Candidate for
City Attorney; City of Oakland

City Attorney Barbara Parker on the Issues

Protecting Public Safety

I believe the highest priority for Oakland is public safety. I will continue to dedicate all the available legal resources and powers of my office to public safety.

● After I was sworn in last year, I reorganized the City Attorney's office to focus more resources on public safety and code enforcement.

● In the last year, my office partnered with the Oakland Police Department to bring civil lawsuits against two hotels that were operating as centers of child sex trafficking: the Economy Inn and the National Lodge. These hotels were also magnets for rapes, kidnappings, and shootings. Our departments worked together to build the cases, and the court recently ordered both hotels to close for one year, which is the maximum penalty allowed by state law. The court also ordered the owners of the hotels to pay the costs of our prosecution and the Police Department's investigation, as well as significant fines to the City. Shutting these hotels should send a clear message: we will not allow businesses to make a living from the abuse and exploitation of women and girls in our community.

● My office worked with the Oakland Police Department to get a preliminary injunction and restraining orders against 40 members of the Norteņos gang in the Fruitvale.

● I am rigorously defending a woman's right to choose by ensuring safe access to reproductive health clinics.

● I directed my office to bring lawsuits against Occupy Oakland vandals who smashed the windows of businesses in downtown Oakland. While I fully support the right to peacefully assemble and protest, I cannot support the destruction of local businesses.

● I proposed a "shield" ordinance that would ban makeshift weapons and metal shields from protests.

● I am currently working on reforms that would enhance the penalties for carrying an illegal gun in Oakland.

●Our office's Neighborhood Law Corps has shut down numerous drug houses and problem liquor stores.

● I am fighting to ensure that law enforcement has the right priorities, by supporting the decriminalization of medical marijuana, and fighting back against the Feds' crackdown against medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakland. Law enforcement should focus on violent crime, not non-violent medical marijuana users.

A Commitment to Professionalism

The City Attorney is an elected position, but it is also a professional position. As a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and practicing lawyer for more than three decades at every level of government and in the private sector, I never envisioned myself running for political office. I am a professional, not a politician. However, it is no secret that there is a crisis of confidence in the public's perception of whether our elected leaders are working together effectively to solve problems. We need less political rhetoric and more competent, independent professionalism.

● It is my primary mission as your City Attorney to represent the City--and by extension its residents, businesses, unions, and taxpayers--with the highest level of professionalism, independence, and integrity. Indeed, I have worked for my entire career with these goals.

● You can always count on me to do what I believe is legal and right for the people of Oakland. I am not motivated by politics.

● It is a top priority for me to continue to run an effective, efficient, and professional law office and City department. Over the last nine years, the City Attorney's staff has been cut by about one third--19 attorneys and 12 support staff. For a city with as many legal issues as Oakland, we have a very minimal staff. When I took office, I reorganized my department to leverage the resources remaining to us. That's how we've been able to keep costs down, while continuing to provide quality service to the people of Oakland.

Fiscal Responsibility and Protecting Taxpayer Dollars

As your City Attorney, I am working hard every day to protect taxpayer dollars, and to do more with less.

● Since I have taken office, we have reduced outside counsel costs by 40%. We did this despite the fact that over the last ten years, and particularly during the last 3 years, the City Council continuously slashed our office's budget to the bone--making much deeper cuts to our office than to most City departments. As a result of the City Council's policy to cut our budget and staff, the City Attorney's office initially had to increase its reliance on more expensive outside counsel for legal advice. But since I was sworn in, we've been able to cut outside counsel costs so drastically by reorganizing and restructuring the office, and by doing more with less.

● Since I have taken office, we have had a great track record in litigation. Settlement costs are down more than 50%, after they had risen for the several years before I was sworn in. I am working very hard to reduce costs and protect taxpayer dollars.

Standing Up for Working People

I am a lifetime supporter and advocate for working people. Unions and collective bargaining provide a critical balance of power, securing living wages, benefits, and safe working conditions for workers, and a pathway to the middle class and the achievement of the American dream.

I grew up in a strong union family in Seattle, Washington. My parents migrated to Seattle to escape the brutality and grinding poverty of the rural segregated South. My father was a poor farmer who became a merchant marine and a proud member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards union. My mother was a sharecropper who became a homemaker and a hotel maid in the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Workers union. My parents were able to provide me and my siblings health, dental, and vision insurance and purchase a home because of their unions' work.

During my 21-year tenure in the City Attorney's Office--as a deputy city attorney, a supervising deputy, more than ten years as Chief Assistant City Attorney, and now as City Attorney--I have been a union activist and leader.

● I was one of the attorneys who led the efforts to organize the Local 21 attorneys' bargaining unit in the City Attorney's Office, the first unit in the City of Oakland to represent attorneys, and I served on the initial negotiating team.

● In 2009, while I was Chief Assistant City Attorney, second in command in the Office, I spearheaded the organization of the Confidential Management Employees Association. I also served on the negotiating team and as an officer.

● I am developing a legal strategy to fight the taxpayer rip-off in Oakland's unfair deal with predatory and deceptive lending practices by some of the nation's biggest banks and Wall Street financing entities. Our office's Neighborhood Law Corps (NLC) has worked extensively on foreclosure issues in Oakland, forcing banks to clean up blighted properties and preventing banks from illegally evicting tenants from foreclosed homes. The NLC recently brought in $130,000 in fines from Wells Fargo Bank for failing to comply with blight laws.

● I am expanding our Code Enforcement Unit to focus more legal resources on foreclosures and blight issues.

In Oakland, many of our working families continue to struggle in these difficult economic times. As City Attorney, I am continuing to use my leadership skills and passion to champion fairness and equity for workers and unions. And I am committed to continuing to honor collective bargaining as a fundamental right that gives working people a voice at the table.

Keeping Politics and Corruption Out of Government

Our City Attorney must serve as an independent watchdog, to ensure fair and honest City practices, and keep political influence and corruption out of City government. It's my job to ensure that everyone knows and plays by the same rules regardless of political influence or position.

● To ensure accountability at City Hall, I conduct impartial reviews of all City contracts and laws to ensure competent, fair, and honest procedures, that all Oaklanders are represented, and that the actions of our City government are transparent, fair, and legal.

● When it became clear that certain members of the City Council needed a reminder about the interference clause of the City Charter--which prohibits City Councilmembers from interfering in administrative affairs of the City such as hiring, firing, and contracting--I stepped in with a memo reminding everyone of their proper roles. While the City Council makes policy, it has no administrative powers, and it's my job to make sure everyone stays in their lanes.

A Fighter for Fairness. A Fighter for Oakland.

My parents escaped legalized oppression in the rural, segregated South, and migrated to Seattle, Washington, where I grew up. My mother was from a sharecropping family and my father was from a poor farming family.

In the 1970's, I was one of the very few African American women admitted to Harvard Law School--but some male classmates told me that I was taking a space that should have been held by a man.

These disparities, along with my parents' history of facing oppression and brutality, ignited my determination to break barriers and fight against double standards and injustices of all kinds.

Since my graduation from Harvard Law over 30 years ago, I have been committed to using the law as a tool to champion underrepresented communities, create opportunities, and fight for equal rights for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or economic status.

I believe the City Attorney must act as a force for change in Oakland by using the office's resources to tackle Oakland's serious problems and improve the quality of life for all.

As your City Attorney, you can count on me to continue my efforts to always seek justice and protect equal rights.