The Assembly Public Safety Committee has joined the Public Safety Committee in unanimously supporting AB 1737, but city camps are no longer protected under the bill’s amended language.

Following apparent pressure from city and county representatives and lobbying groups, Assemblyman Holden has agreed to exempt city camps in order to keep the measure moving forward into Assembly Appropriations and on to the Senate.

“I am fully aware that very few bills take a legislative journey without amendments, but this amendment is in direct conflict with the work we do at Meow Meow Foundation,” said Doug Forbes, the organization’s co-founder and president. “I am thankful that Mr. Holden took this bill on, but I am deeply concerned that he made this concession without further discussion about its impact upon our most vulnerable citizens.”

According to a 2015 national survey, roughly 80% of summer camp enrollment is comprised of white children with parents who are firmly in the middle-upper income bracket. Approximately 6% of campers are Hispanic, 9% Black. And, camp staff is comprised of approximately 85% white, non-Hispanic young people.

Between 40-45% of families spend at least $1,000 each summer to send a child to camp. Nearly 30% of families spend $2,500 or more. Summer camp is a privilege predominantly afforded to white upper income earners.

The same survey stipulated that 25% of camps are affiliated with a government agency. California has always failed to afford camp children and youth counselors proper health and safety protections, because legislators have failed to license camps, which are child care facilities with far greater risk than traditional daycare. In absence of licensing records, it is impossible to know how many camps exist throughout California’s 58 counties and how many are products of local governments.

Meow Meow Foundation’s best approximation is, on the low end, 1,500 summer camps exist in California, and on the high end, 2,500 or more camps might be operating in the state. Taking the average of the two, roughly 2,000 camps exist, of which 25% or 500 are government/city/county camps. If only 200 children – a conservative figure – attended each such city or county camp in a given summer, the total child population at government-affiliated camps would nonetheless be 100,000, in addition to the youth counselors.

City-run camps cost as little as $25/week, which is why lower income earners, including if not largely our Black and Brown families, take advantage of this affordable, convenient child care option while hard at work day and night. And while Forbes and his foundation understand that Black and Brown families are not a monolith, historical data proves that such families are ordinarily and unjustly at the bottom of the totem where it concerns health, safety and economic protections under the law. 

Forbes said, “This is precisely why I am gobsmacked that our legislators have swiftly sacrificed this critical demographic without perseverance; the same kind of perseverance I have been attempting to exhibit with my testimony and our daily work on this critical child health and safety issue, despite grave personal despair.” Forbes was referring to the fact that, in addition to his lasting grief over his daughter, his wife and foundation co-founder Elena Matyas died in March after a lengthy battle with cancer fueled by lingering depression.

Forbes said he is the one who must answer to his constituents about why 25% of them would be, once again, excluded from the provisions of this potential law, not Holden or his legislative team or other lawmakers.

Holden was Pasadena’s first Black male mayor. He has a distinguished legislative record that has lifted up Black, Brown and economically disenfranchised populations. Forbes said this impressive history is what makes it hard to understand why the Assemblyman would be quick to sacrifice the same ordinarily disenfranchised populations from this bill.

In light of this abrupt concession without robust discussion, the foundation is not able to offer the same unbridled support for the very bill it originated. Forbes said that discriminatory nature of this amendment should not be tolerated.