
The conversation of equity in government has been growing in Baltimore for several years, with the Department of Health’s focus on health equity and the Department of Planning’s analysis of Capital funds across City neighborhoods. In 2018, Councilperson Brandon Scott established the Equity Assessment Program (Council Bill 18-0223) to eliminate structural and institutional racism and other forms of discrimination. Under this ordinance, City agencies are required to “assess existing and proposed policies and practices for disparate outcomes based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or income” and “develop policies, practices, and investments to prevent and redress those disparate outcomes”. At the Bureau of the Budget and Management Research, we first began exploring how to incorporate equity into the budget during a Results for America peer-to-peer exchange with Seattle in 2017. We intentionally committed to incorporating an equity lens into our work in the fall of 2018 with the hiring of a Baltimore Corps Fellow. We started by exploring how our office defines equity and began learning together about the national and local policies and programs that created and maintain inequity we see today. While we are still very early in developing and incorporating an equity framework into our work, we recognize that our goals and practices will shift as we dive deeper into this work. Our work has also driven us to begin to assess what concrete ways we can institutionalize an equity lens in our work. We are currently working to assess what our role is in the City and how we can take part in the broader efforts for equity. Additionally, we are working to expand community outreach and transparency to ensure that we are expanding our reach.