(Republicaninformer.com)- The California task force that last year voted to provide reparations for California residents who are descended from slaves is finding out the hard way that actually implementing a reparations plan isn’t that easy.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Reparations Task Force met last Wednesday to discuss what California taxpayers should pay black residents but the team still hasn’t figured out the particulars.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the 9-member panel concluded that California blacks whose ancestors were slaves should be paid $223,200 each to compensate them for housing discrimination practices from 1933 to 1977.
But according to task force member Jovan Scott Lewis, a Berkeley professor, the group still hasn’t determined “the actual racial wealth gap” in California. He has asked other advisors for help in finding the necessary information to come up with a dollar amount.
Advisors hired by the task force have come up with categories for which they believe blacks should be compensated, including housing discrimination, mass incarceration, over-policing, unjust property seizures, devaluation of black businesses, and health care.
And while it has the categories, the task force has yet to settle on time frames. Nor has the group determined how many California blacks should be eligible for reparations. Do they limit it to just the descendants of slaves? Or do they include all blacks who can prove that their US lineage dates back to before 1900?
The plan has to be presented to the California legislature by June 2023. But last Wednesday’s meeting showed the difficulties of trying to put a reparations plan into action.
Task force members, along with state officials attending the meeting, were more comfortable discussing social welfare programs like universal basic income, home-buying grants, and wellness centers.
According to the Free Beacon, nearly all of the people who called in to comment during the meeting wanted cold, hard cash, with recommended amounts ranging from $5,000 to $5 million.
The Reparations Task Force can only make recommendations to the state. Ultimately, the decision on what to do with those recommendations rests with the California legislature.
With the state facing a $24 billion deficit in 2023, it is unclear how California’s super-majority Democrat legislature can proceed if they have to raise the revenue necessary to offer reparations.
