Introducing hearings on Municipal ID and Language Access

Councilwoman Ramos introduces two resolutions in the spirit of celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month:

Municipal ID

This resolution calls for a hearing regarding the Municipal ID program that was passed in a prior council. There are several groups of our residents that struggle to get official identification, and this program is designed to provide them with official ID that is less cumbersome to get. People who are experiencing homelessness are often delayed in obtaining housing because they have to wait for paperwork to get their IDs. Members of our Trans community often have obstacles for proper ID, and members of our immigrant community who are not driving also lack proper ID.

This is a great program that is needed now. This hearing will help us understand where the challenges to implementation are, and how we can help bring it to fruition. 

Language Access

This resolution calls for a hearing about how residents who speak other languages are able to access our City services. This is a follow up to the questions I asked our City agencies during budget hearings about how many Spanish speakers and Latinos are on staff. The Baltimore City Health Department did a great job, out of necessity, to hire community health workers, and I’ve noticed DOT also has new Latine liaisons and other new staff. While each of our agencies have been trained on language line, it is imperative that at least some of our front line workers look and speak the language so that our growing community can access services to. Data regarding Hispanic and Latino residents in Baltimore City have consistently revealed detrimental under-use of City government services. For instance, Baltimore City 311 services received 660,000 calls in English but only 2,000 in Spanish between January 2020 and December 2021, suggesting a critical under-use by Spanish speaking residents. This hearing will be a discussion of where we are, and what else is needed. 

I offer these two resolutions in the spirit of Hispanic Heritage Month this month and look forward to the discussion.