SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Senate advanced a series of ambitious reparations proposals Tuesday, including legislation that would create an agency to help Black families research their family lineages and confirm their eligibility for any future restitution issued by the state is adopted.
Lawmakers also passed bills to establish a fund for recovery programs and to compensate Black families for property the government wrongfully took from them using eminent domain. The proposals now go to the state Assembly.
State Senator Steven Bradforda Los Angeles-area Democrat, said California “bears a great responsibility” to atone for injustices against Black Californians.
“If you can inherit generational wealth, you can also inherit generational debt,” Bradford said. “Reparations are a debt owed to descendants of slavery.”
The proposals, which passed largely along party lines, are part of a series of bills inspired by recommendations from a task force that spent two years studying how the state could atone for its legacy of racism and discrimination against African citizens. Americans. Lawmakers have not introduced a proposal this year to provide widespread payments to descendants of enslaved Black people, which has frustrated many reparations advocates.
A bill to study reparations for African Americans, first introduced in the 1980s, has stalled in the U.S. Congress. The states of Illinois and New York recently passed laws to study reparations, but no other state has gone further than California in considering reparations proposals for Black Americans.
California Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican who represents the Sacramento suburbs, said he supports “the principle” of the eminent domain law, but he does not believe taxpayers across the state should have to pay families for land seized by local governments. .
“That in itself seems a bit unfair to me,” Niello said.
The votes come in the final week for lawmakers to pass bills in their homes, and days after a key committee blocked legislation that would have given property tax and housing assistance to descendants of enslaved people. The State Assembly introduced a bill last week that would require California to formally apologize for its legacy of discrimination against Black Californians. In 2019, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a formal apology for the state’s history of violence and mistreatment of Native Americans.
Some opponents of reparations say lawmakers are overpromising about what they can offer Black Californians as the state faces a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.
“It seems to me like they’re putting the cart before the horse first and foremost,” said Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who represents part of Riverside County in Southern California. “They are setting up these agencies and frameworks to implement reparations without actually implementing reparations.”
It could cost the state as much as $1 million annually to run the agency, according to a Senate committee estimate. The committee has not released cost estimates for implementing the eminent domain and recovery fund bills. But the group says it could cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate claims from families who say their land was taken for racially discriminatory motives.
Chris Lodgson, organizer of the reparations group the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, said ahead of the votes that this would be “a first step” toward passing more far-reaching reparations laws in California.
“This is a historic day,” Lodgson said.
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Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on social platform X: @sophieadanna
