The wafting smoke from the barbecue was undeniably sweet.

But to Michael Harper, 30, the atmosphere was something sweeter.

“To see people out here, coming together to celebrate something beautiful in our community, in the Iron Triangle: this is a great thing,” Harper said. “I’ve been in this neighborhood a long time and I’ve seen worse times. This reminds me that God is good.”

Harper was one of more than 100 residents who turned out Saturday to see the newly-remodeled L.I.F.E. Center at the corner of Second Street and MacDonald Avenue, in the heart of the city’s Iron Triangle neighborhood.

The L.I.F.E. Center is a community jewel, said pastor Sydney Keys, who also serves as director of the center. The two-story complex combines a church worship hall, computer labs, child care and fitness centers and other recreational and educational amenities.

Keys said the Feb. 14 shooting inside a local church, which prompted several peace rallies and drew national attention, influenced his decision to hold the Saturday community gathering. Several smaller community festivals went on throughout the city Saturday.

“This place is open seven days a week, Monday through Sunday, because that’s what the people need,” Keys said. “The timing is right for us to play a greater role in our community.”

L.I.F.E. stands for Love Involvement Family and Education, Keys said.

The L.I.F.E. center is one of the few places in the area that is licensed by the county to care for infants, a capability that is in particular need in the immediate community, one of the poorest in the Bay Area. The center also has a computer lab, with several high-speed Internet terminals that residents can use for research and employment searches.

The event drew local dignitaries, including Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Councilmen Tom Butt and Nat Bates, and council candidate Corky Booze.

Keys’ wife, Patrice, who is the center’s co-director, gave McLaughlin a tour of their newly-renovated facility.

“These kinds of services should be provided to everyone,” McLaughlin told Keys while being shown the childcare center. “It’s really wonderful that the church is picking this up and providing this, so thank you so much.”

Later, McLaughlin and others manned a free giveaway table, where the L.I.F.E. center handed out a cache of donated shoes and clothing. Dozens of locals lined up for the goods.

Booze said the infant care capability that the center offers is vital to the health of community.

“Single parents right here in the Iron Triangle have a resource where they can safely leave their young children while they go to work,” Booze said. “We can’t say enough how much that is appreciated.”

It was scheduled as a retreat to Napa, but it turned out to be anything but a relaxing repose in wine country.

Instead, the gathering for top police brass would become a point of no return.

The time was September 2006, and inter-departmental complaints about newly-minted chief Chris Magnus had grown louder.

High-level black officers grumbled about what they alleged were racist and racially-insensitive comments made by Magnus, a white North Dakota import whose hiring came over other longtime local police leaders.

At the same time, Magnus planned to use the retreat to explain some clear goals he had for the department, a strategy that included shifts in management structure and new responsibilities for those in leadership posts. He knew his reforms could encounter resistance.

With critics arrayed against him at an evening meeting, Magnus was ready to respond.

Earlier, Magnus had confided in another high ranking officer, current Deputy Chief Edward Medina, that he wanted to confront his accusers.

Tensions ran high.

Magnus’ deputy chief at the time, Lori Ritter came under fire from the black officers present at the meeting. Ritter was a divisive figure in the department who drew criticism for keeping a prominently displayed photo of “The Cowboys,” a disgraced clique of allegedly racist and violent former cops, in her office.

Magnus first stood aside, hoping Ritter would rise to her own defense.

Her diffident responses seemed to emboldened the critics.

One black police official, Arnold Threets, angrily paraphrased a quote from Malcolm X, demanding that fairness be restored to the department under the Magnus regime.

Magnus said it was time to move forward and get passed the squabbles. He tried to focus on his structural reforms, but his command staff leaned toward revolt.

Captain Cleveland Brown suggested that the command staff may instead just disregard Magnus and take their concerns directly to his boss, City Manager Bill Lindsay.

The chief bristled at the open defiance.

Magnus erupted into an impassioned defense. He threw down a gauntlet, inveighing the professionals in the room against such a course – in savage terms.

“The statement was, you better kill him, because if you wound him, he’ll be like a wounded animal,” remembered Lt. Michael Booker.

That is the narrative that emerges from a DVD featuring sworn testimony by Booker, Magnus, former Deputy Chief Ritter, City Manager Lindsay and several other high level police officials. The DVD was circulated to area media by the plaintiff’s attorneys earlier this year, before the judge in the case issued a gag order. The discrimination suit was filed in March 2007 against Magnus and the city.

But the video, which has been edited and came from the plaintiffs’ side, succeeds in casting a disturbing light on a department that has not yet shaken a checkered past.

The DVD clocks in at more than one hour and runs the gamut of forgettable episodes, from footage of Magnus wrestling with questions about his alleged use of racially insensitive jokes to clips from the 60 Minutes episode years ago that brought the department’s “cowboy” culture to national attention.

Magnus attended a March 13 peace rally coordinated by black religious leaders.

The re-creation of events in Napa nearly four years ago comes from recordings of sworn depositions given last year by more than a half-dozen department officials.

On several occasions, Ritter appears to admit racist behavior during sworn depositions.

City spokespersons, and others, maintain that the video is edited in a way that undermines its validity. Only one news station has used footage from the video in a report.

U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel issued a gag order on all parties last month in response to the circulation of the DVDs containing edited deposition testimony.

Magnus declined comment last week, citing the judge’s gag order.

In the DVD, Medina said that Magnus told him before the meeting that he wanted to confront allegations and suspicions about his comments once and for all. The testimony from the sworn deposition is dated Oct. 30, 2009.

Tension was high, Medina testified.

Magnus said it was time to move forward and get passed the squabbles, Medina testified, a sentiment that was seconded in taped testimony by Lt. Mark Gagan.

Several other witnesses corroborated that Magnus made something close to those  statements.

“Did you find that to be a little bit out of the norm for a commanding officer” to say such a thing, said an unidentified lawyer in the video.

“I did,” Gagan replied.

Ritter is married to a former member of the 1980s “Cowboys,” a clique of white officers so dubbed by the media because of a well-circulated photo of members suited in Western garb. The allegedly racist, violent group gained national notoriety when “60 Minutes” host Mike Wallace narrated a segment on them years ago.

“It was going to be a problem, yeah,” Medina said of Magnus’ intention of addressing the issues at the retreat. Medina testified that he also worried that Magnus’ desire to take on the issue would inflame, rather than soothe, racial tensions.

But Magnus disregarded that advice.

According to several sworn depositions, several black officers accused Ritter of disfavoring black officers.

The DVD features sworn testimony by Magnus, former Deputy Chiefs Lori Ritter and Ed Medina, City Manager Bill Lindsay, Lt. Arnold Threets,  Lt. Michael Booker, Lt. Mark Gagan, Lt. Richard Clark, Captain Cleveland Brown,  Captain Allwyn Brown, and other police and city officials was circulated to area media by the plaintiff’s attorneys earlier this year, before the judge in the case issued a gag order.

At a different point during the interrogation, Office of Neighborhood Safety Director Devone Boggan testified that during a conversation with Magnus, Magnus characterized the tensions inside his department as a “civil war.”

City officials have been wary about speaking on the matter.

Last month, prior to the gag order being issued, the lone black City Council member, Nat Bates, said a trial is not a foregone conclusion.

“If there is not a settlement, it’s going to trial,” Bates said.

Bates dismissed the DVD as being unreliable, noting that it represents the plaintiff’s argument in a favorable light.

He did acknowledge that the ongoing issue represents a distraction in the city, where the homicide rate nearly doubled last year as opposed to 2008.

“When you have a case this serious, it’s going to be a distraction,” Bates said.  ”A case of this magnitude doesn’t come without distractions, but you’ve got to wait until all the evidence is in.”

Councilman Tom Butt agreed.

“It’s a huge distraction, everybody knows that,” Butt said.

City Manager Lindsay, who has discretion over the hire and fire of the police chief, said at a recent council meeting that he has not wavered in his support of Magnus.

“Not at all,” Lindsay said when asked whether Magnus’ removal had been discussed.

Magnus has been lauded by city officials and civic leaders for his leadership of the department. Crime has generally trended downward since he took his post in early 2006, with a particularly notable drop in 2008. That year, killings in the city were cut nearly in half from 2007. Homicides spiked again in 2009, but overall crime was down slightly.

Rhonda Harris, a local contractor, questioned the city’s allocation of resources in defense against the charges. The city has retained private counsel.

“For me, it’s a public policy issue,” Harris said. ”When does the city say stop, enough is enough. We have parks in this city that don’t have restrooms.”

City leaders said the time has come to plan for a future without the company that has dominated the local economy for more than a century.

A future without Chevron, the city’s largest taxpayer and employer, was a reverberating theme at a community meeting Friday night held by the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a local activist group. About 50 people attended the meeting, which featured Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Councilman Tom Butt, and author Antonia Juhasz.

“Regardless of whether Chevron stays or leaves, the main thing is that we are an independent agency as a city, as a municipality,” said McLaughlin, a frequent critic of Chevron and the only Green Party mayor of a U.S. city of more than 100,000 people. “We are not under the domination of Chevron or any corporation and we cannot go back into that kind of thinking.”

Tom Butt addresses the crowd. Photo courtesy Michael Beer

During her short remarks, McLaughlin alternately compared the relationship between the city and the corporation to the “Stockholm Syndrome” and an abusive marriage.

But the city would no longer be a victim, McLaughlin said.

“They can co-exist with us if they pay their fair share of taxes and if they use the highest state of the art pollution controls,” McLaughlin said.

The featured speaker was Juhasz, an author and activist with expertise in petrol energy. Her most recent book, 2008′s “Tyranny of Oil: The world’s most powerful industry – and what we must do to stop it,” received rave reviews from leading critics.

Juhasz painted a grim picture of the multinational oil corporation, accusing it of flexing its legal and political power to pursue profitable – but environmentally devastating – operations spanning the globe.

The planned upgrades to the local refinery were the latest example, Juhasz said. She noted that Chevron has been documented as being the largest greenhouse gas producer in the state.

“The retooling that Chevron would like to do, which is the source of so much controversy, would significantly increase those greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention toxic pollutants,” Juhasz said.

Still, Juhasz said she believes the Richmond refinery, one of more than a dozen Chevron operates in the U.S., would not be selected for closure.

“If (Chevron) does close a U.S. refinery, it will probably be the one in Hawaii,” Juhasz said.

In January, the Contra Costa Times’ business editor declared that he expects Chevron to announce plans to close the refinery during a strategy unveiling in March.

Last year, Chevron was forced to halt work on a nearly $1 billion project to upgrade the refinery to allow for processing of a larger range of oil products when a state judge sided with environmentalists who’d filed suit. The suit alleges that an environmental impact report filed by Chevron was incomplete.

Chevron representatives have countered that the project has gone through proper channels and would generate jobs and revenue in the city.

Chevron spokespersons have been measured in their public statements since late last year, when they first publicly hinted at the possibility the refinery may close. In recent weeks, the company’s public stance has been noncommittal on the refinery’s future, but that there may be an “opportunity” for improving relations with local leaders and the public.

Public statements from Chevron’s representatives have emphasized the corporation’s 108-year relationship with the city, which was all-but-founded thanks to development by the company, then part of Standard Oil.

Chevron has also embarked on a stepped-up philanthropic program, including programs for underprivileged youth, funding more than $2 million in Richmond projects last year alone.

At the same time, company officials have attended community meetings and offered tours of the refining facility, including one that brought along a handful of leaders from the Point Richmond Neighborhood Council, in order to answer questions and clarify the company’s position.

Chevron employs about 1,200 workers at its local refinery, but for years the company has declined to specify how many of those workers are Richmond residents. Councilman Butt said he would guess only about 5 percent of employees at the local refinery live in Richmond.

Butt criticized the corporation, saying that Chevron “doesn’t have a heart” and exists solely to make money, which he said was “what business is about.”

“But, I also have a job, as a Richmond city councilmember,” Butt said. “My job is to get as much money as I can out of Chevron while they’re here, and to try to protect the safety and the welfare and the health of people who live in Richmond.”

Butt did acknowledge the possibility that Chevron will shutter its local refinery, the largest on the West Coast and the source of nearly half the city’s tax receipts, but said that decision would be unaffected by local politics.

“Whatever Chevron does is going to be a product of their internal economic and strategic planning,” Butt said. “They’re not going to do it because people in Richmond try to get too much taxes out of them. That has nothing to do with it, absolutely nothing.”

Butt said other possibilities include Chevron downsizing its local operations, which would also have significant public policy implications.

As Butt spoke, he drifted noticeably toward not only the likelihood that Chevron would leave, but the potential long-term benefits.

“My gut feeling is,” Butt said before a lengthy pause, “it may happen.”

About 50 residents attended the event. Photo courtesy Michael Beer.

Butt added again that it would not be because of local politics, but due to weakened global demand for petrol products.

By the end of his remarks, with the virtually unified crowd’s encouragement, Butt was ticking off a litany of possible benefits from the loss of the city’s largest taxpayer. They included: “no more (air pollution) sirens,” a new influx of residents to a newly-opened up “waterfront community,” and a cleaner and more diversified local economy.

He said the Feb. 23 City Council meeting would include a preliminary study session on planning for the possibility of Chevron’s departure.

Councilman Jeff Ritterman, a consistent Chevron critic, also attended the event.

Residents in attendance ranged from wanting Chevron’s outright exodus to calling for increases in taxes and regulation.

Resident Michael Beer said the time was now for solidarity among residents to help impose restrictions on the corporation’s local practices.

“Richmond for many, many years has been in this thrall,” Beer said. “It’s like a spell that Chevron had put on the city, and (Richmond’s) beginning to wake up.”

Additional information from both sides can be found at www.chevron.com and www.thetruecostofchevron.com
]]> http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/02/21/local-meeting-examines-a-possible-future-without-chevron/feed/ 3 http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/02/03/council-calls-for-reduced-airborne-pollution/ http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/02/03/council-calls-for-reduced-airborne-pollution/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:07:32 +0000 Robert Rogers http://richmondconfidential.org/?p=7659

Richmond was born an industrial town of sooty petroleum refineries and locomotives, but its future should be based on low-emission, high-tech industries, the City Council declared Tuesday.

After a long, and sometimes contentious, public debate, the Council voted 5-1 to declare the city in recognition of a lower standard of carbon dioxide levels in the air.

<View resolution and supporting materials here.>

The new standard, 350 CO2 parts-per-million (ppm), was established by a team of scientists and environmentalists who argue that the ratio should be the upper limit for how much carbon dioxide is in the earth’s air. According to research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2008, the current level worldwide stands at 387 ppm; about 40 percent higher than at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Although the recognition has no legal force nor costs, Councilman Jeff Ritterman, who introduced the resolution with the support of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Councilman Jim Rogers, said he hoped the resolution would raise awareness and spur public debate about climate change.

“I really wanted to do something on the local level,” Ritterman said. “We didn’t get much international leadership on this in Copenhagen,” Ritterman added, referring to the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.

The Council’s adoption of the measure, which includes an agreement to begin organizing community meetings to draw input for possible future local climate measures, comes amid intensifying public debate over the city’s largest employer, Chevron Corp.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has proposed that the local Chevron refinery upgrade old infrastructure and improve energy efficiency in exchange for environmental groups’ dropping their objections to expansion in Chevron’s refining operations.

Dozens of community members spoke out during public debate, most in criticism of Chevron.

The lone dissent on the council for the air quality declaration came from Councilman Nat Bates, who at one point called his council colleagues “socialists.” He also accused McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party, and Ritterman of working to “run Chevron out of town.”

“This city is going to be a ghost town,” Bates said of what would happen if Chevron ceased local operations. Rumors that Chevron may consider closing its Richmond refinery have swirled of late. The refinery employs about 1,200 workers. Bates said Chevron pays the city nearly $35 million annually in total taxes.

McLaughlin and Councilman Tom Butt said they hoped the resolution would be part of a larger effort to establish Richmond as an environmentally-friendly city and a hot spot for green technology and industry. Butt said Richmond had recently been accepted to Green Cities California, a coalition of local governments calling for policies that support sustainable development.

On Jan. 27, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured a local solar panel manufacturing company to tout his statewide jobs growth plan.

]]> http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/02/03/council-calls-for-reduced-airborne-pollution/feed/ 4 http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/01/06/local-civic-group-discusses-chevrons-role-in-community/ http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/01/06/local-civic-group-discusses-chevrons-role-in-community/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:00:20 +0000 Robert Rogers http://richmondconfidential.org/?p=6964

The Point Richmond Neighborhood Council has about 400 members and $4,485 and change in its general fund budget.

But those stats don’t tell the tale-of-the-tape in terms of the spirit of this small but informed band of loyal members. And the five-member board makes sure that members – all residents of the city’s quaint historic district – stay up to speed on the issues that affect them.

The council holds a meeting in the Point’s branch library building the last Wednesday of each month.

“We don’t have a lot of power,” said Peter Minkwitz, the council’s president. “But we do represent and inform the citizens of Point Richmond.”



Chevron engineer Megan Bleckinger chats with resident Gary Bracken.

But on last Wednesday, the neighborhood council’s meeting was mostly about the biggest entity that has ever been affiliated with Richmond: Chevron Corp.

Chevron, which operates a 2,900-acre local refining facility, is locked in legal and political struggles with the city over the scope of operations and the level of taxation and fees. Meanwhile, the corporation has upped its community outreach work and charitable donations to local residents and organizations.

“We were invited as part of Chevron’s neighborhood outreach program to tour the refinery earlier this month (December),” Minkwitz said in an interview before the meeting. “So, we went, and now we report to the community.”

Minkwitz and his colleagues told a smaller-than-normal holiday audience of about 15 residents – and one Chevron representative – of he and his colleague’s impressions of the guided tour of the refinery.

“I think I speak for the group that was there,” Minkwitz said. “We were pretty impressed with what Chevron is doing, just this refinery.”

Often glancing at his notes, Minkwitz rattled off statistics and anecdotes from the tour to the gathering of impassive-faced members.

Board member Sue Rosenof was similarly positive. The air-borne plumes that residents often see emanating from the refinery are actually harmless steam, she said, adding that she believed it.



Point Richmond Neighborhood Council President Peter Minkwitz.

“It didn’t feel like they were trying to say what we wanted to hear,” Rosenof told the group.

But Rosenof also voiced what some members said they suspect – that the tour was in part an effort to rebuild public support. In the past few years voters have elected a green mayor, whose platform was buttressed with criticism of Chevron, and passed Measure T, a tax increase aimed at the corporation. A judge ruled against the voter-approved tax hike last month.

“Right up front they said they know that they really do need to work on getting a better relationship with their neighbors,” Rosenof said.  “They know what’s going on, they read the papers like we read the papers, but the people there were willing to answer all our questions.”

In February, Chevron agreed to pay the city $28 million in a legal settlement, after a city-commissioned audit found the company had under-paid taxes for years.

Once the loose presentation concluded, one resident, Jean Womack, spoke up to criticize what she said were wrongfully negative depictions of the corporation in historical literature.

“The oil companies are always described … as being robber barons,” Womack said.

But a few other residents disagreed, and were not moved by the observations relayed to them by the board members.



Resident Mike Parker questioned the corporation's motives.

Resident Mike Parker spoke in a near-shout as he criticized Chevron’s efforts.

“It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts” that Chevron is conducting tours and dispatching representatives around the community, Parker said. “It’s because of the pressure put on them by this community.”

Parker added that he saw Chevron’s outreach as a political ploy.

“The population voted for measure T, Chevron lost and it lost badly in that, and so now they’re spending a lot of money on public relations,” Parker said. “While they’re giving you these tours, they’re spending huge amounts of money in order to appeal their property taxes.”

City Councilman Tom Butt also attended the meeting. Butt had sharp words for Chevron, which he claimed eluded payment of millions in taxes to the city over the years before this year’s audit and legal settlement.

The political fallout continues to be felt, he said.

“It’s had an effect on the council and how they deal with Chevron,” Butt said.



Councilman Tom Butt said relations between the council and Chevron were strained.

Megan Bleckinger, a chemical engineer for Chevron, attended the meeting. Although she spoke sparingly during the open forum, and never directly addressed the various allegations made against the corporation, she chatted with residents afterward and handed out contact information.

“I’m just happy that there is an open debate here about Chevron’s place in the community,” Bleckinger said. “Everybody can contact me anytime, and I can do my best to get answers to any questions they have.”

Minkwitz said after the meeting that he was pleased with how it unfolded. He explained that his aim was not to put an overly positive gloss on Chevron or his tour of the facility, but to avoid getting mired in unproductive talks.

“You can’t get too caught up in the big macro analysis, ” Minkwitz said, adding that he wanted to keep focus on what is best for Richmond, now and in the future.

]]> http://richmondconfidential.org/2010/01/06/local-civic-group-discusses-chevrons-role-in-community/feed/ 0 http://richmondconfidential.org/2009/12/31/struggle-between-chevron-and-city-intensifies/ http://richmondconfidential.org/2009/12/31/struggle-between-chevron-and-city-intensifies/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:01:42 +0000 Robert Rogers http://richmondconfidential.org/?p=6912

A political showdown between the city and its biggest taxpayer continues to unfold, and no one is quite sure how it will end.

On one side is Chevron Corp., the nation’s second-largest oil company and a multibillion dollar, multinational corporation. Among its vast global network of petroleum facilities, Chevron has maintained a refinery in Richmond since 1902. The facility has grown to 2,900-acres and generates a significant portion – some have estimated more than 40 percent – of the city’s $144 million general fund budget.

On the other side is a mayor, city council and part of the local constituency of this town that say the corporation must do more to recompense the people of Richmond for the environmental burdens – including airborne pollutants – placed on the city and its residents due to the refinery.

And now speculation has begun to swirl that this century-long partnership between the oil company and Richmond may be in its final throes. Some of the speculation is being fed by Chevron itself: In a recent National Public Radio report, Mike Coyle, the refinery’s general manager, used the word “divorce” in describing Chevron’s long relationship with Richmond.

But some city officials think the corporation’s leaders are prone to floating such ideas in efforts to gain political leverage and concessions.

“Every time Chevron has been in some kind of a dispute with the city, they always threaten to leave,” said Councilman Tom Butt, the city’s longest-serving legislator. “They’ve been doing this for years, but the bottom line is whether they continue to operate a refinery in Richmond or not has nothing to do with local tax disputes and everything to do with the corporation’s macro economic strategic plans.”

Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen said the refinery in Richmond faces higher tax and environmental burdens than its other facilities around the world, and even higher than other refiners in California. While not directly threatening to leave if Chevron doesn’t prevail in its local tax and legal battles, Tippen did suggest that the continued existence of the Richmond facility is not a guarantee.

“One part of the corporation does not subsidize other business units,” Tippen said. “Chevron business units that cannot compete effectively must adapt successfully to meet their challenges, or they are sold or shut down.”

The problem revolves around a series of measures the city has taken under the leadership of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. A Green Party mayor elected in 2006, McLaughlin ran on a tough-on-Chevron platform, and wants to get Chevron to pay more in taxes and fees.

Last year, voters passed Measure T, which sought to levy an additional quarter-percent tax on the value of manufacturing materials. Chevron responded to the tax hike – which amounted to more than $20 million in additional taxes on the refinery this year – by filing a lawsuit alleging that the tax measure violates state and federal law. A Contra Costa Superior Court judge agreed, ruling in favor of Chevron in December.

This year, the company has been dealt two additional blows. In February, the company paid the city $28 million in a legal settlement after a city-commissioned audit found the company had under-paid taxes for years.

In July, Chevron’s multimillion dollar effort to retrofit its refinery was halted by a Contra Costa County judge. Judge Barbara Zuniga ordered the stoppage on grounds that an environmental review needed to further explain how the new petroleum refining technology would affect surrounding communities.

Chevron is the biggest employer and taxpayer in the city. It employs 1,300 people locally, although how many of those employees are Richmond residents is unknown.

Chevron banked $23.9 billion in 2008, according to public company reports, continuing a period of record profits this decade. The global reach and record profits reaped by the corporation have come amid persistent poverty and crime in the city.

This year, Richmond’s violent crime edged up, punctuated by 47 homicides, an inordinately high total for a city of just over 100,000 residents. City statistics have the local unemployment rate hovering at nearly 20 percent, far higher than the state average.

To McLaughlin these circumstances, and the pollution emitted by refining operations, call for a bigger commitment from Chevron to the city in which it operates. Like Butt, she dismisses insinuations that the corporation may move operations elsewhere.

“Chevron has all its infrastructure permanently in place here in Richmond,” McLaughlin said. “They are located right on the water where the crude gets unloaded from ships and piped right into the refinery.  This is really an ideal situation for them.”

Tippen did not characterize the refinery’s situation in quite so effusive terms, but did emphasize the corporation’s connection to Richmond and the broader area. He also noted Chevron’s philanthropic efforts, which have roughly doubled this year to more than $3 million and helped fund 80 local nonprofit organization, a move some critics see as an effort to curry community favor.

“As the largest taxpayer and one of the largest employers in Contra Costa County, our business needs to remain healthy in order to help support the community and the people who live and work here,” Tippen said.

McLaughlin said Chevron’s contributions to the community are not enough.

“We believe that we have every right to expect more from mega-billion dollar companies operating within our city’s boundaries,” she said.

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