extending into a few surprising areas in the North Bay, potentially impacting federal funding for myriad projects. This has led Sonoma County and the cities of Petaluma and Healdsburg to join in a lawsuit filed by King County in Washington State. The lawsuit accuses federal departments of requiring them to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI agenda or lose funds. Jeff Kay, Healdsburg city manager, says the suit alleges that the federal government is putting various policy-related edicts into grant agreements that are not really related to those projects. In Healdsburg’s case, it impacts a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grant to redo taxiways and runways at the city’s small
Kay says the full lawsuit doesn’t just deal with DEI, but a host of current administration policies, such as promoting gender ideology or access to abortion. These issues do not apply to the Healdsburg Airport grant, which is in the neighborhood of $600,000. “We are just trying to maintain a transportation facility which is really important in times of fire response, then finding ourselves in a position of having to make commitments that are vague to the point of being really concerning,” Kay says. While the airport grant is fairly small, Kay worries the federal requirements could impact other local transportation projects. “We have one right now which has committed
federal funding of over $2 million, so realistically, several million dollars could be at stake.” A preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs has already been issued in the case, Kay reports, so one of Healdsburg’s motivations in joining the lawsuit is to hopefully gain protection under that injunction, “which would prohibit the federal agencies from making these requirements and allow us to move forward with these projects.” In the meantime, the runway rehab cannot begin.
Alive and well Despite the defunding
municipal airport. “Specifically, in our case, we have received preliminary approval for the grant,” Kay says, but it came with two requirements. “One was that the city must certify it does not operate any programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion that violate any applicable anti-discrimination laws,” Kay explains. And the second requirement was that the city “will cooperate with federal officials in the enforcement of federal law, including cooperating with and not impeding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal offices and components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the enforcement of federal immigration law.” Healdsburg has no DEI programs that violate anti- discrimination law, Kay says, but the ICE/DHS requirement is quite sticky. “That requirement is more challenging because it requires us to navigate state law, which places fairly strict control on cooperation with immigration enforcement,” Kay explains. “Our larger concern and our major motivation for joining this suit is simply because we’re being required to sign off on these policy commitments that have nothing to do with airport runway rehab.”
threats, attempted roadblocks and political chaos that surround DEI, it appears the movement is still alive and well in the North Bay. And while wordsmiths are steering clear of the DEI moniker for the time being, “we’re still seeing it included in strategic plans as part of just creating a healthy culture,” Persike concludes. “Words change over time,” she says. “That’s why the Merriam- Webster Dictionary is always updating the latest terminology every year when they update the dictionary. It’s kind of one of those moments. DEI was extremely visible and that visibility in some areas was misunderstood as a kind of quota system. Now we’re seeing that it’s integrated.” As they say, you can’t put a genie back in the bottle and you can’t stuff toothpaste back in the tube. g
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28 NorthBaybiz
November 2025
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