California recovery panel approves report

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Global Courant 2023-05-07 06:40:08

California’s first reparations task force has voted to approve recommendations on how the state should compensate black Americans and apologize in response to slavery.

The nine-member commission that has been deliberating on the recommendations for two years voted Saturday night in Oakland, California, to give final approval to a comprehensive report containing proposals that will then go to state lawmakers in Sacramento to consider for reparations.

The California task force’s recommendations range from creating a new agency to provide services to descendants of enslaved people to tailored calculations of what the state owes residents for issues such as housing discrimination and police brutality.

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Economists in March predicted in a preliminary estimate that California’s recovery plan could cost the state more than $800 billion. The task force, which consulted five economists and policy experts to arrive at the number, said at the time that the total did not include compensation for property the group says was unfairly taken or for the devaluation of black-owned companies.

California’s total annual state budget is about $300 billion.

Earlier this week, however, the task force released its latest proposals, which don’t include a blanket price tag, but instead outline how California might calculate how much money black residents have lost since 1850, when the state was founded, to today due to discrimination.

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