City auditor: Poor leadership, chaos doomed Oakland's ill-fated retail theft grant

Oakland did not fully act upon potential $15.6 million retail theft grant until 16 days before deadline; If DA Pamela Price is recalled, county counsel isn't sure what happens next

CITY NEWS

OAKLAND

—RETAIL GRANT TICK TOCK—Just hours before the deadline for a potential $15.6 million state grant to help prevent organized retail theft was looming last summer, several Oakland departments were scrambling to upload the application before a 5 p.m. deadline, according to emails included in an Oakland city auditor’s report released on Tuesday.

—At 3:45 p.m, with just 75 minutes remaining before the grant application was due, Oakland Police officials threw a curveball, saying they preferred one letter of support signed by multiple businesses affected by retail theft rather than a bundle of letters of support already in their possession.

—“I need to upload this letter in the next hour,” Oakland Economic and Workforce Development (EWD) staff wrote to an unnamed local commerce organization president.

—In the rush to submit the application, EWD staff inexplicably neglected to save documents already uploaded into the state’s system.

—“We have tried to submit this application several times before the 5 p.m. deadline; however, the attachments that we previously uploaded have not been saved in our application,” they wrote.

—Three days after the deadline, OPD’s grant coordinator delivered the bad news to its deputy director. “OPD completed its portion of the application and EWD advised they would submit the grant because they were still updating information. The analyst working on the application had technical issues and was unable to submit it.”

—News of Oakland’s unconscionable botching of the much-needed grant to combat a scourge of brazen retail thefts embarrassed the city, the mayor, and the administration.

—Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao initially laid blame at the feet of the new city administrator before taking accountability for the fail grant application during last year’s state of the city.

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