The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is meeting Tuesday to review a proposal to dole out $5 million each to qualifying Black residents in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery.
At the board meeting, the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee will present the controversial idea, along with dozens of other recommendations from its draft reparations plan released in December.
The other recommendations range from offering grants to buy and maintain homes to exempting Black businesses from paying taxes. But the $5 million lump-sum payment has garnered the most attention — and controversy.
The Board of Supervisors can vote to adopt all, none or some of the committee’s recommendations and even change them. Tuesday’s hearing was originally scheduled for last month but was postponed.
SAN FRANCISCO REPARATIONS PROPOSAL WOULD DESTROY CITY’S BUDGET, SUPERVISORS CAUTION
An estimated 50,000 Black people live in San Francisco, but it’s unclear who among them would be eligible for reparations. Under the committee’s draft reparations plan, a person must be at least 18 years old and identified as “Black/African American” in public documents for at least 10 years. Eligible people must also meet two of eight other criteria, such as living in San Francisco during a certain time period or descending from someone incarcerated for the police war on drugs.
Regardless of what the criteria might ultimately become, several board members have expressed concerns about how large lump-sum payments would impact the city’s budget, which is already facing a massive estimated deficit of $728 million.
“There wasn’t a math formula,” Eric McDonnell, chair of the reparations committee, recently told the Washington Post, describing the process of coming to its $5 million per person recommendation. “It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that…
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