Updates - Friends of Public Banking Santa Rosa

[Shelly]

Dear Friends of Public Banking,

Warm greetings to you all on this somewhat chilly winter day. I hope this note finds you all warm and well. It has been sometime since I sent out a blast on our Public Banking efforts here in Santa Rosa, so I wanted so share a few exciting updates.

First and foremost, I want to thank those of you who signed our online petition asking the City of Santa Rosa to fund a feasibility study for a Public Bank of Santa Rosa and for endorsing our proposed Resolution for a Public Bank as well, both of which may be viewed on our website at www.publicbanksantarosa.org. Friends of Public Banking Santa Rosa reached out to the community in January asking for your support in the signing of these documents in order to bring them to council for their annual Goal Setting and Budget Priority meetings. A big thanks also to those of you who were able to attend those meetings and spoke out in favor of public banking. I am happy to say that between these 2 documents and signatures from signed petitions as well, we were able to inform city officials that we had over 500 signatures in support of these efforts (now over 600). As a result of the community support, we are making for a strong collective voice and having an impact.

Our specific ask of the council at this meeting was to fund a feasibility study for a public bank of Santa Rosa. The council voted to make this a Tier 2 Priority, up from last years Tier 3 level. The full breakdown of the Tier 1 & Tier 2 priorities may be viewed here; https://www.srcity.org/2476/Mission-Vision-Values-Goals-Priorities

We didn't expect this to move forward too quickly given that we didn't make Tier 1, but I am pleased to say that a few of us attended the city's Long Term Financial Policy and Audit Subcommittee meeting last month to hear the interim CFO Alan Alton give a report back on the current and future banking services for Santa Rosa. As many of you know, the city currently banks with Wells Fargo and has put out an RFP for banking services. We went to hear about this and were pleasantly surprised to hear Alan Alton state that he has set aside funds for a feasibility study for a public bank. He is awaiting the results of the Oakland feasibility study, which is set to be completed at the end of this month. I have attached our notes from this meeting if you would like to read more about the banks that have bid on the RFP and the city's recommendations. We will continue to monitor the progress on this RFP.

I also want to inform you all that we have changed the meeting time for our monthly Friends of Public Banking Santa Rosa meeting. We previously met from 2-3:30pm, but that has been adjusted to 1-3pm going forward. Also, we typically meet on the second Saturday of the month, but for this month only, we will meet on Saturday, March 24th as there were scheduling conflicts for this month on the second Saturday. In April we will resume meeting on the second Saturday of the month. As always we will meet at the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa from 1-3pm in back to back meetings with the Divestment/Admin group from Sonoma Solidarity with Standing Rock, who will hold their meeting from 3-5pm.

Lastly, below is an excellent update from Trinity Tran who spearheads the Public Bank LA working group with major updates on public banking in LA, California and and across the nation. We are all part of this very vibrant and growing movement of public banking whose time has come.

To our collective best always,

Shelly Browning

"The tallest oak in the forest was once just a little nut that held its ground." ~ Unknown

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Public Bank LA Campaign Updates!
From: Public Bank LA <public...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wed, February 14, 2018 4:04 pm
To: Public Bank LA <public...@googlegroups.com>

Greetings friends,

A lot of exciting developments are being made in the public banking sphere. We have spent the last few months researching and building the groundwork for how public banking would unfold in Los Angeles. Unlike our Divest LA campaign where we were, in part, able to reverse engineer the basic legislative processes for divestment, public banking at the municipal level is largely unchartered territory.

Please take time to read through this update as it will help clarify the agenda, direction and strategic objectives of the Public Bank LA campaign.

THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT

Across the nation, a firestorm is building as elected officials at the regional and state level are paving the path for public banks. San Francisco recently announced the formation of a 16-person Municipal Bank Feasibility Task Force to study public banking. Seattle has earmarked $100K for a public banking feasibility study. Washington D.C. has also allocated $100K for a feasibility study. Oakland has partnered with the County of Alameda and the City's of Berkeley and Richmond to create a regional, publicly-owned bank. Oakland City Council has appropriated $100K for a feasibility study. 

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy made public banking a central campaign issue, and just a few weeks ago, 2 state senators in New Jersey introduced a bill to create a public bank. In Michigan, Democratic and Republican lawmakers filed a bipartisan bill to create a State Public Bank. In both states, lawmakers are pushing towards the option to deposit public money into state-owned banks that would lend its money to fund public infrastructure projects and reduce spending. On the international scale, government officials in Ireland have completed a feasibility study on public banking, moving towards creating a system inspired by Germany’s ‘Sparkassen’ public banking model.

State Treasurer and candidate for governor John Chiang recently teamed up with Attorney General Xavier Becerra to create a feasibility study exploring a publicly owned bank to serve California's now-legal cannabis industry. While a public bank can certainly provide beneficial services for the city and the cannabis industry, we urge proponents to focus on the greater environmental, social, and general economic benefits this bank would provide. A public bank must be chartered with a social and environmentally responsible mandate- a public bank must be a People’s Bank, 100% responsive to the needs of our communities.

ADVOCACY

Our five central points for public banking:

1. Save Money: The city pays $100M a year in banking fees and interest. This can be reinvested into the community instead of siphoned away from the city.

2. Community Development: Fund low-income housing, low-interest student loans, just economic developments, co-ops, small businesses, green energy infrastructure, etc.

3. Ethical Allocation of Money: Social, environmental and transparent anti-corruption ethos.

4. Local Self-Determination: The people of the city will have a say over the financing of their own community—not private financiers.

5. Serve the Unbanked and Underbanked: 3 out of 10 Angelenos do not have adequate access to checking and savings accounts. A city-owned bank would expand credit to smaller banks to provide options to serve the unbanked/underbanked populations. Additionally, a public bank could enable the unbanked cannabis industry to deposit funds legally.

Read the extended agenda on our website: https://publicbankla.com/index.php/5-point-agenda

Public Bank LA FAQs: https://publicbankla.com/index.php/faqs

LA CITY COUNCIL 

In the latest update on the Bank of Los Angeles motion, LA City Council is in the process of creating their own in-house feasibility study through the City Attorney’s Office, CLA and CAO. The Ad Hoc Jobs Creation Committee is currently addressing questions one committee meeting at a time. The motion will stay in Committee as a longer conversation until it’s ready to move into full council with a long series of recommendations. Some of the issues the City will study and report on include: regulatory barriers, purpose and structure, oversight, capitalization, liability and risks, implementation, and the budget and staffing of the bank.

The City Administrative Officer has just released a 35-page report that creates a basic outline of the City's financing processes, policies, programs, and infrastructure financing alternatives. We will be reviewing this over the course of the next week.

The next Ad Hoc Committee meeting at LA City Hall is tentatively scheduled for mid-to-late February. We will update as soon as information is available.

STRATEGY

Based on our consultation with experts, we believe that state legislation is required to instruct the California Department of Business Oversight to issue a special license for charter cities to form public banks. The currently available commercial and credit union licenses are inadequate to address issues including governance and capitalization of state-chartered city banks. The public bank charter license would establish a regulatory framework for a system of public banks in the state and provide the terms, legal exceptions and constraints for cities to operate within.

We are now working on a 2018-2019 strategy including power mapping and coalition building at the state level with DSA-LA in order to leverage the political climate and make public banking a central campaign issue in the 2018 gubernatorial and congressional elections. Our aim is to find an author for the charter city public banking bill, push for the bill to pass in the California State Legislature, and signed by California’s next governor in 2019.

We are developing a statewide alliance of organizations working towards creating socially responsible municipal and regional banks. The charter city alliance will work in close alignment with the California state public banking efforts, the Public Banking Institute and Commonomics. The goal of the city alliance is to coordinate statewide efforts to pass the public bank license bill in the State Senate and Assembly for the 2019 legislative session.

NEXT STEPS 

With the national momentum behind municipal and state-owned banks, we are now living in an extraordinary time to transform the public banking idea into reality. The time is now to take our power back and fundamentally change how money flows in our local economies- from private gain for the few to public good for the many.

Within the next month, we will be building out teams to focus on generating media and educational content, and coordinating political outreach. If you would like to put your talents to work, get involved with the Public Bank LA campaign by reaching out directly to: tri...@revolutionla.org.

We look forward to building this historic movement with you!

Update: Ad Hoc Committee on Comprehensive Job Creation Plan Meeting 2.28 

The Ad Hoc Committee on Comprehensive Job Creation Plan convened today to discuss and review the reports from the CAO, CLA and City Attorney’s office on the feasibility of the Municipal Bank of Los Angeles (MBLA). Thank you to Chairman Paul Krekorian, City Council President Herb Wesson, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, and Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson for their leadership in pushing forward with public banking, and their positive outlook in finding solutions to form a city-owned bank that: 1) protects our municipal funds, and 2) uses our capital to achieve community policy objectives.

A special thanks to our team members Dave Jette, Josh Androsky- DSA-LA, Heidi Kang, and ACCE allies Orinio Opinaldo and Gisele Mata for submitting public comment in advocacy of public banking, and to PBLA supporters who attended to support this initiative.

The Ad Hoc Jobs Creation Committee discussed preliminary issues including: capitalization and collateralization of city funds, startup capital for the municipal bank, and the creation of a Public Bank Charter through the State Legislature to expand the scope of the responsibility to advance policy goals with social, ethical, environmental standards.

Although there was emphasis from the city departments on the legal and regulatory hurdles of forming a bank, the panel acknowledged that the city has the ability to form a bank that can be governed by an independent board of directors with community representation on the board, and use municipal funds for a broader range of financial services.

The Committee instructed the CAO, CLA, City Attorney, and the Office of Finance to continue to evaluate the benefits and risks, identify a specific list of steps to finance the bank, develop a coordinated strategy to expand programs to city residents including housing development, research and monitor private banking practices including an annual review of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) data, and report on charter changes that the city would need to make to move forward with a municipal bank.

Stay tuned for updates as we continue our work to help guide the city’s process through our research and recommendations. We look forward to hearing the updated report from the city departments and the progress from SB 930 that could pave the path forward for an independent bank.

Listen to the recorded meeting: https://www.lacity.org/your-government/audiovideo/council-committee-meeting-audio

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Connect: colle...@revolutionla.org
publicbankla.com / revolutionla.org / divestla.com

"The tallest oak in the forest was once just a little nut that held its ground." ~ Unknown