City Gets Award for Misused Measure Y Money

It was a typical feel-good item in councilmember Jean Quan's weekly newsletter:

Measure Y Receives Award for Family and Sexual Violence Efforts
The City received an award from the Family Justice Center for its Measure Y programs. Coordination with County and non-profit groups and new Measure Y programs have dramatically increased the numbers of women and others seeking help, the numbers have tripled from my first year in office 5 years ago. Deaths due to domestic violence on the other hand are at a 10 year low. (Issue #271, March 8, 2008)

Heart-warming, isn't it? However, the Alameda County Family Justice Center gave Measure Y an award in 2008 after the city council voted the Center $147,364 of Measure Y funds in 2006. (Dept. of Human Services memo to council, July 11, 2006)

Furthermore, the grant runs for five years until 2011 with no obligations or milestones on the part of the Family Justice Center. (Another County-spawned agency, the hyphy-promoting Youth UpRising, also grabbed a five-year unconditional grant from Measure Y.)

Still further, 85 percent of the Measure Y grant to the Center is used to boost the salary of the executive director. According to the 2006 City staff report, the money provided by the federal and county governments for the director's salary "is not competitive. Finding and retaining a qualified Executive Director will ensure the success of this important program for victims of family violence in Oakland."

The director turned out to be Nadia Lockyer. She had been admitted to the state bar less than ten years earlier on Dec. 5, 1997. Her most important qualification was that she is the wife of Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General at the time. He began his political career on the San Leandro school board. Alameda County rounded up money from Oakland's Measure Y and other sources to boost the director's starting salary from $60,000 to $90,000 per year. That was a nice plum for Ms. Lockyer in her mid-30s.

The federal government provides much of the funding for the Center. A Berkeley gentleman reports that he "called the head of the Federal agency which gives grants to the Family Justice Centers, (US DOJ OVW Director Mary Beth Buchanan) and she told me she did not know that the California Attorney General's wife was picked as head of this FJC."

Councilmember Quan's paragraph implies the Family Justice Center has something to do with domestic violence deaths falling to a ten-year low, even though the Center only opened in 2005!

National trends Source: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs//homicide/intimates.htm#intimates

Nadia Lockyer does not merely bend the truth; she uses it as a springboard to huge exaggeration. She claimed in a press release that the Family Justice Center had helped "20,000 victims of domestic violence and their families," when the actual number was around 2,000.

To sum up, Measure Y tax funds were mis-spent on a political job handout to a state bigwig's wife. In gratitude, she gave an award to the Measure Y program. Councilmember Quan then makes cynical publicity use of the domestic violence problem without telling you any of this.

Meanwhile, Oakland has fewer police now than when Measure Y was written and sold on the promise of five dozen additional officers as part of a "balanced approach."