What a month! Public banking is making headlines across the country; San Francisco and Berkeley are moving forward with ballot measures, LA’s making waves, and we came home from the National Public Banking Conference in Philly with new allies and big plans. Here’s the rundown.



Public banking in California is everywhere lately, from the evening news to the New York Times! Here are a few highlights:

• CNBC: It’s a ‘socialist’ bank — and North Dakota Republicans love it
• The New York Times: Berkeley considers starting a public bank with taxpayer money
• NBC 4: City of LA looking into creating its own public bank; featuring CPBA’s Trinity Tran
• FOX 11: LA City Council votes to identify $460,000 for public bank study
• Straight Arrow News: Los Angeles wants to open a bank; featuring Trinity Tran
• San Francisco Chronicle: A public bank could be key to fixing San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis by Thomas Marois
• Berkeleyside: Should Berkeley fund a public bank for the East Bay? Voters will decide in November
• Westside Observer: Why Should Wall Street Have All the Money?; op-ed by CPBA’s Rick Girling

Bay Area momentum

Next Tuesday, Berkeley votes on Measure Z and San Francisco votes on Prop B, both of which would lay the groundwork for public banks. Measure Z is a parcel tax to fund a regional public bank for the East Bay. Prop B would let San Francisco set up a city-owned finance corporation now, with a path to a full public bank down the road. Two cities, two ballot measures. Public banking’s having a moment in California!

LA’s big move forward

The LA City Council voted 11-3 to approve $460,000 for a feasibility study on a city-owned public bank. The study was first approved in 2023, but the money was swept back into reserves when the budget got tight. Thanks to years of organizing by the Public Bank LA coalition, the work is moving forward.

Dispatches from Philly

CPBA Executive Director Trinity Tran and Legislative & Policy Advisor Thomas Hanna just got back from “Public Banking for Public Prosperity,” the Public Banking Institute’s national conference in Philadelphia, co-sponsored by the California Public Banking Alliance. It brought together dozens of organizers, practitioners, and researchers from coast to coast. Christopher Armitage gave the keynote, joined by national experts like Don Morgan, CEO of the Bank of North Dakota, and Ellen Brown, co-founder of the Public Banking Institute.

Trinity spoke on three panels about politics, strategy, and organizing. Thomas, who’s also VP of Research & Policy at The Democracy Collaborative, presented on how public banking fits into community wealth building and democratic governance.

Watch the recording of the 3-day conference here.

We came home with new allies, a bigger network, and a few big projects in the works for 2027. Stay tuned for more!

State public bank

The Existentialist Republic’s Christopher Armitage ran the numbers, and if California had its own bank in 2025, it would have generated $2.26 billion last year alone, and $20.1 billion over the decade. Imagine what we could’ve built with that!

We’re full steam ahead on the state public bank campaign, with a 130+ member coalition led by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), The Greenlining Institute, End Poverty in California (EPIC), Indivisible California: StateStrong, 350 Sacramento, SacACT, and our statewide team.

New cities are joining the CA movement

Our San Diego team is growing! Shawn McClondon of the Sister Cities Project is joining San Diego Regional Rep Bobby Werner, and we’re planning San Diego’s first major public banking community gathering. In Merced and the Central Valley, Adam Shane and the 2nd Sunday Solidarity Coalition are gearing up to launch the region’s public banking movement, and we’re teaming up for a public banking conversation in Merced. Both are on deck for 2027, with lots more to come!

Next week, Berkeley voters decide on Measure Z, which would create a public bank modeled on the Bank of North Dakota. It’s been around since 1919 and has kept credit flowing when private banks pulled back.

Berkeley’s Public Bank East Bay would lend through local credit unions and community banks for affordable housing, clean energy, and small businesses. San Francisco has a public bank measure on the ballot too.

Read the New York Times article: Berkeley Considers Starting a Public Bank with Taxpayer Dollars.

Public banking is on the move in California!

Public banking isn’t a fringe idea anymore. It’s on the evening news. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted 11-3 to fund $460,000 for a feasibility study on a city-owned public bank. The Council first approved this study in 2023, but the money got swept back into reserves when the budget got tight. Now it’s back on track, thanks to years of organizing by Public Bank LA and community members who kept showing up at public comment, in council offices, and in the press.

The study will map out what a municipal bank could look like for Angelenos: its mission, governance, capitalization, and path to regulatory approval.

The big question from critics is whether the city can run a bank. LA already runs LAX, the Port of LA, and LADWP, all multibillion-dollar enterprises run by independent commissions and professional staff. A public bank would work the same way. It wouldn’t be a retail bank with branches or checking accounts. It’d be the city’s bank, lending through local credit unions, community banks, and CDFIs to finance affordable housing, small businesses, and clean energy, and keeping LA’s public dollars working for LA instead of Wall Street.

Local TV took notice. NBC4 sat down with CPBA Executive Director Trinity Tran to ask whether Angelenos would sign up for a city-owned bank, and FOX 11 covered the vote with Eli Lipmen of Move LA, a member of the Public Bank LA coalition.

FOX 11: LA City Council votes to identify $460,000 for public bank study

NBC4: Would you sign up for LA’s city-owned public bank?

$2 billion in profit! That’s what it would look like if California had owned a state public bank. Christopher Armitage ran the numbers. Using public cash the state already holds, a Bank of North Dakota-style public bank would’ve earned California $2.26 billion in 2025 alone, and $20.1 billion over 10 years. That’s without cutting essential services or raising taxes.

With budget deficits squeezing states across the country and an affordable housing crisis, this is the conversation our leaders should be having. Read the latest in The Existentialist Republic.

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/north-dakotas-bank-earned-the-state

In Memory of David Cobb

We lost a dear friend and colleague this September. David Cobb, our Onboarding Director and North Coast Regional Rep, passed away on Labor Day. David gave over 30 years to social justice and the fight for democracy, and he’d been with this Alliance since 2019. Much of what we’ve built carries his fingerprints, from onboarding new organizers to representing our coalition up north and nationwide.

Beyond CPBA, David spent decades working across the movement, including with The Democracy Collaborative, the Green Party, and the US Solidarity Economy Network.

His longtime friend Jim Reed wrote a beautiful tribute to him, shared at the request of David’s partner, Ruthi Engelke. Read it here: link.

A celebration of life will be held Saturday, October 3 at 2pm at the Arcata Playhouse, 1251 9th St, Arcata, CA.

We’ll miss him. And we’re grateful for every year we got to work alongside him.

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With that grief also comes gratitude for the movement he helped build. Here’s what’s been happening across CPBA…

Public Banking Listening Session

Hella Bees, a Black-owned restaurant and bar in Oakland, was buzzing Thursday evening August 27 when community members from the East Bay and San Francisco came together to talk about public banking and what it could mean for their communities. Four small groups of 8-10 people, mostly people of color, dug into the financial challenges they face and discussed how regional public banks might work.

Jointly organized by End Poverty in California (EPIC), SF Public Bank, Public Bank East Bay, and the California Public Banking Alliance, this roundtable showed how organizations can collaborate to make positive change. Many people new to public banking learned about public banking ballot measures this November: Berkeley’s Measure Z, a parcel tax to capitalize a regional public bank, and San Francisco’s Proposition B, which would authorize a Municipal Finance Corporation now and a public bank later.

Special thanks to Michael Tubbs, Founder of EPIC and former Mayor of Stockton, and to Nikki Fortunato Bas, Alameda County Supervisor for joining the listening session, and to Rick Girling of CPBA and Reina Tello of PODER SF for facilitating.

Photos: End Poverty in California

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TED Films: Who Controls Your City’s Money

Take 5 minutes to watch Trinity Tran, 2026 TED Fellow and the Executive Director of CPBA, explain why public banking is critical in building a community-led financial ecosystem. With visuals that amplify her message, Trinity presents an overview of public banking that educates and provides public banking advocates with tools to succeed in establishing public banks.

https://www.ted.com/talks/trinity_tran_who_controls_your_city_s_money

It’s already at 200,000+ views, help us spread the word and push past 300,000!

To get a deeper dive on the public banking movement, listen to Who Controls Your City’s Money, a TED Talks Daily podcast featuring an interview with Trinity where she discusses how her meditating combined with her protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline led her to a growing commitment to democratizing finance. Trinity emphasizes that money is power, the power to decide which investments should be prioritized and that this power should not be exclusively in the hands of Wall Street bankers. The history of the nation’s only state public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, and the broad system of public banks in Germany are explored as inspirations for the burgeoning public banking movement in California and beyond.    

TED Talks Daily: https://open.spotify.com/episode/42yH48wLfzVNKc9Y3dytw4

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Welcome Thomas Hanna, CPBA’s Legislative and Policy Advisor

We’re excited to welcome Thomas Hanna to CPBA as a volunteer Legislative and Policy Advisor! Thomas is VP of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and a longtime ally of the California and national public banking movement. He’s spent years studying public ownership and banking, and he’s been in the trenches with us before, co-authoring “Constructing the Democratic Public Bank,” a governance proposal for the Los Angeles public bank published after the California Public Banking Act passed.

Thomas is also the author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States (Manchester University Press, 2018), and of “The Crisis Next Time: Planning for Public Ownership as an Alternative to Corporate Bank Bailouts” (Next System Project, 2018), both foundational reads if you want to dig deeper into the case for public finance and public ownership. We’re grateful to have his expertise on our team as we push this work forward.

Take 5 minutes to watch Trinity Tran, 2026 TED Fellow and the Executive Director of CPBA, explain why public banking is critical in building a community-led financial ecosystem. With visuals that amplify her message, Trinity presents an overview of public banking that educates and provides public banking advocates with tools to succeed in establishing public banks.

Watch and share! https://www.ted.com/talks/trinity_tran_who_controls_your_city_s_money

It’s already at 200,000+ views, help us spread the word and push past 300,000!

To get a deeper dive on the public banking movement, listen to Who Controls Your City’s Money, a TED Talks Daily podcast featuring an interview with Trinity where she discusses how her meditating combined with her protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline led her to a growing commitment to democratizing finance. Trinity emphasizes that money is power, the power to decide which investments should be prioritized and that this power should not be exclusively in the hands of Wall Street bankers. The history of the nation’s only state public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, and the broad system of public banks in Germany are explored as inspirations for the burgeoning public banking movement in California and beyond.    

TED Talks Daily: https://open.spotify.com/episode/42yH48wLfzVNKc9Y3dytw4

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot that would be a step towards creating the first city-run public bank in the country.

A public bank would let the city issue low-cost loans to affordable housing developers, small businesses, green infrastructure projects, and other entities that struggle to get loans from traditional banks.

“We can build a public bank that prioritizes reinvesting back into what we all need to sustain our local communities,” said Supervisor Chyanne Chen, who sponsored the measure. It will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot and requires more than 50 percent of the vote to pass.

Read the latest in Mission Local! https://missionlocal.org/2026/07/sf-public-bank-ballot-measure-election/

Corporate monopolies don’t just control what we buy — they control the infrastructure that connects and sustains our communities. But people are fighting back.

We’re thrilled to be part of “The Corporate Power of It All,” a special edition from Liberation in a Generation and The Forge. In the conversation, the California Public Banking Alliance’s Trinity Tran breaks down how communities are organizing for public banking and building alternatives to corporate control.

The tools to win are already in our hands.

Read the article here.

As federal funding streams face cuts, the idea of public banks is gaining ground as a tool for states and localities to finance community development.

As Shelterforce writes, the California Public Banking Alliance is building a public financial ecosystem: public banks to finance community priorities & CalAccount to ensure people can actually access it.

Statewide Rally + Press Conference!
April 22 | 12:30 PM | West Steps, State Capitol, 1315 10th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
RSVP here: Eventbrite link

Join us at the historic launch and show your support for public banking!

Speakers will share brief, 30-minute remarks, including

• Assemblymember Matt Haney (San Francisco)
• Assemblymember Ash Kalra (San Jose)
• Trinity Tran, Executive Director, California Public Banking Alliance
• Michael Tubbs, Founder, End Poverty in California
• Tristan Brown, Legislative Director, California Federation of Teachers (CFT) AFT, AFL-CIO
• Max Vargas, CEO, The Greenlining Institute
• Dr. Flo Cofer, Leader, Sacramento Area Congregations Together (SacACT), Sacramento Climate Coalition

Celebrate and Connect!
Enjoy multicultural performances, shaved ice with organic fruit purées, and more as we celebrate community and change.

Why It Matters for Main Street
California faces budget deficits, a housing crisis, and major infrastructure needs, while billions in public dollars flow to Wall Street. AB 2243 starts the process to create a state public bank through a State Bank Commission and Plan.

A public bank would work with community lenders to lower borrowing costs, expand financing for housing, climate projects, infrastructure, and small businesses, and keep more public dollars working in California.

Endorsed by 100+ organizations statewide.

Confirmed orgs attending, including co-sponsors: California Public Banking Alliance (CPBA), End Poverty in California (EPIC), The Greenlining Institute, California Federation of Teachers – CFT–AFT, AFL-CIO, Indivisible CA: StateStrong, Climate Action California, Third Act Sacramento, 350 Sacramento, Sacramento Area Congregations Together (SacACT), Sacramento Climate Coalition, Indivisible Sacramento, Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign, Friends of the Earth, and CPBA regional leads from San Francisco, Los Angeles, East Bay, Sacramento, Central Coast, and Yolo County. More groups are joining at the Capitol as we build turnout!

Sign on to endorse:
https://forms.gle/NSFTtXHknHsQd2GX6

California Democratic Party Delegates: sign-on here.

RSVP for the Earth Day Launch of AB 2243: Eventbrite link

Come be part of this historic moment!