Office of Equity leader tasked with creating diverse Sonoma County government

With just one other full-time worker, Alegria De La Cruz must shift how Sonoma County’s largest local government handles some of its most essential functions.

How the county doles out contracts, crafts external messaging and deploys public resources will be among the litany of things examined by De La Cruz, 44, the first director of the new Office of Equity.

Her goal is to achieve better county governing, De La Cruz said in a recent interview, by assessing each department for implicit biases and helping each individual agency advance its agenda so no resident or business benefits more — or less — from its policies.

“There’s so much that equity work can do that can line up priorities and make the use of public funds much more efficient because they're being targeted in an inclusive and thoughtful way,” said De La Cruz, former chief deputy county counsel who was appointed as interim director in July before the county Board of Supervisors gave her the permanent position last month with an annual salary of $189,468.

De La Cruz pointed to the county’s task force addressing coronavirus inequities within the local Latino community, who make up about 26% of the county’s population, as an example of when that intentional work can be effective.

In early summer, Latinos accounted for 77% of local virus infections.That has dropped to 54%, according to the latest county health figures.

And the work must continue, with Sonoma County falling short of a new state public health requirement aimed at reducing the pandemic’s toll in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

“If we’re going to spend this money, let’s do it in a way to match the community needs,” De La Cruz said. “That’s a fiscally smart thing to do in a time with limited resources. I think equity is a fiscally responsible way to react to a crisis.”

The equity office’s creation, approved by county supervisors with a $750,000 annual budget, has come in a year marked by a national awakening around policing, health and education inequalities, among other civil rights issues earning space in mainstream debate.

But launching the county office, criticized by some for its timing amid a $45.7 million budget deficit made worse by the pandemic, was years in the making rather than a well-timed political gesture.

In 2017, Sonoma County joined the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a national network of public agencies dedicated to the issue, said Victoria Willard, a county employment officer.

A small group of human resources, health services and administrative workers enrolled in the alliance’s yearlong training in 2018, attending monthly seminars in Oakland, where other public employees from across the region gathered to hear speakers talk about different topics involving racial issues in their home jurisdiction.

That initial group began working across Sonoma County government, and recruited 14 others from an array of different departments, including the probation department, Sonoma Water and the Economic Development Board, who joined them in the alliance program last year.

Ryan Pedrotti, water and energy education manager for Sonoma Water, was one of those employees. As someone whose daily job revolves around public outreach, he said learning how to approach “uncomfortable conversations” inside the agency has helped him navigate his work outside of it.

“As folks are out in the community ... or going through the budget process or contracting process, it’s pausing and creating space for how the work they’re doing relates to equity,“ Pedrotti said. “The only way to do that is to understand and embed equity as a core belief.”

Late last year, those dozen-plus employees suggested that county supervisors add an equity and social justice pillar to their five-year strategic business plan. Supervisors adopted that recommendation when the new plan was approved in January.

Based on the years of government alliance training, Willard said one of the most effective strategies to realizing equity measures in a local government is having a dedicated office with access to and oversight of every department.

“Somebody might say (the office is) nice to have — cultural competency, implicit bias training is nice to have,” Willard said. “But when you start to bring data into the conversation, that’s where you can start to change peoples’ perceptions of equity work being something nice to do compared to something we need to do.”

Right now the office is in “start-up mode,” De La Cruz said. Diving into each county government department’s capacity for these conversations, and assessing and analyzing the realities of each respective agency is critical at this stage, De La Cruz said.

But the objectives remain ambitious, as does the work required to make efficient an office that has been tasked with creating efficiency.

De La Cruz said she is “moved, honored, excited” and even terrified of what lies ahead.

“This is a moment where we’re calling each other into a new conversation to look at these things and the experiences of people our communities were built on,” she said. “Ideally the Office of Equity doesn’t need to exist because (eventually) it’s part of the air we breathe and water we swim in. That’s my vision.”

You can reach Staff Writer Yousef Baig at 707-521-5390 or yousef.baig@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @YousefBaig.