PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Jimmy Pan, Former Policy Director of the Racial Justice Commission
2:36:46
·
5 min
Jimmy Pan, former Policy Director of the Racial Justice Commission, provided testimony on the implementation of racial equity measures in New York City. He emphasized the importance of timely implementation to maintain public trust and urged both the City Council and the administration to prioritize racial equity work.
- Pan stressed the need for the City Council to develop its own racial equity infrastructure to better assess the impact of laws and prioritize actions.
- He suggested ways for the Council to support the Mayor's Office of Equity and Racial Justice (MOERJ) in changing budgeting processes to align with equity goals.
- Pan advocated for viewing all city agencies as having a role in advancing equity, rather than categorizing some as pro-equity and others as anti-equity.
Jimmy Pan
2:36:46
Good afternoon, counsel.
2:36:49
Is that better?
2:36:51
I'm Jimmy Pan.
2:36:52
He hit him.
2:36:53
I served as a policy director for the racial justice commission.
2:36:56
And after the racial justice commission, close down, return to the administration to help stand up the ballot measures.
2:37:02
I'm primarily here to be able to answer questions about the ballot measures, but I also do wanna make a fee points reflecting what I've heard today that I think are important, not just for the council, but for the administration to take into account as well.
2:37:15
So appreciating the difficulty of transforming government and appreciating the desire to get it right rather than rushing ahead I do wanna point out that New Yorkers do care about timelines, and it is a matter of whether they trust the government or not.
2:37:31
Certainly, I can attest to us being on the racial justice commission and people testifying but also expressing significant doubt about whether government would ever truly move forward even if these things passed.
2:37:41
And I think as we continue to push timelines back, we're really asking new Yorkers to trust us more and more without giving them something to work with.
2:37:52
So I would certainly implore counsel to continue having hearings like this to create accountability, which again is is helping the administration understand the importance of this, but also that the administration can recognize that this is something that they should really think about the role of government and fostering trust and how many communities have been let down continue obviously, over decades in in hearing prompt system government and not seeing that realized.
2:38:19
And I also note that there's a simultaneous vision commission that's happening right now that purports to to again have voters come to the ballots and change the law.
2:38:28
I I would just urge the administration to think about what it means to delay the production of the Patchholder Vision Commission and ask New Yorkers now to vote on a new set of telemeasures.
2:38:43
I would also take this opportunity to urge council members and the speaker to think about, you know, as we crest Juneteenth, what is council going to do about creating an original infrastructure in the council itself too?
2:38:56
There are just around the US that have both an executive branch infrastructure and a legislative infrastructure.
2:39:02
And as you alluded to earlier chair, you know, it is very important that counsel has a framework to think about the impacts of the laws, to think about what's prioritized when it comes to voting on different measures and to really understand the ultimate effect of the actions that counsel is going to take.
2:39:23
You know, every institution needs to understand what it's doing and what it's prioritizing and have a strategy for actually making these results happen.
2:39:31
That's why the mayor's office of Equity National Justice spent a lot of time building the infrastructure for agencies to understand how they're gonna make a long term impact.
2:39:40
And not be reactive to the issues of the day.
2:39:42
I think counsel would really benefit from a similar set of processes and really expert staff that help council members and council leadership really understand how to make lasting change and also internally operate fairly and with the mind's words focusing on the things that really matter to New Yorkers.
2:40:07
I wanna speak a little bit to your point about OMB's role and all of this.
2:40:13
And certainly, you know, Mike's experience working in the mayor's office for a long time is that while OMB pit plays a very major role, I think the mayor's office of equity ratio unless this does have an opportunity to change how we do budgeting in the city.
2:40:28
As you correctly pointed out, it can be very opaque and questions about, you know, how agencies are funded relative to 1 another or why program is selected over another, it can be opaque in the city as well.
2:40:43
I would just suggest that 1 thing that council could do as its negotiating budgets to help mayor's office of Equinorations do this work is to continually ask the question of when these budget proposals are mentioned, has MOERJ weighed in on this.
2:40:58
Does it comport with the framework that they've put forward?
2:41:01
How how does this align with the anti marginalization agenda that, you know, we've etcetera.
2:41:07
Right?
2:41:07
Just as an example, I think counsel does have a role to play and and making sure that OMB is consistently understanding that these these criterias are things that New Yorkers care about and therefore their council members care about as well.
2:41:22
Lastly, I would just quickly address your point about you know, whether an agency is advancing equity or not or whether they should have their funding move somewhere else.
2:41:31
You know, my personal theory is that every agency has a role to plan equity.
2:41:36
I just did my work in city government.
2:41:38
I don't see 1 agency has pro equity and another agency has anti equity.
2:41:41
Think part of what the mayor's office of Equinational Justice is really trying to do is help every agency understand their role.
2:41:48
Okay.
2:41:49
Of course, if they're not meeting their goals, if they're not closing disparities, if they're not allocating resources the right way, I think that really should be a major consideration for the administration, but I just I wanna push back a little bit for your consideration and for the administration's consideration that every agency no matter how big we're small actually has a meaningful and major role to play in our society, and they can all work towards justice.
2:42:12
So this is my just some quick points, and I'm I'm here for
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Testimony by Jennifer Jones Austin, Former Chair of the Racial Justice Commission and CEO of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA), on Implementation of Racial Equity Charter Amendments
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Assessment of MOERJ and CORE's progress in implementing racial equity measures