City of Austin Equity Assessment Tool Oct | current

The Root Cause Equity Consulting team brings the collective experience of leading an initiative within local government to design and implement a comprehensive equity assessment to be utilized across departments. Our team is composed of City of Austin Equity Office staff that led and developed the City’s equity assessment tool. We were honored to see that our equity tool was cited by the Des Moines Equity team website as a guiding example, and has been recognized by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity as a best and promising approach to equity assessment. 

In response to Council directive and community advocacy, we led the charge to develop and implement Austin’s first equity assessment tool, aimed at institutionalizing policies and practices that address the City government’s impact on equity. Based on a scan of existing tools and co-creation with community members, we devised a comprehensive assessment or set of questions to guide each department in assessing the benefit and/or burden that their policies, programs, practices and budget decisions place on communities of color and other vulnerable populations in the city.  

King County’s (WA) Office of Equity and Social Justice hired Root Cause Equity Consulting to help them understand their current practices for compensating community members who take part in advisory groups. This effort is helping King County to set up consistent standards across their organization. 

This project showcases our ability to engage departments and gather feedback. We conducted one on one interviews with key department representatives and designed a survey that establishes an inventory of existing projects that compensate community members. Root Cause Equity Consulting has engaged all 13 core County Departments to accomplish this. In addition, this project features interviews not only with King County staff, but also staff from comparable jurisdictions to inform policy recommendations. In addition, we  have conducted listening sessions with Council Staff to inform policy recommendations. 

The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force brought together City staff and community members to co-create a framework for a holistic approach to public safety. The Task Force first convened in August 2020. The group developed guiding values, a history of policing timeline, and recommendations for policy, cultural, and structural changes to improve the quality of public safety.  

The Task Force’s scope included forming several work groups in key theme areas for reimagining. The work groups conducted in-depth community engagement to ensure those most impacted by police violence were represented in the recommendations development process. Outreach included a virtual community listening session with more than 150 people participating in the conversation in Arabic, Burmese, English, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. The Task Force finalized a comprehensive set of public safety recommendations and presented them to Austin City Council in April 2021. 

This project represents our ability to take input from a wide range of stakeholders and develop actionable recommendations for executive leaders and policy makers. The task force was co-chaired by former Chief Equity Officer Brion Oaks and supported by Equity Office staff that facilitated meetings and compiled the final report. The Reimagining Public Safety initiative represents a process of City Staff and community leaders working together to transform local government.  

Root Cause Equity Consultants serve as sub contractors to the Race Forward Racial Equity Leadership initiative for the City of Sacramento. In this capacity, we work closely with Community leaders in the City of Sacramento for the City’s first Racial Equity Council. The work of the Racial Equity (RE) Council includes: 

• Defining the role of the RE Council so that it has decision-making power and will have mechanisms to hold the City accountable when needed. This requires that it has influence during planning, implementation and evaluation stages. This needs to be more than just making plans -- it needs to be real.

• Guiding City Council on development of an effective community engagement/community partnership program as well as a racial equity assessment to guide all City Council budget, policy, procedure and practice decisions. This includes a partnership structure and metrics to evaluate budget, policy and program implementation, and to allow for re-alignment of efforts to achieve racial equity. 

• Guiding the City in the creation and implementation of a racial equity assessment tool.

• In order to eliminate inequities and achieve racial equity, we are working with City Council to create and resource a formal structure and mechanisms for the RE Council to guide the City’s racial equity work over the long term.