Recommendations by the California Reparations Task Force come with an $800 billion price tag.
San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to officially support the slew of reparations bills proposed by the California Legislative Black Caucus.
The proposed legislation covers a wide range of topics from providing medically supportive food through Medi-Cal benefits to prioritizing African American applicants for occupational licensure. Many of the 14 proposed Reparations Legislative Package send taxpayer funds to community organizations for initiatives such as STEM education or to support racially targeted medical research.
What is noticeably absent from the list are direct cash payments of over $1.2 million per older Black resident, something initially requested by the California Reparations Task Force.
Not including direct cash payments, economists estimate the total cost of the California Reparations Task Force proposals to be over $800 billion. The California annual budget is only $300 billion.
“I’m looking forward to how the county will implement some of these laws that have been passed at the state level. We have a lot of work to do,” said Monica Montgomery Steppe, County Supervisor for District 4 and a member of the state’s Reparations Task Force.
Only Supervisor Joel Anderson voted no on the motion. He asked the board for a line-by-line vote on each of the 14 reparations proposals, but that request was denied.
“I could not support all 14 different pieces of legislation contained in the Reparations Legislative Package,” Anderson said to CBS 8 San Diego. “I had hoped to demonstrate that support for the areas we agree, but I will always vote to represent my constituents to the best of my ability.”
In a previous statement, Anderson pointed to atrocities committed against Native Americans and other historical events. “If we wanted to go through our history, there isn’t anybody in the United States that somebody in their history wasn’t discriminated against. I think that if we keep looking to the past, we’ll never get to the future, and I want to focus on how we can improve things moving forward.”
“Considering that California is now 40% Latino, it seems particularly unjust to force this population to pay for the sins of people who lived far away, long ago, and to whom they have no relation,” said an opinion piece by the North County Daily Star.
“I am just asking folks to have an open heart and mind when it comes to this conversation,” said Supervisor Steppe.
