of this week’s committee items deal with the continued budget precarity, including the Finance Committee meeting.

At last week’s Council meeting, Interim President Noel Gallo claimed that the City would have a special meeting on the issues of the grants and on layoffs, but no such meeting was scheduled. It’s likely Gallo was inadvertently referring to an unofficial meeting with City staff and members of the Finance committee, but this week’s Finance Committee also carries no budget related issues.

One of the salient claims of the unions and members is that civilian departments are being decimated while police overspending continues without oversight—Gallo, who also chairs the Public Safety Committee, has cancelled two committee meetings in a row, including this week’s. A Council meeting agenda already published for Tuesday, February 18, also has no budget related issues.

The union coalition plans to rally Tuesday morning as the Council's committees meet, stay tuned.

*shortly after publication, the union coalition issued a press release confirming the PERB charge. The document states:

"On Monday, February 10, SEIU 1021 and IFPTE Local 21 filed a charge with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) alleging unfair labor practices by the City of Oakland. The charge outlines a series of unlawful actions in the City Administration’s rollout of layoff notices and cuts to vital services. The PERB filing seeks a resolution to protect the rights of workers and to protect the public services that are at risk of being drastically cut."