ATLRepair AtlantaReparations Study Commission

Study · Playbook · 9 min read

Paying for Repair: What Funded, What Failed

Cannabis taxes delivered 10% of projections, transfer taxes held, land proceeds froze, and philanthropy raised $105M. The funding record for operations and remedies, with Georgia-specific design notes.

Two different money problems go by the same name. Operations money pays for research, engagement, and staff; no report exists without it. Remedy money pays for repair itself, and the structure that holds it (what practitioners call the vehicle) has a lot to do with whether it survives budget cycles, elections, and federal pressure.

Operations: what the work itself cost

Body Ops funding Result
Fulton County $250K county budget (4 to 3 vote), AUC Consortium fiscal agent, DataWorks GT, volunteer researchers 636-page quantified Harm Report[1][2]
California State DOJ staffing by statute + $12M later implementation line 1,000+ page report; agency by 2025[3][4][5]
St. Paul $250K/yr incl. $175K contracted harm report; $50/meeting stipends Permanent commission, steady output[6][7][38]
Chicago $500K study budget; 40 compensated members Study + citywide engagement (2026)[8]
Kansas City Asked $510K, received ~$350K Report slipped to 2027; open doubt[9][10]
Evanston One assistant city manager + a $100K philanthropic grant for a program administrator Chronically thin; program still ran[11]
Boston Split academic contracts, economist never hired ~3 years late[12]

The table shows the minimum: roughly $250K and real staff have produced serious harm reports, while unfunded efforts have produced deadline extensions. Philanthropy funding operations (Evanston's administrator, St. Paul's church gift, Colorado's privately raised study of more than $1M) has been the least controversial money in the field.[11][13] CARSC currently has no identified operating budget, which is why the survey treats the ops-funding question as a live one.

Remedies: where the money sits

  • Taxes earmarked from cannabis and similar sources fell short in every city that tried them. Evanston's 3% cannabis pledge delivered ~$100K/yr against $1M projected, paused payments entirely in 2025, and forced a hunt for a Delta-8 tax.[14][15] Amherst's cannabis-benchmarked fund watched receipts fall from $210K to $58K over four fiscal years, roughly 72%.[16][37] The record argues against building repair on a single volatile stream.
  • Real-estate transfer taxes have been the steady, reliable source. Evanston's graduated real-estate transfer tax on $1.5M+ sales now supplies the bulk of its ~$1M/yr.[17][15] (Georgia note: cities may impose only taxes authorized by the state constitution or general law, so this is a lobbying objective, not an ordinance.[34])
  • Selling land the city once took can supply both money and meaning. Asheville seeded its fund with $2.1M from selling land taken in urban renewal, the taking's value returned.[18] Asheville also shows the failure mode: appropriated money froze under federal pressure, $6.4M unspent.[19]
  • Federal money has dried up and now works against these programs. Providence's $10M ARPA program forced race-neutral design and sunsets with its deadline, and taking federal money gives Washington something to hold back (HUD's $225M hold on Asheville).[20][21] Practitioners now generally design remedies on locally controlled and private money.
  • Private philanthropy has produced the largest sums. Tulsa's Greenwood Trust, announced with a $105M goal, is the largest single-city commitment yet made, launched with zero council appropriation.[22] Atlanta's base for that kind of money is deeper than Tulsa's, though not by as much as the two cities' sizes suggest: the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta held $1.51B in assets at the end of 2024 against Tulsa Community Foundation's $1.07B.[39][40] The wider gap is corporate. Georgia hosts 17 Fortune 500 headquarters, nearly all of them in metro Atlanta.[41]
  • Legal settlements are the only route that has paid cash quickly. Palm Springs went from documented municipal displacement to tort claim to negotiated settlement, with $5.9M wired to survivors plus ~$21M in programs.[23] Chicago's Burge fund was the same shape.[24] In Georgia, courts treat payment made in exchange for something real, including resolution of a documented claim, as consideration rather than gratuity, which legal analysts identify as the cleanest lawful route to direct payment the state offers.[36]
  • Universities, churches, and companies have paid on their own, separately from government. Georgetown/Jesuits: ~$400K/yr plus a $27M foundation aiming at $100M (aspiration $1B);[25][26] Virginia Theological Seminary pays annual cash to descendants from a $1.7M endowment;[27] Harvard endowed $100M.[28] Atlanta's universities, hospitals, banks, railroads, and utilities have their own histories of complicity, including the successor institutions of convict-lease fortunes (see Chattahoochee Brick).
  • Corporate disclosure has only worked with enforcement. Chicago's slavery-era disclosure ordinance produced six disclosures in twenty years because no one enforced it;[29] California's insurance registry surfaced 677 records.[30] Advocates treat disclosure as fact-finding for the negotiation that follows.
  • Bonds are untested. No reparations program funded by general-obligation bonds exists anywhere yet, and Georgia general-obligation debt requires voter approval in a referendum.[35] Any city trying it would be first.

Scale

Four ways to set the size of the commitment, each with a real example: let the assessment set the number (Fulton's extraction accounting, which reaches $902 billion at 7% compounding, and California's formulas function as negotiating positions, not appropriations);[2][31][3] proven municipal scale ($10-25M, Evanston's pledge);[15] a $100M-plus floor, which Tulsa showed is reachable;[22] or a standing share of the budget, repair as a permanent line item, the least tested and arguably most durable. San Francisco showed what not to do: a maximal number ($5M/person) with no vehicle produced national backlash and an empty fund.[32][33]

Putting it together for Georgia

One architecture discussed for Georgia conditions: operations from city budget plus philanthropy through a fiscal agent (the Fulton pattern), and remedies spread across several structures, with public-purpose programs and tax relief where lawful, a private trust for scale, settlement funds for documented-harm cash, and land transactions for restitution, so that no single adverse ruling or budget season can end the program. The survey asks respondents to rank exactly these sources.

References

  1. Rough Draft Atlanta, "Fulton County funds Reparations Task Force," roughdraftatlanta.com. Accessed July 2026.
  2. Fulton County Reparations Task Force, "Harm Report" (2025), 636 pp.; Acknowledgments credit the Atlanta University Center Consortium as fiscal agent and DataWorks (Georgia Tech) as data service provider, fultoncountyga.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  3. California Department of Justice, "AB 3121: Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals — Final Report" (2023), oag.ca.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  4. Associated Press (via CapRadio), "California budgets up to $12 million for reparations bills, a milestone in atoning for racist legacy," capradio.org. Accessed July 2026.
  5. SFist, "California Will Indeed Have Reparations for Descendants of Slaves as Newsom Signs Reparations Bill" (SB 518, Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery, Oct. 2025), sfist.com. Accessed July 2026.
  6. City of Saint Paul, "City Council 2025 Adopted Budget — Department Section" ($250,000 Reparations Committee line), stpaul.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  7. City of Saint Paul, "Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission," stpaul.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  8. The TRiiBE, "Chicagoans can now apply to join the city's Reparations Task Force," thetriibe.com. Accessed July 2026.
  9. KCUR, "Kansas City's reparations commission has been working for 2 years, but there's a lot left to do," kcur.org. Accessed July 2026.
  10. Flatland KC, "KC Reparations Leaders Uncertain Work Will Lead to Action," flatlandkc.org. Accessed July 2026.
  11. Evanston RoundTable, "City to hire reparations program administrator," evanstonroundtable.com. Accessed July 2026.
  12. WGBH, "Boston reparations panel pivots toward slavery research, eyes deadline extension," wgbh.org. Accessed July 2026.
  13. City of Saint Paul, "Saint Paul accepts historic $100,000 donation from Unity Church-Unitarian supporting reparations," stpaul.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  14. Evanston RoundTable, "Lower cannabis tax revenue pauses reparations disbursements," evanstonroundtable.com. Accessed July 2026.
  15. The Daily Northwestern, "Evanston's cannabis tax has failed to meet city's high hopes," dailynorthwestern.com. Accessed July 2026.
  16. Amherst Indy, "Town Seeks Volunteers for New Amherst Black Reparations Committee" (annual contribution benchmarked to cannabis tax collections), amherstindy.org. Accessed July 2026.
  17. Evanston RoundTable, "Reparations Committee cautiously moves forward on tapping real estate transfer tax funds," evanstonroundtable.com. Accessed July 2026.
  18. City of Asheville, "Asheville City Council makes initial $2.1 million in reparations funding appropriation," ashevillenc.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  19. Blue Ridge Public Radio, "'A place of fear:' Asheville candidates hedge on pushing forward landmark reparations endeavor amidst federal scrutiny," bpr.org. Accessed July 2026.
  20. WPRI 12 Providence, "Ambitious reparations program, but no direct payments, recommended in Prov." (archived), wpri.com (archived). Accessed July 2026.
  21. Blue Ridge Public Radio, "'DEI is dead.' HUD axes DEI programs in Asheville's $225M Helene recovery plan," bpr.org. Accessed July 2026.
  22. City of Tulsa, "Mayor Nichols Presents Road to Repair to Address Systemic Impacts from 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre," cityoftulsa.org. Accessed July 2026.
  23. KESQ News Channel 3, "Palm Springs finalizes $5.9M settlement for Section 14 survivors and descendants," kesq.com. Accessed July 2026.
  24. NPR, "Chicago Creates Reparations Fund For Victims Of Police Torture," npr.org. Accessed July 2026.
  25. Georgetown University, "Georgetown Launches $400,000 Annual Fund to Support Descendants of the Enslaved," georgetown.edu. Accessed July 2026.
  26. CNN, "Georgetown University and Jesuits donate $27 million to foundation for descendants of enslaved people," cnn.com. Accessed July 2026.
  27. Episcopal News Service, "VTS reparations fund makes first cash payments to descendants of seminary's Black slaves, laborers," episcopalnewsservice.org. Accessed July 2026.
  28. Associated Press (via WHYY), "Harvard pledges $100 million to atone for role in slavery," whyy.org. Accessed July 2026.
  29. WTTW News, "Chicago Failed to Enforce Law Requiring City Contractors to Disclose Links to Slavery: Officials" (archived), news.wttw.com (archived). Accessed July 2026.
  30. California Department of Insurance, "Slavery Era Insurance Registry — Slave Names" (677 records), insurance.ca.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  31. CBS News Atlanta, "Fulton County Reparations Task Force releases landmark report documenting centuries of harm," cbsnews.com. Accessed July 2026.
  32. SFist, "SF Supervisors on Board With Reparations Plan, But Those $5 Million Payments Are Looking Unlikely," sfist.com. Accessed July 2026.
  33. The Voice of San Francisco, "Board of Supervisors revisits reparations," thevoicesf.org. Accessed July 2026.
  34. Georgia Municipal Association, Handbook for Georgia Mayors and Councilmembers, "Municipalities: Sources and Limits of Power," gacities.com. Accessed July 2026.
  35. Georgia Attorney General, Official Opinion 97-30 (Ga. Const. Art. IX, Sec. V, Par. I: no new debt "without the assent of a majority of the qualified voters"), law.georgia.gov. Accessed July 2026.
  36. Annotated Ga. Const. Art. III, § VI, ¶ VI ("Consideration paid for services not gratuity," citing Harrison Co. v. Code Revision Comm., 244 Ga. 325 (1979)), campus.kennesaw.edu (PDF). Accessed July 2026.
  37. Daily Hampshire Gazette, "With money for Amherst reparations falling short, new revenue sources may be needed" (July 9, 2024: $210,000 in FY21 to $58,000 in FY24), gazettenet.com. Accessed July 2026.
  38. St. Paul City Council, resolution on the Reparations Legislative Advisory Committee budget ($175,000 of $250,000 for a contracted Harm Report), stpaul.legistar.com. Accessed July 2026.
  39. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, Inc." (EIN 58-1344646; FY ending Dec. 2024: total assets $1,511,857,437), projects.propublica.org. Accessed July 2026.
  40. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Tulsa Community Foundation" (EIN 73-1554474; FY ending Dec. 2024: total assets $1,073,416,757), projects.propublica.org. Accessed July 2026.
  41. Metro Atlanta Chamber, "Fortune 500 and 1000 Companies in Georgia" (2025; 17 companies ranked in the Fortune 500, those outside metro Atlanta marked), metroatlantachamber.com (PDF). Accessed July 2026.

Put it to work

Answer the questions this brief informs →

Keep reading

Atlanta's Record, 1837 to Now →