``I feel a tremendous debt of gratitude to Councilmember Kate Harrison. She takes positions that may not always be comfortable but are right for the present and future well being of our community and the world. She is an extremely hardworking and effective council member and I support her for another term as my representative.``
~ Cate Leger, Green Architect, Former Berkeley Energy Commissioner
Kate comes from three generations of women activists, fighting for justice and equity. After years as an involved community member, Kate ran for the City Council, where she works every day to improve District 4 and the City.
Kate uses her extensive experience and her ability to build coalitions to get things done. She rapidly responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing free and accessible testing and vaccination to all Berkeley residents. She also made sure that tenants and small businesses were supported through financial aid and commercial eviction protections. She organized mask distribution to homeless service providers from her home. Kate encouraged the earliest possible safe reopening of our schools, understanding the importance of in-person education while also prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of our community.
Kate has developed an action plan to increase funding for street paving now. She works with neighborhood associations, the Downtown Business Association and small businesses to protect and promote local small businesses. She works with community groups to protect tenants and bring forward modern policing policies. She is not afraid of special interests, pushing to require lobbyists in Berkeley to register and downtown developers pay their fair share of community benefits.
Kate was recognized by the Sierra Club for her climate activism when it honored her with the 2021 Trailblazer Award. She wrote and passed the nation’s first ban on natural gas in new buildings, created the Climate Action Fund to help lower-income residents make climate-protecting and health-promoting changes to their homes and transportation and is bringing public electric charging stations to people living in multi-unit buildings.
If a concerned constituent calls, Kate makes sure they are lent an empathetic ear. She brought additional trash bins to North Shattuck. She pressed PG&E to improve the safety of gas pipelines running right past Berkeley High School. She eased the regulatory burden for our taxi drivers, who serve seniors and the disabled. Her office refuses to overlook the day-to-day issues that affect our neighbors.
Kate promises to keep answering every single phone call and email. A vote for Kate will ensure your local representative always has your back.
As a public sector executive and consultant, Kate has solved problems for agencies in 31 California counties, eight states and fourteen nations. Her firm improves systematic access to justice and helps agencies provide legal resources and enhance outcomes in foster care, domestic violence, child support and child custody cases. People who benefit from Kate’s work include Native American foster youth in North Dakota, defendants without lawyers in Serbia and people returning to their communities from prison.
Kate has also held policy and executive positions in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office under Art Agnos, and at the California Administrative Office of the Courts, where she helped develop the budget and policies for and enhance access to California’s $1.7 billion-a-year court system. Kate has balanced budgets and improved government efficiency while ensuring services for the most vulnerable are maintained and employees treated fairly.
Kate attended UCB both as an undergraduate and received her Masters from the Goldman School of Public Policy. As a student activist, she worked on Berkeley’s rent control campaign, protecting tenants from unjust evictions and unreasonable rent increases, formed a statewide coalition to pass California’s first just cause eviction protection, served in the ASUC Senate, and exposed abuses committed by the FBI for the ACLU.