City Hall reporters Eli Wolfe and Natalie Orenstein tracked every Oakland City Council vote in 2025 - all 138 of them at full council meetings, plus 519 more at committee meetings - to find out how your representative is doing the most basic part of the job.
Tuesday's Oakland City Council meeting was the site of a very spirited debate about police use of automated license plate-reading cameras from the surveillance company Flock Safety. On one hand, we have seen these cameras lead to the arrests of genuine criminals who may not have otherwise been caught. But Flock cameras also have a troublesome trend of misidentified vehicles and false arrests,
The city will stick with a surveillance company that scans license plates to help law enforcement catch criminal suspects, a dramatic reversal of an earlier vote that had rejected the firm's new $2 million contract. The company, Flock Safety, will maintain an existing network of 300 cameras to monitor the city's busiest streets and local state highways for up to two years while the Oakland Police Department conducts a competitive search for a long-term vendor.
The proposed increase in contribution limits for officeholder accounts aims to modernize fundraising practices that haven't been updated since 1999, aligning with contemporary political needs.