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State Sen. Aisha Wahab’s day-to-day work in her current post has dovetailed with an increasingly fierce campaign for the congressional seat vacated by former Rep. Eric Swalwell in recent weeks as Tri-Valley officials and nonprofits blast a proposed bill that would require additional transparency and oversight of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ discretionary spending practices.
The bill in question is SB 1193, described by Wahab as a transparency bill that Alameda County desperately needs in a recent town hall. However, in a letter by District 1 Supervisor David Haubert, the bill is deemed as “not necessary” and “political payback and retribution” to the board for not endorsing her congressional run.
The bill is specifically aimed at increasing transparency and regulation around the board of supervisors’ use of discretionary funds, which is the money leftover in each district’s account at the end of each fiscal year that can be carried over for spending on grants and services that benefit the public good at each supervisors’ discretion in the following year, known as the Fiscal Management Reserve Program (FMRP).
Under the legislation first proposed by Wahab earlier this year, Alameda County would become subject to the same regulations currently in place for Orange County, which requires that county’s board of supervisors to maintain a log of discretionary spending available online, prohibits the use of those funds by supervisors within 90 days of elections in which they’re on the ballot, and requires majority approval by the board for any use of discretionary funds.
Although the bill was first introduced in February, scrutiny from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors picked up last month, with Haubert hosting a press conference and issuing a series of statements against the measure and the board voting unanimously at its April 21 meeting to oppose the bill. But the state senate committee in which it advanced through a second hearing on April 29 felt differently with its unanimous vote.
The debate was ongoing as of last week, with Haubert issuing an additional public letter May 6 and Wahab taking to Zoom for a virtual town hall event May 7 aimed at clarifying what she described as misinformation from the board of supervisors and other opponents.
“This bill is not necessary, and that’s why the Alameda County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to stand up for our community partners and oppose SB1193,” Haubert wrote.
“The writing of this bill begs many more questions,” he continued. “Why would Senator Wahab single out and attack Alameda County alone and not include other counties? Why would Wahab include restrictions only during an election cycle? Why would Wahab accuse the Board of Supervisors of operating ‘slush funds?’ Why would Wahab propose rules for county boards and not hold herself accountable to the same? Lastly, don’t she and her colleagues in Sacramento have much better things to do than this?”
With the exception of the last two, Wahab sought to answer those questions and others that were raised by attendees at her virtual town hall discussion last week and debunk what she described as “misinformation to the public and nonprofits, with a lot of fear-mongering and scare tactics and extremist language.”
On Haubert’s first point, Wahab noted that her district represents portions of both Alameda County and Santa Clara County, emphasized that she is a current resident of the county and grew up in its foster care system, and pointed to what she described as unique situations and challenges it faces as the fifth wealthiest, seventh largest and most taxed county in the state.
“Alameda County is wealthy, highly educated, and has a large tax base,” Wahab said. “But the outcomes are uneven…the county performs well on income, educational attainment, but it faces severe affordability and homelessness pressures, as well as documented failures in child welfare.”
The latter is something Wahab said she sought to address by requesting a state controller’s audit in 2024, which found that the county’s department of children and family services failed to properly document and address a number of complaints alleging child abuse and neglect in the foster care system.
“The question really is whether a county with this level of tax base and public spending is delivering the level of transparency, urgency, and measurable results residents deserve,” Wahab said.
Among the findings in the audit report released this year was that the county failed to ensure that foster youth receive necessary services in a timely manner due to a lack of documentation and tracking on the services provided by contractors and inter-agency partners. Wahab said she started a task force aimed at addressing those findings last year, in which some of the concerns she is seeking to address with the proposed senate bill came to light.
“One of the things that we wanted to address is also some of the concerns through SB 1193 in multiple different conversations,” Wahab said.
Without SB 1193 in place, Wahab said there are no laws requiring supervisors to prove the public good that their discretionary funding is meant to bolster, “no performance standards, no enforceable and competitive contracts.”
“Some of it sidesteps competitive contracts and RFP process,” Wahab said. “In our audit, we learned that there’s no true whistleblower hotline, or documentation, or website or anything like that. We also have disputes about whether there is an ombudsman for youth and some of the other services.”
Concerns about the county’s discretionary spending practices stems back even further, Wahab noted, with a 2017 grand jury report raising alarm bells on the practice after former District 5 Supervisor Keith Carson made a $300,000 grant to a nonprofit that he and his chief-of-staff, Elaine Brown had founded.
Neither Carson nor Brown were found guilty of any wrongdoing, and there is no record that any of that funding enriched them personally or went to anything beyond the organization’s scope of building the affordable housing Black Panther project with retail space to accommodate local businesses run by formerly incarcerated and otherwise socio-economically disadvantaged owners.
The West Oakland project debuted last year, following years of community and financial support from a range of sources.
Nonetheless, the grand jury’s investigation into the eye-catching six figure grant raised concerns about the county’s discretionary spending practices, and yielded two recommendations: That the board establish a policy prohibiting its members from hiring or directing staff members to form or take a management position at a nonprofit, and that it establish a $25,000 cap for any one organization in a single fiscal year while ensuring that the county’s procurement policies and procedures are strictly followed.
Although a spokesperson for Haubert’s office said that the county had since “implemented all the safeguards suggested in the Grand Jury findings,” he confirmed that the county had rejected the latter of the report’s two recommendations.
The county’s response at the time was that the spending cap was not “warranted or reasonable,” and that it would instead “conduct further analysis to institute accountability measures to ensure FMR grants are used for legitimate public purposes.”
But those and other measures in the nine years since the grand jury report have not been sufficient according to Wahab, who pointed to SB 1193 as a way of providing “basic transparency” and nothing more.
“This bill does not eliminate or prohibit any discretionary funding,” Wahab said. “It does not provide a cap. It does none of the sort. It requires that awards be publicly voted on and posted online. Nonprofits currently receiving funds in good faith will continue to receive that right.”
While the bill aims to address concerns with Alameda County in particular, Wahab noted that it is not the only county to be subject to similar safeguards and transparency requirements for its supervisors’ discretionary spending, nor the only one to face the prospect of those requirements being imposed by the state.
“Other counties responsibly choose to put in on their own, and there are counties, for example like the Orange County case, where some supervisor was actually locked up, and the legislature acted when the county refused to do the right thing,” Wahab said. “And so we are, again, very much going to be working on this bill continuously to ensure that we are protecting nonprofits and supporting the work that they do, as well as other organizations in the county.”
If the bill is passed, Wahab said that the major change would be to shift FMDR spending items from the board of supervisors’ consent calendar – which requires a 4/5 vote by the board in order to pass, but in which items are typically passed with a package of others considered routine in nature – to its regular agenda, allowing for discussion and public comments ahead of a vote on each item.
Regarding concerns that this could drastically increase the length of board meetings, Wahab noted that “a county board of supervisor is a full-time job,” in contrast with some smaller city councils and other governing bodies in which electeds are able to maintain full time jobs outside of their positions.
“In 2025, Alameda County’s regular full board meeting averaged about three hours and 21 minutes,” Wahab said. “So roughly by noon to 1 PM, they are done. If you have a handful of awards that are going to be voted on, it does not take that much time to just again, be very transparent, highlight what the public good is, how much the award dollars are, and which organization is getting it and why.”
According to Wahab, the bill was introduced after she had failed to garner responses or engagement from the county over the findings of the state audit report released last year – and to that end, it’s already had its desired effect to some extent by opening dialogue.
“They didn’t engage even 30 days after the audit was released,” Wahab said. “They only engaged and inquired when I said that we’re going to do a press conference on the findings. That is deeply disappointing when we know that children’s lives are on the line. However, when this bill was introduced … in February of this year, that is when everyone has gotten up in arms.”
Haubert had a different take on the timing of the bill amid Wahab’s bid for Swalwell’s former congressional seat in a crowded race.
“This bill isn’t about transparency,” Haubert said. “It’s about political payback and retribution because most of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors refused to endorse her for Congress and, instead, endorsed her main opponent, Melissa Hernandez. Wahab is abusing her political power for personal political gain, and she is willing to risk much needed grant funding to worthy community organizations to do it.”
While Haubert alleges that the bill would impose “restrictions and barriers” to the county’s ability to fund community based organizations that rely on its funding, Wahab said that other organizations have also expressed frustration with the current system.
“The fact of the matter is that nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, employees, and many other groups have concerns regarding the fairness of funding – the actual funding, and the process where some nonprofits, especially those that are not politically connected or affluent in themselves, can’t actually seek a lot of this funding,” Wahab said. “There’s a fear of retaliation through funding or not funding.”
Haubert’s chief of staff Shawn Wilson said Tuesday that the office’s concerns still stand following Wahab’s town hall.
“We stand pretty committed to our belief that this bill is targeting Alameda County and putting the most vulnerable at risk,” Wilson said.
