A clearly conflicted aldermanic committee refused to vote to accept $150,000 to fund the city’s immigrant-friendly municipal ID card program, after nobody from City Hall showed up to explain it.
Member after member of the Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee spoke at Wednesday night’s City Hall meeting of his or her support for the ID card program. But they refused to take up the resolution to accept the money from three private sources because of the possibility, as committee Chairman Alderman Yusuf Shah put it, of “unintended consequences.”
Alderwoman Frances “Bitsie” Clark (at left in photo with Shah and Alderwoman Migdalia Castro) said she is strongly in support of the program. She said she feared putting off action on it sends a bad message “to people who are opposed to the city’s attitude on the ID card. I think we should pass it.”
Alderman Jorge Perez said that even though he supports the program, he didn’t think putting off consideration until the next meeting would be harmful.
“If it was so urgent [to pass the resolution], someone would have been here,” he said.
Castro said she needed more information and was “uncomfortable voting on it right now. The city needs to come in and talk to us,” she said.
Reached Thursday morning, city Community Services Administrator Kica Matos (pictured) took personal responsibility for what she termed an internal mix-up.
“I was out of the country and just returned,” Matos said. “I was under the understanding that [the meeting] was covered by someone else from CSA.”
Matos raised the private money so the city wouldn’t use tax dollars to fund the ID program, which is beginning its second year
The resolution called for the board to accept $75,000 from Atlantic Philanthropies, $50,000 from the Four Freedoms Funds and $25,000 from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Atlantic Philanthropies of Bermuda and the Four Freedom Funds of New York are charities that promote human rights and immigrant rights, according to their Web sites. The Kaplan fund, capitalized by the sale of the Welch Grape Co., benefits “human migrations,” according to its website.
Alderman Mordechai Sandman (pictured) said he wanted to be sure the entire cost of the identification card program was covered by contributions and not city funds before he voted on the measure.
The Finance Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 7.