Public Bank Pomona Valley

Including Pomona, La Verne, Claremont, and San Dimas

Public Bank Pomona Valley is a coalition of leaders from Pomona, Claremont, San Dimas, and La Verne working to create a grassroots movement encouraging the creation of a regional public bank in our area. 

We are raising awareness of Public Banking, its advantages, legalities, and suitability for our community. This group will share links, stories, and thinking about how public funds can be locally controlled and invested for our benefit, without enriching the big banks, but returning profits to our municipalities. 

Public banking serves as a powerful tool to keep taxpayer dollars in local communities

Public banks can be an essential asset to our community’s growth and development. Offering low or no-interest loans to small businesses; providing local funding for local infrastructure projects such as parks, roads, and community service centers; reducing local tax-burdens on citizens; and giving local government greater control and options for projects for the community good.  

Thanks to recently passed legislation, we have the opportunity now to build a new alternative banking system through locally-controlled socially and environmentally responsible public banks, enabling cities and counties to recapture public dollars and have a say over the financing of our own communities. 

Cities and counties hold billions of dollars of public money in private banks. These private banks control this money which they have used to finance harmful industries including: private prisons, immigrant detention centers, weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel pipelines, and other investments that prioritize corporate profit over the people and the planet. These too-big-to-fail banks are also engaged in risky and fraudulent practices that crashed the global economy in 2008.

We have the opportunity now to build a new alternative banking system through locally-controlled socially and environmentally responsible public banks, enabling cities and counties to recapture public dollars and have a say over the financing of our own communities.


Check out our "One-Pagers" on the Resource page.  

Great info on the potential impacts of Public Banking on issues of concern.


Just announced!!!

Public Bank East Bay has released its Viability Study. Here's how it begins:


This Viability Study demonstrates that the Public Bank East Bay (“PBEB”), a cooperative venture among the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond and Alameda County, is a viable entity which can:

•achieve fiscal stability within the first three years;

•provide loan support to underserved sectors of the local economy;

•address local infrastructure needs;

•reduce local government dependency on Wall Street banks;

•decrease local fossil fuel and other harmful investments;

•partner with local financial institutions to the economic and social benefit of all;

•mitigate economic inequity in the region;

•serve as a model for public banks around the state and the country.


Gov. Newsom Signs AB 1177, the California Public Banking Option Act!


HISTORIC! Today Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1177, the California Public Banking Option Act, a historic step which set into motion the creation of the nation’s first public banking option. AB 1177 creates an opportunity for us to transform our financial services system and center it on the needs of our local communities and build a more inclusive economy.


In the months ahead the CalAccount Blue Ribbon Commission will convene to conduct a market analysis and to determine the best way to implement the CalAccount program. It’s up to us to make sure that the CalAccount program reflects our values of equity and inclusion, and that it succeeds in bridging the financial access gap that’s left 1 in 4 Californians and nearly half of Black and Latino California households unbanked and underbanked.


There will be opportunities for organizations like yours to take part in shaping the CalAccount program and co-hosting public outreach forums. Stay tuned for more updates and opportunities to ensure the success of CalAccount, the nation’s first public banking option program.


We’re proud to stand with 250 racial and economic justice groups, climate justice organizations, labor unions and elected officials who worked tirelessly to make AB 1177 possible. We thank the authors of AB 1177 for their vision and courage to end the discriminatory, predatory high-cost financial services that target low-income communities and communities of color.


AB 1177 was authored by Assemblymembers Miguel Santiago, Wendy Carrillo , David Chiu, Eduardo Garcia, Lorena Gonzalez, Ash Kalra, Alex Lee, Phil Ting, Buffy Wicks, Mike Gipson and Adrin Nazarian. Co-authors include Assemblymembers Laura Friedman, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Luz Rivas and Senators Maria Elena Durazo, Lena Gonzalez, Ben Hueso, Scott Wiener and Josh Newman. We thank the Governor and California State Legislature for their leadership in rebuilding an economy that reflects our California values of equity and inclusion.


Thank you to our fellow co-sponsors of AB 1177, SEIU California and California Reinvestment Coalition and to the Californians who spoke truth to power about the realities of being un/underbanked.


This is the second public bank law the California Public Banking Alliance has won, following the passage of AB 857 the California Public Banking Act, which Governor Newsom signed at the end of 2019.


Thank you for making history with us.