I support reparations. This is an example.

@2 - if you applied for a $3M research grant (which would be extraordinary in most fields - a typical grant in biology, for example, is less than 20% of that), you would not only have to have a team already in place with well-documented expertise in any area that you could possibly need, but you would have to have:

Very specific details of all the experimental work you planned to do, with a showing that you were competent to do it.

Quite a bit of preliminary data, generated using the kinds of methods you propose to spend the new $3M on, and showing that your general approach is very likely to lead to important new knowledge in the field.

A detailed discussion of what kind of results you expect and how you would interpret them along with a specific discussion of what pitfalls you expect and how you would get around them.

A detailed budget including exactly how many investigators and staff you need, exactly what they would be paid, the identities of key people, and a breakdown of how everyone would spend their time.

A timeline for when all of this would happen. And you are expected to do all of this BEFORE you get a dime of the funding.

$300,000, let alone $3M, to kinda figure out what they are going to do is ludicrous and funding it without far more specifics is gross malfeasance.

Useless liberals always blow cash on unnecessary "Blue Ribbon Committees", hoping that pressure dies down by the time the (obvious and unnecessarily qualified) results are published.

Demand direct investment of the cash into communities that will self-distribute the funds based on their own needs. Require a democratic strategy and track how the investments are made and their rationale. You'll get all the data you need for a future "blue ribbon committee" and don't have to wait until the current economic crisis is over (or even worse) to release funds.

Dr. Nelson Salim Herbs would never receive a grant with his disorganized rambling about herpes and diabetes.

@4 -- That's my point. They are starting from scratch. Was there a similar fund a couple years ago? Ten years ago? Twenty? No. This is it. This is the beginning. You have to start somewhere, and they are starting now. Much of the money is going into laying the groundwork that so many (including you) take for granted ("a team already in place with well-documented expertise in any area that you could possibly need"). This is getting that team in place.

Why isn't there a team in place already? Because no one really gave a shit about issues like these in white fucking Seattle until recently. Its three millions dollars in a city of 700,000. I'm not an expert in math, but I'm pretty sure that works out to roughly the cost of one Big Mac per person. Its not going to break the bank.

Holy shit, you guys are obsessing over 3 million for this, and the county just decided they would spend an extra 100 million for an already ridiculously expensive addition to the convention center. If you want to freak out about government spending, that's where the freaking should occur.

@8: It's not like there aren't at least obviously three million better things to spend it on in the Central District alone. Dedicated school funding, repaving the streets more often (so the residents and businesses pay less for vehicle maintenance), rental for business incubator spaces, daycare for working parents -- the list is endless, and by spending it in our poorest neighborhoods, both gets us the best value for money, and also avoids the blatant racism of dedicating it to one ethnicity. Any or all of those recipients would do more good, for more of our poor citizens, faster than this expenditure will.

(Oh, and in non-pandemic years, the Convention Center is a huge money-maker for both the owner and downtown restaurants & hotels, so additional investment in it makes sense.)

@8 - Yes, they have to develop some infrastructure but that does not justify a large grant of public money without any explanation of how you are going to spend it. From what I can tell, this is largely an effort to research what people in the community need. That is survey work which is not dependent on expensive infrastructure or supplies. $3M should buy one hell of a lot of community surveys.

As to your convention center example, I am far from sure that we need that or that it is the best use of public funds. However, you can be damned sure that the people who are running that project had to account for exactly what they were going to do and exactly where all that money was going to go.

I'm not saying that an effort like what is being discussed here is not warranted. But when someone wants millions of dollars for a vaguely-defined study and can't really tell you what they are actually going to do, it is a huge red flag and suggests that they actually have no idea.

You're missing the real story, Nathalie. That $3 Million is a bribe to keep Nikkita Oliver from declaring for Mayor. Neither Mosqueda nor Gonzalez wants to run against somebody who out-demagogues them (no easy feat). Nor do they want to see a split in the "Progressive" vote, in which there are many loose ends.

So keeping "Nikky" out of contention by giving her $3 Million to play with (not bad for a perennially unemployed "spoken word artist"), especially when it's Other Peoples' Money, sure looks like a sound political investment.