Officials prioritize equitable county services
Anne Arundel County Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Department seeking to improve access to services
As County Executive Steuart Pittman begins his second four-year term, he’s tasked his equity, diversity and inclusion director with a large undertaking: ensuring Anne Arundel County government entities and nonprofits are providing the best possible services to all residents.
For Richard “Pete” Hill, the head of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Department, making the county more equitable means paying special attention to the needs of those in demographic groups that are sometimes overlooked in county decision-making, including people with disabilities, people of color and members of the LBGTQ community. Pittman created the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Department in December 2020. Hill was announced as its first director in June 2021.
“Over the years that we have been an incorporated government, starting in 1964, nobody has ever seriously looked at the policy developed over those decades” through the lens of equity, Hill said.
All taxpaying citizens are entitled to county services, but systemic inequities can prevent some of those services from being accessible, Hill said. For example, a county space like a senior center or park without ramps would be less accessible to those in wheelchairs. Hill trains county departments and county-affiliated nonprofits on how to review potential projects, spaces and policies through an equity lens.
Hill uses a process that examines each project being proposed, including any data that supports the proposal, levels of community engagement, the benefits and drawbacks to certain communities, available funding and personnel and how the
department will remain accountable.
“We talk about a key question: Who will this policy benefit and who will be burdened by it?” Hill said.
During the past two years, Hill and his department, which consists of Asha Smith, an equal opportunity and human relations officer, and Chanell Clemons, a parttime assistant who works on equal opportunity, fair housing and human relations, have developed an internal equity newsletter, hosted lunch and learning events and created an equity training manual for county staff. Hill has also spent that time training several departments on the equity lens including the Department of Public Works, Office of Planning and Zoning and the Department of Recreation and Parks.
Over the next few months, Hill is hoping to create diversity teams within each department and county-affiliated nonprofit, including the Arundel Community Development Services, Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp., Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corp. and the public library system. The teams, which will consist of three to 10 people chosen by department heads, will be responsible for ensuring the equity lens is being considered in each decision. They will produce quarterly reports on their progress.
“At the end of this administration, Mr. Pittman and I want to be able to look back and say, ‘No matter who is following us, they cannot take back knowledge. They can destroy the EDI office. They can not fund it. They can disband the staff, but because we embedded this in all 30 departments, there will always be somebody left standing who bought into the concept and will continue,’ ” Hill said.
The goal is to have teams in place, trained and ready to report by June 15, 2023.
For Smith, the focus is on enforcing fair housing and equal employment opportunity laws and fielding complaints. Over the remainder of Pittman’s term, she’ll be creating and implementing a plan to enforce the county’s fair housing statute passed in 2019.
The law prohibits discriminatory housing practices against people based on categories such as age, religion, race, sexual orientation and more.
“We’re really trying to get some teeth into that to make sure that we have the capacity to do all aspects of fair housing enforcement work — from testing to training, outreach and education, mediation and, of course, processing complaints,” Smith said.
That first step of testing, Smith hopes, will involve sending out “testers” to view homes for sale or rent. Testers are pairs of people who are similar except in race, sexual orientation, disability or another key form of identity. They will report back to Hill’s department on their experience. The department then collects data to offer training for those sellers.
“We’re really more focused right now on what landlords and property managers and realtors in our area know,” Smith said. “For us, this is going to be like information gathering and education. It’s not really going to be to penalize folks. You want to make sure that people are complying with the law and that they’re aware of it.”
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Department staff also meet regularly with leaders of social justice groups, including the Caucus of African American Leaders and Annapolis Pride.
Carl Snowden, convener of Caucus of African American Leaders, and Joe Toolan, Annapolis Pride spokesperson, said they’re glad to see the department working on addressing implicit bias with Hill’s equity trainings and generally investing more in diversity.
“Pete Hill and Asha Smith, they are kind of modeling the behavior they want to see from other county employees which is being involved in the community,” Toolan said.
Snowden said he’s looking forward to a new task force the county is developing to recruit and retain more firefighters of color. Smith, fire department staff and personnel staff will be on the task force. The fire department is currently about 90% white, according to county data, the highest percentage of white employees in one of the county’s larger departments.
“It’s a very measurable outcome,” Snowden said. “It’s really focused on spending less time talking about the problem, which we all know, and more time focused on what we can do to solve the problem.”
Snowden hopes the department can work toward measuring the changing attitudes of residents on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion through surveys or polls in the coming years.
To that end, Toolan said he encourages people who have noticed equity issues in the county to schedule a meeting with Hill or Smith.
“Pete Hill and Asha Smith, they are kind of modeling the behavior they want to see from other county employees which is being involved in the community.”
— Joe Toolan, Annapolis Pride spokesperson