COLUMBIA — The city of Columbia is hosting office hours to hear city comment ahead of Monday's vote to change the city's diversity, equity and inclusion language.
Since President Donald Trump was inaugurated back in January, he has been working to end DEI-related initiatives across the country. In response to this, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an order of his own which eliminated DEI in Missouri agencies.
Columbia City Council is also feeling the pressure from Washington as the city risks losing crucial federal funding if it doesn't comply. The federal order requires Columbia and all other cities to certify that they do not operate DEI programs that violate federal anti-discrimination laws.
Don Waterman is the Fifth Ward City Council member and was at Thursday night's office hours. He says Columbia is going to have to make language changes to avoid any federal funding losses.
"We are going to have to make these changes because with out it, we are putting a lot of things at risk in the city," Waterman said.
Columbia specifically receives $48,233,536.84 in federal funding. This is broken into several different areas such as:
- Community and economic development ($5,227,417.49)
- Finance ($1,625,000)
- Fire ($20,000)
- Health ($4,736,066.93)
- Housing & Neighborhood services ($603,540)
- Information technology ($123,158.80)
- Parks ($3,140,747.49)
- Police ($193,318.28)
- Public Works ($24,295,319)
- Sustainability ($3,786,708)
- Utilities ($4,658,260.85)
Waterman stressed that health care would take one of the biggest hits if Columbia lost federal funding. Among the funded areas are women and children, violence prevention, STD detection and treatments and mental health and substance abuse.
However, Waterman said that even if there is a change in the city's DEI language, the city will continue its operations as they currently exist.
"Even though we may be changing some of the language on paper, what we do as a city is not going to change," Waterman said.
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