The new commission charged with bridging Erie County’s racial divide plunged with demoralizing speed from its historic first grant awards in September to the chaos lately sown by County Executive Brenton Davis and members of Erie County Council.
Their decimation of the new Erie County Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission amid shifting rationales has provoked anger, sadness and demands for reconsideration, but it should not surprise. It marks the culmination of a near year-long effort by Davis to divert the commission’s funding and downplay, even recast, its mission.
The county executive appears to believe — no matter what authorities such as Brookings Institution scholar Camille Busette, urban policy expert Bruce Katz or Erie businesses, including Erie Insurance, have told us — that intentional efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in a community as scarred by racial disparities as Erie County do not qualify as “real” economic development. Educational opportunities, a strong economy and good-paying jobs offer alternate paths to addressing racial inequities, Davis has said, sidestepping the fact that the local DEI initiatives he sees as “valiant” but less impactful share those same strategies and goals, only sharpened by historical context and data.
Combine this with Davis’ eagerness to strain the limits of his executive authority to remake the board and reallocate American Rescue Plan dollars to his preferred ends and you have a toxic situation that threatens to wrench the county’s overdue racial reconciliation into reverse and derail local leaders’ bid to capitalize on the pending deluge of government funds via the new investment playbook, “Erie’s Inclusive Growth: A Framework for Action.” That initiative, called Infinite Erie, aligns this region with other forward-looking communities that seek growth with racial equity and inclusion in sharp focus.
No question, Davis should strive to strengthen the regional economy. Seeking to leverage native assets — Lake Erie, our educational institutions, advanced manufacturing and transit options; and pairing Erie’s plastics industry and research strengths with the global demand to address plastic pollution — is smart and laudable.
But the globalization that sapped Erie’s manufacturing base did not alone give rise to the scalding data that led to the creation of the DEI Commission in 2021 — policy, intent and the basest aspects of human nature did. It requires more than a blindered, ahistorical pursuit of jobs to fix it.
Erie leaders rallied around this truth in 2020 as the murder of George Floyd and the disparate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color revealed the extent to which institutional racism still impedes human potential here. Erie County and the city of Erie each declared racism a public health crisis.
The county’s declaration, Resolution Number 43, of 2020, ticks off the disturbing local statistics underscoring the badly tilted playing fields on which lives are built here. Here are just a few of the consequential examples:
- A median household income of $63,235 for white families, more than double that of Black people, $28,814; 38.6% of Black people living in poverty compared with 14.1% of white; Black unemployment, even in stable years, twice as high as white.
- Black people experience higher age-adjusted rates of death by cancer and diabetes and suffer nearly double the number of heart attacks that white people do; infant mortality rates are 22.8 per 1,000 live births for the Black population, more than four times higher the 4.9 mortality rate for the white; 22% of Black people experience hunger, compared with 9% of white people.
- When it comes to housing, 98% of the federally financed loans for suburban homes in the 1950s and 1960s went to white families and today just 5% of people of color own homes — so critical to growing generational wealth. They represent 37% of the subsidized housing but just 16% of the county population. Only 13.8% of Black people have a bachelor’s degree or higher, about half of the 27.8% of white people who do.
Erie County commits to addressing racial inequity
Erie County Council created the Erie County Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission, or Diverse Erie, in September 2021 to invest in historically disadvantaged communities, economically empower minority populations and minority businesses and aid those disproportionately affected by the pandemic. They funded it with two $3.5 million installments of American Rescue Plan money to be awarded in 2021 and 2022.
2021:How Erie County is addressing its other public health crisis: racism
Then-County Councilwoman Kim Clear noted at that time that increasing opportunity for Black and brown people could impact the entire regional economy. Bridging such racial gaps is not just a moral imperative but an economic one if Erie seeks a competitive edge, as Busette explained in a 2021 interview.
“When you have racial justice, you have a better-prepared workforce, better infrastructure in the city, better health infrastructure (which) makes you more attractive to prospective employers,” she said.
“… Employers don’t really want to step into places that have a lot of racial tension or racial disparities because it can make for an unpredictable operating environment for them.”
In September, Diverse Erie CEO Gary Lee stood before a crowd at Joyce A. Savocchio Business Park to begin that transformation. He announced $1.1 million in grants requiring a one-to-one match. The grants targeted not one-off temporary fixes, but capital projects deemed to have a long-lasting impact on the Black, Indigenous or people of color populations.
The Minority Community Investment Coalition won $250,000 to advance aquaponic farming at Savocchio Park, a former toxic dump site in an east Erie area variously impoverished, polluted and redlined.
The East Side Renaissance garnered $250,000 to support restoration of the blighted Parade Street corridor and its people with entrepreneurial opportunities, homeownership and commercial development. There was $250,000 for a GMA Development Group construction trades training program; $250,000 for capital improvements at the Greater Erie Economic Development Corp. to provide services to people of color; and $100,000 for renovations at the Mercy Center for Women to support self-sufficiency and workforce development.
It was an event by people of color for people of color. It looked and felt like a watershed moment.
But instead of celebrating the implementation of those grants, leaders of the East Side Renaissance, former Diverse Erie Board Chairman Gerald Blanks and others on a recent day stood together at Bishop Dwane Brock’s Eagle’s Nest Leadership Corp. to denounce Davis’ push to gut the Diverse Erie board in the wake of those grants. They called for his resignation and warned that legal action could follow if the commission and its grants were not restored.
How did we get here?
In essence, because the county executive said so.
Conflict of interest policy, perception at issue
Diverse Erie awarded the grants in compliance with its own bylaws governing conflicts of interest and the Pennsylvania Ethics Act, as variously confirmed by Diverse Erie board Solicitor Tim Wachter, County Council Solicitor Tom Talarico and former Erie County Chief Public Defender Pat Kennedy.
Blanks and Commissioner Adrienne Dixon have ties to grant recipient GEEDC, and Matt Harris to the East Side Renaissance, but they did not take part in the deliberations or vote on the grant awards. They reported their conflicts to the commission and filed abstention memos with the board secretary. The board alerted County Council and Davis’ office of the conflicts and the abstentions, as A.J. Rao has reported.
No matter the rule of law, the Diverse Erie board, according to Davis, created an intolerable appearance of “self-dealing.” To address his perception of an intolerable conflict, Davis removed Blanks and Dixon from the commission, while 6th District Erie County Councilman Samuel Bayle removed Harris, a retired state police trooper and founder of a character development program for schoolchildren.
When it became clear that three of the four remaining DEI commissioners — small business owner Tiffany LaVette, Gwendolyn White of Erie Insurance, and surgeon Sarah Carter — intended to proceed with the grants announced in September, Davis dismissed them from the commission, saying he would not “stand to see grants get funded that were put forward in bad faith.”
Drew Compton Letter to Davis (1).pdf
Four members of Erie County Council — Council President Brian Shank, Bayle, Ellen Schauerman, all Republicans, and Democrat Jim Winarski — in last-minute budget maneuvers on Thanksgiving Eve then delivered the last blow, cancelling the DEI Commission’s second $3.5 million ARP award that had been approved in 2021.
“They’re just not playing by the rules,” Council President Brian Shank said.
Who’s not?
How we got here
The reckless accusations and brash power grabs occurred amid a context that matters.
Davis took office with sights set on Diverse Erie’s funding. He objected to the fact that Erie County Council, after a months-long process of community engagement, had in December 2021 budgeted all but $7 million of the county’s second $26 million round of American Rescue Plan funding due to arrive this year.
In February, he unveiled his intentions to rebudget the county’s 2022 ARP award and cancel Diverse Erie’s second $3.5 million grant. He suggested rural communities had not received a fair share. He falsely claimed that the 2022 ARP spending plan had not been publicly vetted and declared the need for public hearings.
But in September, with scant public notice, he put forward to Erie County Council a 2022 ARP reallocation proposal that he drafted not via public hearings but behind closed doors with a three-member, Republican-dominated subcommitteeof Erie County Council. The proposal, among other things, shifted $3.5 million from Diverse Erie and more than $3 million from urban renewal and community development to a general list of projects deemed by the administration to be more supportive of economic and workforce development and in line with new, less restrictive rules for the use of ARP funds.
After County Council declined to take up that new 2022 ARP budget due to its lack of detail and transparency, Davis’ Diverse Erie board purge came into public view. In the end, with little public debate about changes to the ARP budget, council enacted a rebudgeting of the funds the day before Thanksgiving, which included cancellation of the DEI Commission’s second $3.5 million grant.
A commission formed to help the Black, indigenous and people of color affected by the pandemic and historically marginalized will inevitably encounter conflicts in Erie County. It is a small community, with a limited number of agencies, initiatives and leaders. That’s why boards, commissions and authorities across the county generally maintain such conflict policies.
Consider the precedent Davis’ actions set. Other independent county commissions are now wide open to sackings and manipulation by executive whim.
Beyond that, the fate of the approved grants and the composition of the Diverse Erie board stand in limbo while the public health crisis of racism endures. Drew Crompton, a lawyer retained to represent Diverse Erie, including White, LaVette and Carter, has notified Davis that their removals were improper and that the three women intend to continue serving on the commission.
Decision time
The impasse marks a test of community resolve and character we can’t afford to fail.
More:Slavery’s legacy in Erie and the unfulfilled promise of Juneteenth
Amid the turmoil, Johnny Johnson — Erie historian, retired teacher and longtime advocate for racial justice — raised an existential question.
In essence: How does long does Erie want to wallow in its disgraceful state of racial inequity?
More:Will Erie leaders, citizens stand up against the dismantling of the DEI Commission?
That question so far has only been answered publicly by a single Erie powerbroker, Erie Insurance, which has spoken in support of the Diverse Erie mission.
“Sadly, while other communities are working together to leverage the American Rescue Plan funding to address this important public health crisis, the need for investment in Black, Indigenous and people of color families here in Erie County only continues to grow and this declared public health crisis continues to go unaddressed. The people of Erie County and the DEI commission’s volunteer leaders dedicated to this important work deserve better,” spokesman Matthew Cummings said.
Johnson cast the work as a stark moral imperative citing Biblical prophets.
It is that.
It is also a deeply practical and self-interested goal, which should accord with Davis’ agenda.
Diverse Erie is meant to be a vital partner in the execution of Infinite Erie’s investment playbook. Drafted by urban policy experts Katz and Florian Schalliol of New Localism Associates of Arlington, Virginia, with the input of dozens of community stakeholders, the playbook represents a once-in-a-generation bid for the region to seize a share of the billions of dollars flowing from American Rescue Plan Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act and more.
That document does not downplay DEI initiatives. It identifies inequity as the No. 1 weakness holding the area back:
“Erie suffers from rampant inequity, as Black residents and other communities of color have considerably lower outcomes across health, education, income, and other issues. These problems are both old and new; though rooted in history, they continue to hamper Erie’s prospects.”
The playbook knits goals of equity and inclusion into the evolving list of top investments Erie County hopes to advance. That strategy aligns with what experts say historically segregated communities with severe racial disparities like Erie must do in order to compete. As experts with the Urban Institute wrote in July, cities such as Augusta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio; Jacksonville, Florida; and Lowell, Massachusetts, have pointed to their inclusion efforts as catalysts for their overall growth.
Davis built his public profile by variously castigating past leaders as corrupt and feckless and expressing confidence that he is singularly equipped, by virtue of his work experience and education, to chart the corrective course.
The truth is recent months’ turf warfare, opaque maneuvers and caustic rhetoric represent a stultifying throwback to the counterproductive, ineffective styles of Erie County governing that Davis promised to shed. Worse, they represent a gross betrayal of the commitments leaders made.
Agency, choice, responsibility all direct a human life, no question.
So do power, policy, wealth, access, opportunity and education — especially when doled out in unequal measure or wielded with bigoted, grasping intent as they have been here.
It will take all of us working together to lower barriers, build capacity and open inclusive paths to opportunity and growth.
The clock is ticking on Diverse Erie’s grants and funding, and perhaps its purpose and existence. Davis stresses his support for equity for all residents, which is fair and good. But how does that alter the need to act with intent to address the specific needs of the Black, Indigenous and people of color Diverse Erie aims to lift up, especially given our history? And that freighted past, as author William Faulkner said, is not dead; it is not even past. Here it has included enslavement; Ku Klux Klan terror; discriminatory lending practices that impeded generational wealth-building and gave rise to the region’s segregated and impoverished neighborhoods; underfunded schools; misguided criminal justice policies and more.
Davis has endorsed the investment playbook that relies upon Diverse Erie’s mission and funding. He seems keenly aware that this temporary influx of government money represents a “moonshot” opportunity for recovery.
We can’t squander it waging a bruising fight over what is ultimately a false choice.
The region’s demands for racial equity and economic growth inextricably link.
To quote Davis, “Let’s get to work.”
Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on Twitter @ETNThompson.
