By Haley Munguia, Long Beach Press-Telegram. The Press-Telegram talks to CPBA’s Ben Hauck and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia on what a public bank could mean for Long Beach.

It’s time for local government to put its money where its mouth is.

At least, that’s what a fledgling group of activists from across the state will call on lawmakers to authorize when they descend on Sacramento this Monday, Aug. 26. There, the advocates will lobby for a wonky cause that’s quickly gaining traction in California’s progressive circles: public banking.

Though Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia won’t be in the state capitol for the occasion, he stands with the organizers in spirit.

Garcia said this week that if Assembly Bill 857 – which would grant cities and counties the authority to establish their own government-run banks – becomes law, he hopes Long Beach would be the home of one of the state’s first public banks.

The prospect isn’t unlikely; the bill has already sailed through six legislative committees and was approved on the Assembly floor in May. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who gets the final say, has also signaled support for the concept.

Continue reading on Long Beach Press-Telegram.

California Public Banking Alliance, Medium. Cities and counties across California are stepping onto the public banking bandwagon! From San Diego to Eureka, 17 cities and counties have passed resolutions endorsing Assembly Bill 857, joining with the California Public Banking Alliance in pushing for state legislation to create a state sanctioned charter for public banks.

City dwellers in San Francisco and Los Angeles agree that the time has come for the billions of tax dollars collected by municipalities to be put to use building affordable housing in the communities that pay the taxes. Berkeley and Beverly Hills want public funds to be divested from harmful fossil fuel companies and rerouted to small businesses badly in need of capital to succeed. People of Richmond, Long Beach and Oakland want to enable their elected officials to put their money in financial institutions accountable to the public, not to distant shareholders.

Continue reading on Medium.

California Public Banking Alliance, Medium. This week, Alameda County Democratic Party, San Mateo County Democratic Party and Sonoma County Democratic Party added their names to the long list of Democratic governing bodies endorsing Assembly Bill 857, the Public Banking Act. This follows past endorsements by the California Democratic Party, 550 delegates of the California Democratic Party, as well as Contra Costa, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz County Democratic Parties.

Democrats statewide realize the importance of establishing a public banking option for municipalities. Currently, local jurisdictions are forced by the limitations of local banks and credit unions to entrust their funds to Wall Street banks. These are the very same banks that drove the US and global economies to the edge of collapse in 2008 with their greedy speculation and, often fraudulent, banking practices.

Continue reading on Medium.

By Robert R. Raymond, Truthout. It may not come as a surprise to hear that the majority of Americans don’t trust the banking system in this country. Only 27 percent of those surveyed in a 2016 Gallup poll said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the institution — less than half of the record high set in 1979. And the lack of trust is spread relatively evenly across the political spectrum — it’s not just liberals or those on the left: Almost everyone is fed up with the banks.

And if banking institutions don’t exactly spark joy, their lead characters — morally bankrupt investment bankers whose greed and arrogance almost singlehandedly collapsed the entire country’s economy — certainly don’t spark joy either. It’s an old story: Bankers made obscene amounts of money destroying the economy, we bailed them out, they walked away from it all without a shred of accountability and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But that’s not where the story has to end. Spurred by the need for an alternative to the for-profit, extractive model of finance exemplified by Wall Street, there is a budding movement in the United States that is working to reimagine banking as an institution that truly serves the public.

Public banking is an old idea, but it has never been very common in the United States. The first and only public bank in the country was founded exactly 100 years ago in North Dakota, and it wasn’t until relatively recently that the idea has begun to find new life in cities and states across the country. Growing largely out of the need for more democratic ownership over capital, the aim of this budding movement is to create a robust public banking infrastructure across the nation that is rooted in the principles of economic, environmental, racial and social justice.

Continue reading on Truthout.

By Chase DiFeliciantonio, North Bay Business Journal. A bill that would allow some municipalities to establish their own banks in California edged through a state committee Wednesday.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 857, passed the Senate Governance and Finance Committee on a 4-3 vote with the support of Chairman Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg.

Authored by Assemblymen David Chiu, D-San Francisco, and Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, the bill would allow local governments of a certain size to create publicly owned banks with the goal of divesting from large banks invested in the fossil fuel industry, private prisons, and other industries while investing local tax money back into communities.

Municipalities could also band together to create joint powers authorities under the bill.

Continue reading on North Bay Business Journal.

North Bay Business Journal talks with California Public Banking Alliance members Chris Petlock, Shelly Browning and Susan Harman.

Should banks exist to make a profit, a difference, or both?

A bill in the California Legislature allowing municipalities to create their own banks could upend how they handle their money and finance long-term projects. It also has the potential to squeeze out larger financial institutions, replacing them with these so-called “public banks.”

The legislation, Assembly Bill 857, could also have a resounding impact on the North Bay.

Cities and counties could combine to found a bank that would replace larger institutions in underwriting “participation loans” made to projects in partnership with local banks and credit unions, according to Susan Harman of the Public Bank East Bay advocacy group, part of the statewide California Public Bank Alliance.

“We would replace Wall Street banks, offer local rates and the money would stay local,” Harman said. “The public bank would buy that loan essentially, back it, and provide the capital that the credit union or community bank would need.”

There are different visions for how public banks could work and how many municipalities would be involved in one. In the North Bay, some advocates envision a wide-ranging conglomeration of cities and counties participating in the bank.

Under the bill, municipalities could band together to create joint powers authorities, or JPAs, to increase their size and improve the chance of loan profitability.

Continue reading on North Bay Business Journal.

Beverly Press. The Public Banking Act, AB 857, passed its first hurdle in the California Senate on June 19. The measure passed through the Senate Banking Committee and now heads to the Senate Governance and Finance Committee.

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) said AB 857 has the broad support from labor unions, environmental groups, grassroots activists and municipalities throughout the state, though it’s up against heavy opposition from Wall Street banks.

“Wall Street bankers hate the idea of a public bank because it takes power away from them and gives it back to the people,” Santiago said. “AB 857 gives us the option to invest public dollars for the public good, and I say it’s high time we prioritized the people of California over the profits of billionaire investors.”

Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) said the state is “standing up to say the public’s money should be used for the public good.”

Continue reading on Beverly Press.

By Tom Gogola, Pacific Sun. There’s an effort afoot in Sacramento for public banking that’s putting the focus on how localities manage their investment portfolios. A bill that’s currently parked in a Senate committee chaired by North Bay legislator Mike McGuire would, for the first time, allow municipalities or regions to create commercial banks that would function in much the same way as Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Assembly Bill 857, authored by Assemblymen David Chiu and Miguel Santiago, sets out to create a regulatory framework to allow California to license public banks that would give cities the option to stop doing business with big banks and invest taxpayer money into local communities.

“We don’t have control over our own money supply,” says North Bay public banking activist Shelly Browning, who’s a longtime public bank activist. Her road to advocacy for public banking leads from Egypt’s Freedom Square protests, to the domestic Occupy movement, to the spring-off Occupy effort to get public banks in the public consciousness.

Continue reading on Pacific Sun.