City ID Cards May Spread To East Bay

Feb 12, 2009 9:55 AM

The lines have gotten smaller, and some of the controversy has died down, since San Francisco last month became the second and biggest city in the nation to give out city ID cards to willing residents.

The next stop of the municipal ID bandwagon could be in the East Bay, where activists and some political leaders in Oakland, Richmond and San Pablo are determined to get their cities to take up the cause. How much San Francisco serves as a model could depend on how the big city program fares in coming weeks.

"Their cards are focused on immigrants, homeless people, transgendered people, younger people, and our card is designed for everybody," Wilson Riles, a former member of the Oakland City Council who aims to get an ID card for all interested Oaklanders, told the Contra Costa Times.

Riles, now a nonprofit consultant, is part of a coalition that has spent a year putting together a plan for an Oakland ID.

"The realization in Oakland was that it would be much more successful if the ID was something of value to all the citizens of the community," he said. "Not just an ID but also a potential debit card and the carrier of a local currency."

San Francisco's program ran into problems last year because of political and legal controversy. Designed to serve marginalized populations, including immigrants who are in the country illegally and cannot get a driver's license or other recognized form of identification, the card program attracted the attention of the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington, D.C. The group, which promotes reducing immigration and enforcing immigration laws, sued to stop the program, but a judge dismissed the lawsuit in October.

According to the Contra Costa Times, San Francisco has issued an average of 27 cards a day since the program began Jan. 15, according to records released by the city. Providing a service for undocumented immigrants remains a top priority for those trying to implement ID programs in the East Bay.

"What New Haven found is that the crime rate has been reduced significantly because immigrants can use the ID cards to open a bank account, so they don't carry cash as much in their pockets," Riles said.

ID proposals have generated some interest, and plenty of caution, in local city halls, and the rationale for and against them varies. Oakland Councilwoman Jean Quan, who has spoken with city card supporters, said she likes the idea of a kind of "smart card" similar to what she observed during a recent trip to Hong Kong. The card could be used both for businesses and to pay local taxes and fees.

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