Grievances, hundreds of dollars, and accessibility: Two Philadelphia nonprofits navigate City Hall for a Spanish-language translator

Two local nonprofits are out of hundreds of dollars after a struggle to secure language translation services needed for private briefings sponsored by City Council, raising questions about accessibility for Philadelphia’s growing immigrant communities within City Hall.

The Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance footed a $500 bill to hire its own translator after the Philadelphia City Council’s Clerk’s Office rejected a March 3 request for a Spanish-language interpreter — submitted through Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke’s office — for a March 20 policy briefing in Council’s Caucus Room.

PACA, a nonprofit that supports local enterprises such as Weavers Way food co-op, wanted to bring three predominantly Spanish-speaker cooperatives to present at and attend the briefing. On March 12, O’Rourke’s office’s request for a translator was denied.

That same day, the Pennsylvania National Domestic Workers Alliance, which has many Spanish-speaking members, attended a policy briefing from Councilmember Kendra Brooks. The same thing occurred, and PA NDWA’s spent $200 on translation services, said Nicole Kligerman, founder and director of the nonprofit.

Leaders of PACA and PA NDWA filed grievances with the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (OIA) soon after receiving notice that their requests were rejected.

As immigrant communities continue to fuel Philadelphia’s population growth and increasingly find themselves on the front lines of debate over local and national policies, the grievances have ignited conversations about City Hall’s long-held practices for providing language translation services.

Brooks’ request for an interpreter was declined in error, Vincent Thompson, communications director for Council President Kenyatta Johnson, said. And once the error was discovered — one day after PACA filed a complaint, and hours after an Inquirer reporter reached out for comment — Council and OIA fulfilled O’Rourke’s request, providing translation services via headsets in the Caucus Room last Thursday.

But the emotional and financial frustration took its toll, the nonprofits’ leaders say.

“That’s $500 that we weren’t expecting to pay, and, for a small nonprofit, that is not a small amount of money for us,” said Corey Reidy, the co-op development director at PACA. Given that the city fulfilled the request for translation less than 24 hours before the scheduled hearing, PACA was still on the hook for the translation services they hired.

Council is adamant about their language accessibility; the body is projected to have spent at least $30,000 in translation services in 2024, and the Clerk’s Office regularly fulfills requests with advance notice, Thompson said. But historically these requests have been restricted to official Council sessions and committee hearings in Council chambers rather than other Council-related events such as the recent policy briefings held by Brooks and O’Rourke.

For Bernardita Rivera, a domestic worker, extending the policy to include such meetings enables her to participate in discussions that pertain to her livelihood. Rivera, a member of PA NDWA, attended Brooks’ March 12 policy briefing for the POWER ACT, which would strengthen worker protections in Philadelphia.

“I can’t participate if interpretation isn’t provided, which is why I always ask for it, and I’m not only speaking for myself, but for people who speak other languages, because if things aren’t explained to us, then we can’t understand what’s happening,” Rivera said in Spanish with Kligerman translating.

City Council has a “responsibility” to provide interpretation for any language that is requested in advance, said Brooks, Council’s minority leader and a member of the Working Families Party alongside O’Rourke.

“City government belongs to the people of Philadelphia and should be open and accessible to any Philadelphian who wants to learn more or voice an opinion about the policies and plans under consideration by our elected leaders,” Brooks said.

The grievances filed over the two briefings are now under investigation, according to Alain Joinville, director of strategic communications and programs for the OIA.

“OIA was recently made aware of these language access issues with Council,” Joinville said. “We are still investigating the incidents, and we are communicating directly with both the complainants and Council staff.”

In 2024, the Clerk’s office granted more than 20 requests for interpretation services in collaboration with GLOBO Language Solutions, the city’s contracted translation services provider, Thompson said. Those services included translations for budget hearings, committee hearings, council sessions, Council members’ individual constituent meetings, and telephone translation services.

A “vast amount” of Council’s estimated $30,000 bill for translation services came from fiscal year 2025 budget hearings and deliberations over the proposed Sixers arena in Market East, Thompson said. GLOBO charges roughly $2,000 for a translator for a standard City Council session.

Chinatown residents and business owners were among the loudest critics of the plan to put the arena on the neighborhood’s edge. The plan for the Center City arena was eventually abandoned when the basketball team struck a deal with Comcast Spectacor to remain in South Philly.

And as budget hearings for the next fiscal year approach, Kligerman said it’s imperative for city leaders to prioritize “language justice” in their departments. For the domestic workers that Kligerman represents, the denial of an interpreter of a translator for the March 12 briefing is “infuriating.”

“It reinforces the reason that we need to do hard work, that we need a budget that invests in people and their ability to understand and participate in the processes in our city, and that includes understanding what happens when they go to City Council,” Kligerman said.

All city departments and offices are required to prepare and implement a language access plan and an annual report on the implementation of that plan must be reported to OIA, according to the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter.

OIA, which currently is operating without a director, did not comment on City Council’s language access plan, but Joinville confirmed that Language Access Philly is responsible for evaluating such plans including investigating and responding to public grievances.

Lina Martinez-Hernandez, a worker-owner of the COMPA Philly Language Justice Cooperative, which PACA had hired for O’Rourke’s briefing, said that language accessibility is often an afterthought for public institutions and political campaigns and can benefit from more financial support or capacity building to train more interpreters.

“That’s not something that you should leave toward the end of your planning,” Martinez-Hernandez said. “It should be from the beginning. It should be embedded, and our understanding of creating spaces that are multilingual and that guarantee that everybody can express themselves in the language that they feel comfortable with.”