Any time the D.C. Council wants to pass a bill into law, it’s required to get an independent assessment of how much the bill would cost and whether the city has the money to pay for it. But now, lawmakers are getting a second look at their legislative proposals — and this one will judge whether what they want to do will help or hurt the cause of racial equity.

Earlier this month the council launched its first Office of Racial Equity, whose main responsibility will be working with lawmakers to better account for racial equity as they write bills. The main tool the office will use will be what’s known as Racial Equity Impact Statements, independent assessments of how a bill could benefit or hurt groups that have traditionally been discriminated against or disproportionately impacted by government action.

“Our main responsibilities are to normalize, operationalize, and organize around racial equity,” says Brian McClure, the office’s first director. “The outcome is to advance racial equity in the District.”

The office was created as part of the REACH Act, a bill passed by the council last year to push the city’s government to more concretely tackle the root causes of historic inequities that exist in education, health, housing, criminal justice, and other areas. The measure also created a partner racial equity office in the executive branch, which will be lead by the city’s first Chief Equity Officer.

“Black folks are lagging behind disproportionately,” says D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who wrote the REACH Act. “And although the council and the District have done a number of very progressive things designed to ameliorate many of the ails that that exist in communities of color, we’ve got to do more to dismantle the systemic racism and institutional bias.”

The move joins a trend in many local governments across the country that are creating new positions and offices to specifically address issues of racial equity. Seattle led the charge when it launched its Race and Social Justice Initiative in 2009, and other governments have since followed suit, including Fairfax County, which has had a chief equity officer since mid-2018.

In late 2019, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments held a training for more than 100 staff and managers from 11 governments in the region to focus on advancing racial equity in public safety, development, transportation, and government procurement and workforce development.

Interest in such efforts spiked last year after the police killing of George Floyd and the racial justice protests that followed.

“We would consider it a good turnout if we got eight to 10 jurisdictions,” says Ariana Flores, the membership director of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, of the organization’s trainings sessions for government officials on how to further racial equity. By late summer, she says, “we had 67 people and in our last one we had 117.”

Montgomery County appointed its first equity officer in early 2020, and last summer Arlington County appointed deputy county manager Samia Byrd as its first chief race and equity officer. Speaking to DCist last year, Byrd said part of her job was operationalizing the concept of racial equity across everything the government does.

“It’s having a lens through which we view our policies and programs and our processes where we can say who’s benefiting, who’s burdened, and who’s missing; making sure that our resources are being allocated appropriately, whether that’s human resources, our capital or our financing,” she said. “Making sure that we’re getting to the root of the issue.”

Flores says these new initiatives, offices, and formal positions within government are a big change from past pushes simply to hire more diverse government workforces. “A diverse workforce, which is important, and having people that are committed to ensuring that outcomes and services that are being rendered by a city government are resulting in equitable outcomes — those are quite different,” she says.

McClure, the director of the new Council Office of Racial Equity, says the new Racial Equity Impact Statements his staff of four will produce will look at the historical context of specific policy areas and any possible blind spots or assumptions in bills, evaluate different scenarios to see how a bill might impact different racial groups, and provide a list of possible positive or negative effects or racial and social inequities.

He also says his office will work proactively with councilmembers and staff to better think through what bills will and will not accomplish — and for whom — as the measures are being drafted.

“To begin asking the question of how particular measures will impact people is going to be something that is new and is going to really change behaviors in a sense,” he says. “They will begin to see how something that may seem seemingly harmless could actually exacerbate inequalities.”

McClure understands the undertaking won’t be simple, calling it a “monumental task.” But he believes it will have an impact.

“I think we have a real opportunity to actually eliminate disparities in the District,” he says. “Some people may think that it’s a lofty goal, but I know that it is possible. When we are successful, that means that the people that have been historically marginalized in the District will start to see improved outcomes.”