New Haven’s immigrant-friendly ID cards can be used for parking, for checking out library books, for withdrawing cash. Here’s another benefit: They are helping to fund the second year of the program.
City Community Services Administrator Kica Matos said Thursday that she’s found the money to keep the ID card program running a second year without dipping into government coffers.
Some opponents have criticized the cards — which are for all residents but particularly help immigrants — because they predicted the city would start using tax dollars to fund the program. An outside grant funded the program’s first year.
Matos offered the information during an interview in her office the morning after a victory in another issue of contention with the ID cards. On Wednesday the state Freedom of Information Commission confirmed that the city can keep the identities of the almost 7,000 applicants for the cards private out of fear for the safety of card holders. Matos was visibly relieved. She said, listening to commissioners’ questions on Wednesday, she had feared the full commission was going to reverse the draft decision issued in late June that supported the city’s right to keep the information private. (She’s pictured above holding a fat folder full of copies of hate mail related to the city’s ID card program.)
“I had two thoughts sitting in that room,” she said. “If we lost, what was I going to tell the immigrant community? And how was I going to get up out of my chair?”
Now it’s on to Year Two of the program, which starts July 24. Matos said a condition of the Board of Aldermen’s approval of the program was that it could not be funded with tax money. So the city has raised $150,000 from three national foundations. (She said she’ll name them at a press conference later this month.)
“We need $200,000 to fund the office of resident services for one year; the remaining amount we got from sale of the ID cards [at $10 a pop] the first year.”
She said the office has expanded its mandate beyond issuing ID cards to serving new residents to the city in a variety of ways.