Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
11 June 2026.
Budget study sessions are the slowest theater in local government. The lights are bright, the slides are dense, and the audience is mostly staff waiting to be called. You can hear the projector fan. Every few minutes somebody says “line item,” and the room collectively decides not to ask.
On June 9 the Council met in a special session, starting at 3:31 in the afternoon, to study the proposed 2026–27 operating budget and the five-year capital plan. One item, F.1, ran until the meeting adjourned at 8:00 p.m. At the start, under the statement of conflicts, the minutes record that Vice Mayor Robinson “stated a conflict of interest regarding a portion of Item F.1 related to the E-Bike Lending Library, Richmond Wellness Trail, and the Transformative Climate Communities grant.” A week later, at the regular meeting on June 16, she stated a conflict again, on the portion of the budget session related to the same grant.
I want to be clear about what that means and what it does not. It does not mean anyone did anything wrong. Stating a conflict and stepping back is exactly what the law asks. In 2024 the State’s ethics commission told the City Attorney, in a written advice letter, that the Vice Mayor has a financial interest in City contracts with Urban Tilth, the nonprofit she directs, and that the City may still contract with it if she discloses the interest, the interest is noted in the record, and she abstains. On June 9, the record notes it.
What the recusal does reveal is the map. A conflict statement is a kind of X-ray. It shows where the bones are. And here the bones run through the budget: an e-bike library, a wellness trail, a $35 million state climate grant called Richmond Rising. In October 2023 the Council, with the Vice Mayor recused, approved sole-source contracts from that grant of $7,042,833.41 to Urban Tilth and $3,680,656.75 to Rich City Rides, whose fiscal sponsor is Urban Tilth. Those are the programs that now sit inside “a portion” of the City budget.
Urban Tilth is no longer a small community garden. Its own federal filings report revenue of about $13.8 million in its 2024 fiscal year and total assets of about $31.5 million, up from under a million before 2019. That growth is not a crime. It is a fact, and it tracks the public money.
So picture the budget session as a room with seven chairs and a large map on the wall. On most of the map, all seven members can point and speak. On one region, marked in a different color, one member must keep her hands in her lap, because the region is, in a meaningful sense, hers. That is the rule working. It is also a strange way to run a city: a budget in which a recurring portion is something one member of the governing body cannot discuss because she runs one of the main recipients.
The fix is not to shame anyone. The fix is visibility. Every grant and contract under Richmond Rising should be listed, with dollars paid to date by organization, in a single public table that comes back to Council every budget season. When a portion of the budget has to be handled at arm’s length, the public should at least be able to see the whole arm.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, June 16, 2026.
— Publius