At its regular Tuesday meeting, the Berkeley City Council will consider waiving a 2019 sanctuary city policy preventing them from continuing business with Superion LLC, an information software company that provides \u201ccritical\u201d operations to the city.<\/p>\n
The request, put forward by city manager Paul Buddenhagen, may override Berkeley\u2019s Sanctuary City Contracting rule that bars the city from entering into a contract with any person or entity that provides U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with any \u201cdata broker\u201d or \u201cextreme vetting\u201d services.<\/p>\n
The resolution notes that Superion maintains the FUND$ system, which the city has used since the 1990s, and that decades of\u00a0 \u201cextensive processes\u201d in data management and financial workflows have been built around, making it difficult to replace.<\/p>\n
The city relies on FUND$ to carry out \u201cfinancial and land management operations,\u201dand if its contract is not renewed, the item argues that there could be \u201ccatastrophic disruptions to city services.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe City depends on the FUND$ system,\u201d Buddenhagen wrote to the city council in the item. \u201cNo other vendor can provide maintenance and support, and interruption of services would significantly impair the City\u2019s ability to collect revenue, manage land records, and administer taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the resolution, Superion\u2019s contract cannot be renewed \u201cbecause it serves federal agencies.\u201dThe item noted that CentralSquare, which formed through a merger with Superion, confirmed it does not currently provide services to ICE, but could not guarantee it would not in the future.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Superion LLC and CentralSquare do not currently \u2018provide the covered services to ICE,\u2019 I am not concerned that this waiver will put the data of Berkeley residents and staff at risk of being utilized by the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes,\u201d Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra said in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city evaluates waivers by considering the cost and availability of alternatives, as well as if approving a waiver would undermine the purpose of the ordinance.<\/p>\n
However, Lunaparra said her office is working with city staff to make the regulations even stronger by adding language to clarify that, \u201cShould Superion LLC enters into any relationship with ICE in the future, they must notify the City of Berkeley so we may review the information and take potential action as quickly as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Lunaparra, this legislation is already cosponsored by Mayor Adena Ishii, Councilmember Mark Humbert and Councilmember Brent Blackaby and is \u201clikely to be considered\u201d at next month\u2019s regular Tuesday meeting.<\/p>\n
Similar waivers have been approved in the past. In 2021, the council approved a deal with Motorola Solutions to update a radio system for emergency services.Vigilant Solutions, a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions, had been a data broker for ICE for years, according to a report from Georgetown Law School Center on Privacy & Technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the resolution, the city has been gradually replacing its FUND$ capabilities with software from Tyler Technologies, but the process is slow and cannot be rushed.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil all the modules are completely off the FUND$ system, the City must rely on Superion support for many of the key modules and for reporting and auditing purposes,\u201d the resolution said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At its regular Tuesday meeting, the Berkeley City Council will consider waiving a 2019 sanctuary city policy preventing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7983,20588,13775,20591,1610,2331,6228,20595,2778,12500,4415,20593,143,145,144,20589,20592,20590,68,20596,20594],"class_list":["post-27166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-adena-ishii","tag-brent-blackaby","tag-cecilia-lunaparra","tag-centralsquare","tag-city-council","tag-councilmember","tag-fund","tag-georgetown-law-school-center-on-privacy-technology","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-mark-humbert","tag-mayor","tag-motorola-solutions","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-paul-buddenhagen","tag-sanctuary-city-contracting","tag-superion","tag-tuesday","tag-tyler-technologies","tag-vigilant-solutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}