Tampa's Racial Reconciliation Committee work should end, city attorney says

Nina Moske, Tampa Bay Times on Sep 18, 2025

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TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa should stop facilitating the work of its Racial Reconciliation Committee, a city attorney said in a memo to the City Council Thursday.

“Continuing to facilitate the committee’s activities... puts the City at risk of becoming subject to a federal enforcement action and/or losing access to federal funds,” the attorney, Andrea E. Zelman, wrote.

The move comes as state and federal leaders crack down on efforts related to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Local governments across Tampa Bay have quietly responded by scaling back or renaming diversity-related programs.

Zelman listed a number of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump this year related to diversity, discrimination, immigration, crime and gender issues. She said disobeying the directives could allow the federal government to withhold funding for affordable housing, hurricane relief, transportation projects and more.

“The federal government is now conditioning the receipt of such funds on compliance with policies announced by the President in his executive orders,” she wrote.

In a statement Thursday, council member Luis Viera said he did not fault the city’s legal department.

“Rather,” he said, ”I fault the reckless Trump Administration, which is engaged in a shameful mission to divide Americans through racial grievance and to call efforts to battle racism ‘discriminatory.’”

The City Council unanimously approved the creation of the 13-member Racial Reconciliation Committee in April 2024 to “address our economic and racial divide.” The group formed to probe five topics: affordable housing, economic development, youth empowerment, citizens returning from prison and “ignored history.”

Its establishment came more than three years after the council passed Resolution 568, officially acknowledging and apologizing for “Tampa’s history which contributed to a complex system of racially motivated discrimination against African Americans.”

But in recent months, committee members say their work has stalled.

“There has been static on the phone line,” they wrote in an essay in May detailing a lack of engagement and responsiveness from city leaders, including Mayor Jane Castor, the City Council and city staff.

Committee members could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

Yvette Lewis, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP, said she wasn’t surprised by the memo.

“They have to follow federal rules,” she said.

“This committee was hardly a radical effort,” council member Viera wrote in his response. “It is the work of patriotic and thoughtful Americans to confront our painful history and its effects on us today through present day injustice.”