Cash payments are not 'ruled out' as California county officials push reparations for Black locals

Officials in Alameda County, California, have greenlit a sweeping reparations plan and are not ruling out cash payments, a member of the Board of Supervisors told Fox News Digital Thursday.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 June 30 to accept the comprehensive reparations plan after more than two years of research and community engagement.

Designed to address decades of systemic discrimination against Black residents, the framework takes an institutional reform approach rather than focusing primarily on direct individual cash payouts.

Supervisor Nate Miley, who represents District Four and was a leading force on the reparations initiative, told Fox News Digital that while the board’s immediate aim is policy reform, it is not ruling out future cash payments.

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"We haven't ruled it out. It's one of the items in the action plan. It's not the only item," Miley told Fox News Digital.

"I think if it were the only item, or if it was a priority item, it might be more challenging," Miley said. "But I do think there's some low-hanging fruit — some immediate things we can do, and some things we're already doing. And then there might be the more challenging things. A cash payment might be one of those more challenging things."

Instead of immediately writing checks, the Alameda County Reparations Commission's plan outlines major structural overhauls. These focus on expanding affordable housing, supporting Black economic development, increasing investments in education and healthcare and enacting criminal justice reforms.

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The board also approved the creation of a permanent standing committee to oversee implementation to ensure these recommendations are not neglected.

"The committee now has an action plan. It's in our ballpark," Miley said, looking ahead to the board’s next steps. "We need to take it up and deal with it."

Miley identified criminal justice reform, housing and education as three of the top issues Alameda County needs to prioritize.

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"Clearly, economic opportunity is another important factor," Miley told Fox News Digital. "It's hard to balance those four and say which is more prominent, but I do think all four of those are significant.

"I see reparations as a path, an opportunity," he added. "I wouldn't say it's a panacea, but I do believe it's definitely a part of the equation that could help African Americans."

While the county-level plan focuses on policy over payouts, local leaders are already testing the waters of direct compensation.

Alameda County recently partnered with the nearby City of Hayward to establish the Russell City Redress Fund. Initially seeded with $900,000, the fund has grown to $1.3 million. It is designed to provide direct payments to survivors and descendants of Russell City, a multi-racial unincorporated community that was seized via eminent domain and bulldozed by local authorities in the 1950s and 1960s for industrial redevelopment.

These localized efforts come amid a broader national debate over racial redress. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, made headlines as the first U.S. city to distribute reparations, providing $25,000 housing grants to eligible Black residents to address historic housing discrimination.

However, Evanston's program is facing a high-profile legal challenge. The initiative hit a major hurdle in June when the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in a federal class action lawsuit, arguing that Evanston’s race-based criteria violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

For local leaders like Miley, the legal and logistical hurdles surrounding direct payouts reinforce why policy-driven reform is a more viable starting point.

"And once again, that's why a cash payment isn't necessarily always the objective," Miley said to Fox News Digital.

"The objective is: How do we get people to have housing? How do we get people to be economically stable? How do you deal with criminal justice reform? A cash payment doesn't always mean that those things will occur. We have to change policies, and we have to change programs. I think that's where we need to invest our resources."