Oakland News Now Blog

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Oakland Finance Director Erin Roseman Slammed By Workers Unions For Alleged Illegal Behavior From OaklandNewsOnline.com: https://ift.tt/ZJ4KIho Oakland (Special to OaklandNewsOnline.com) – On the morning of the City of Oakland’s special City Council Finance Committee Meeting featuring an “informal report” on Oakland Police Overtime, and in the wake of rumors that the City of Oakland may file for bankruptcy, Zennie62Media, Inc. has uncovered a damning May 8th, 2024 letter to Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao directed at Oakland Finance Director Erin Roseman. What could be called the “Report on the behavior of the Finance Department with respect to Business Tax Collection” was written by a coalition of Oakland workers representing SEIU, Local 1021, FPTE, Local 21, IAFF, Local 55, and IBEW, Local 1245, and posted at the website of IFPTE, Local 21. It accuses Ms. Roseman of lack of leadership and “illegal behavior”, to highlight some of the criticisms. Mayor Thao and Members of the Finance Committee, As the coalition representing over 3,000 city workers, we are writing to express concern with recent actions of the Finance Department leadership. We have attempted to engage in thorough discussions with the Finance Director Erin Roseman and Revenue and Tax Administrator Sherry Jackson about the state of the City’s budget and revenue collections, however in those attempts we have been met with illegal behavior, resistance and a troubling lack of transparency. Numerous reports to City Council have made it clear that last year, thousands of businesses did not pay business taxes by the April 17th deadline. Those reports also show that as much as $34 million in business tax collections from prior years may still be outstanding. To date, thousands of businesses still have not been noticed that they are delinquent. According to policy documents provided to us by the Finance Department, delinquency notices are typically sent in May of each year and the entire process for collections takes approximately 45 days. Last year, the first notices of delinquency were mailed in October, November and December of 2023—a full six months after the normal timeline for business tax collections, four months after the close of the fiscal year and months after finance department operations had recovered from the ransomware attack.1 The Finance Department is currently projecting a $177 million deficit. This deficit projection is in part based on the assumption that business tax collections for this year will remain at last year’s levels. Not only did Director Erin Roseman fail to collect revenues from approximately half of Oakland businesses last year, but Director Roseman is essentially assuming that we will do the same this year, which is driving dramatic service cuts to our community and potential layoffs of union members. Failing to collect all outstanding revenues as quickly as possible to protect these vital public services is unconscionable and a failure of leadership. Oakland Finance Director Erin Roseman Accused Of Not Showing Up For Meetings With Union SEIU 1021 IFPTE Local 21 made a first attempt to meet with Finance Director Erin Roseman to discuss this issue in December of 2023, however Director Roseman did not show up to the meeting. As a result, the union submitted questions in writing on February 16th. According to the Finance Department’s Measure T Implementation Report from November 2023, the department had resumed normal operations and had issued business tax certificate renewals by May of 2023, meaning that notices were also sent six months after the department had resumed operations.After Director Roseman and Revenue and Tax Administrator Jackson failed to respond to a number of items, Local 21 filed an unfair labor practice charge on March 25th, 2024. To date, the union has still not received a full response to its requests from Erin Roseman. On April 15th 2024, SEIU 1021 also attempted to meet with Director Roseman to discuss the issue and Director Roseman again did not show up. In both cases, our union representative appeared at the meeting and waited, only to be told that the Director would not be attending. More: https://ift.tt/ZJ4KIho

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Note from Oakland News Now Blog, Zennie62 YouTube, and Zennie62Media: this Oakland News Now Blog video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. This is what we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now Blog site and Zennie62Media -created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary, thus less chance for Oakland News Now Blog, Zennie62 YouTube vloggers to be robbed. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.