From Get Healthy San Mateo County:

The combination of the public health crisis and economic downturn has put significant strains on local jurisdictions’ budgets. These challenges have also brought to the forefront and exacerbated existing inequities among different races and ethnicities in our community, carrying disproportionate impacts for Blacks, Pacific Islander and Latinx residents.  As jurisdictions continue to face challenges caused by COVID-19 and the economic recession, there is a unique opportunity for decision-makers and staff to incorporate new strategies for mitigating potential harm and creating a healthier and more equitable future for all residents.  

To this purpose, we wanted to share with you budget tools used to review racial equity impacts that local jurisdictions across the country are implementing to achieve more equitable outcomes. The purpose of budget equity tools is to first, provide a template to support local jurisdictions in considering the equity implications of budget cuts and programmatic changes; and second, to provide the opportunity to explain the decision-making process and information behind difficult choices. Each of your departments are experts on the services they provide and how to deliver these in the most efficient manner possible. These budget tools will help them articulate equity implications when making difficult budget decisions in order to maximize the health, social, and economic benefits of public policies and programs. We offer our technical support if your jurisdiction is interested in exploring any version of these tools.

Below are few examples of cities that have been implementing modified versions of the budget equity tool:

• City of Portland, Guide for the Budget Equity Assessment Tool: consists in 11 guiding questions for each of the City departments to analyze their programs and budgets from an equity lens.
• City of Seattle, Racial Equity Tool for the COVID-19 crisis outlines 6 steps to better understand the disparate impact that COVID-19 has on people of color and how to mitigate its harms.
• City of San Antonio, Budget Equity Tool Includes a set of 9 questions to guide City Departments in assessing how budget requests benefit and/or burden communities, specifically communities of color and low-income communities
• Santa Clara County’s Public Health Department Budget Equity Tool  outlines 6 questions to assess how budget proposals will benefit or burden communities of color.
• Rapid Equity Budget Cut Tool: Rapid Review Budget Cut Tool. Drafted in excel for easy utilization within a short period of time. This tool is specifically useful for budget cuts.

There are more examples and information on our website and we will keep adding resources as we learn about them. Our data portal provides rich information on numerous local indicators, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, geography and income where possible.