Our Story
Friends of the Public Bank East Bay, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, exists to provide community oversight and stewardship in the formation and functioning of a Public Bank in the East Bay.
Jump Ahead To:
On October 2, 2019, Governor Newsom signed AB 857, enabling local public bank charters in California. Here in the East Bay, we have hired Tom Sgouros to direct and write our “viability study,” as required by AB 857. That study will be completed in March 2022 and must be approved by the city councils of our three founding cities: Berkeley, Oakland, and Richmond.
We have also engaged Gary Steven Findley & Associates to work closely with regulators and create the first stages of our business plan, which will also be our application to the State Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, the agency which charters all California banks.
The Public Bank East Bay is a community-driven process. See Our Supporters for a list of the 50+ community groups we work with. For our viability study, we commissioned the Bay Area Association of Black-Owned Businesses to conduct a small survey of local Black-owned businesses and their banking needs. We are working with community groups to recommend and comment on our initial pool of Bank Board candidates.
We are actively fund-raising for the necessary money (approximately $2.4 million) to pay for the viability study, business plan, and attendant expenses which must be paid before the Bank opens its doors. From the day that it opens, we expect it to be self-sustaining, operating first on the monies deposited by the founding jurisdictions and becoming profitable within the first few years.
We are a member of the California Public Banking Alliance, a group of 11 regional California activist groups working together to facilitate statewide change and make public banks more feasible, especially in the economic chaos caused by COVID-19. The Alliance was also a major supporter of The California Public Banking Option Act, which was signed into law in 2021 and is dedicated to exploring the possibilities of free checking accounts for all Californians.
We support Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Public Banking Act, which aims to create a federal public bank.