Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
4 November 2026.
Every contract of any size ends with a run of paragraphs that nobody reads aloud. The one Richmond made with Chevron, effective August 14, 2024, has eighteen numbered sections, and the most instructive of them are near the back.
The front is simple enough. Chevron pays the City $550 million over ten years, $50 million a year for five years and $60 million a year for five more, into the general fund. The City took its refining tax off the November 2024 ballot. The City Attorney’s agenda report says Chevron’s first offer was $300 million. The Council approved the deal at a special meeting called to order at 12:16 p.m. and adjourned at 1:46 p.m., the Mayor having announced the night before that it had to end by two so the Clerk could get the paperwork to the County in time. The minutes record one motion, by Mayor Eduardo Martinez, seconded by Councilmember Doria Robinson, and seven ayes. The Clerk’s certified copy of Resolution 98-24, which approved the agreement, carries the same seven names.
Two years on, with the ballots now cast, the agreement has more authors than signatures. Accounts of who did the bargaining are not hard to come by. Whoever won on Tuesday inherits the payments and the accounts together.
The agreement saw some of this coming. Section 14, headed Mutual Drafting, says its negotiation and drafting were “the product of the joint and mutual efforts and participation of Richmond, Chevron, and their counsel.” That is the entire list: two parties and their lawyers. Section 9 goes further. The written agreement “supersedes any and all prior representations, negotiations or agreements pertaining to the subject matter.” Lawyers call this an integration clause. It makes the paper the only thing that counts and sends every earlier conversation into retirement. Whatever was said on the way to the signatures, both parties agreed, in writing, to set it aside.
Then there is credit, which the agreement handles twice. Section 1.5, Revenue Neutrality, gives Chevron “a credit in the amount of 100%” of any new or increased City tax imposed on it during the ten years, applied against what it pays. Section 1.6 says Chevron “shall not take credit by videos, images, or written materials” for how the money is spent. So the one party in Richmond with a written right to credit is Chevron, and the one party that has promised not to claim credit for what the money buys is also Chevron. Of everyone with a stake in the deal, the refinery is the only one under contract to keep quiet about it.
The record is thinner on the City’s side. The agenda report says the City Attorney negotiated the agreement, “supported by a City Council ad hoc committee.” It does not say who sat on the committee, when it was formed, or what it was asked to do. The minutes put the Council’s part in plainer terms. On May 21, 2024, the Council told the City Attorney to prepare the ballot measure. On June 18 it put the tax on the ballot, 7–0, after more than a hundred names of public speakers. On August 13 it spent three hours in closed session and came out to direct “City negotiators” to finish by the start of the next day’s meeting and to present the final agreement. On the record, the Council’s share of the drafting was a deadline.
The Council was more exact about the money than about the bargaining. On September 24, 2024, by a vote of 6–1, it adopted Resolution 105-24, which says the Council wants every decision about spending the settlement funds made “in a manner that is open and democratic,” and forbids City employees to make other plans or commitments for the money without the Council’s consent. Open and democratic is a fine standard. It arrived six weeks after the deal, and it covers the spending. Nobody wrote one for the getting.
Some of the credit on offer belongs to another file entirely. Moody’s raised the City’s rating in June 2022 and again in February 2023, pointing to a growing tax base and better financial policies, well over a year before the settlement. When the State Auditor took Richmond off its high-risk list on October 7, 2025, the City’s own press release called the recovery then City Manager Shasa Curl’s “multi-year effort.”
None of this settles who deserves thanks for $550 million. The paper declines to say, and by its own account it was written jointly. What it does show is that the people bound by the clearest written terms about credit work for Chevron, and they agreed to take none. Everyone else may claim as much as they like. There is no clause against it.
The Council meets next on November 9, in closed session.
— Publius
Sources: City Attorney’s agenda report, Aug. 14, 2024 · Resolution No. 98-24 and the Tax Payment Agreement · Council minutes, Aug. 14, 2024 · Council minutes, Aug. 13, 2024 · Council minutes, May 21, 2024 · Council minutes, June 18, 2024 · Resolution No. 105-24 · Moody’s rating action, June 15, 2022 · Moody’s rating action, Feb. 17, 2023 · City press release, Oct. 7, 2025