Contentious race exposes division on BART’s board
Can BA RT weather the financial crisis wrought by a global pandem ic w it hout making deep cuts to its workforce?
Can the agency balance calls to rein in law enforcement power with the concerns of r ider s who feel unsafe on its trains?
Those are the burning questions facing BART as five of its governing board’s nine directors run for reelection this fall.
East Bay Director Debora Allen has answered them by calling for much more aggressive moves to slash spending, including job cuts, and by vocally defending BART police from their critics — making her a lightning rod for controversy on the agency’s progressive- dominated board. As a result, her reelection bid for the seat representing a suburban swath of central Contra Costa County has turned into the most contentious of this year’s BART elections.
Six of the board’s nine directors — many of whom have clashed with the more conservative Allen — have endorsed her opponent, a health care marketing manager f rom Wa lnut Creek named Jamie Salcido.
“They are intolerant of a different viewpoint,” Allen said of her fellow board members. “T hey would love to replace me with someone who goes along with what they want and believe.”
The union representing BART police officers gave Allen $10,019 in August, added to the $1,000 it contributed last year. Salcido’s biggest donation came from another BART director, Rebecca Saltzman, who is running unopposed for reelection and contributed $2,500.
Salcido says Allen’s approach has undermined the director’s effectiveness. Salcido believes she would be the better representative for the district, which stretches from Martinez to San Ramon, and includes Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill and Danville.
“BART is facing some
very serious problems, and we need people who are willing to work and collaborate to get things done,” Salcido said. “I don’t see that happening with the incumbent.”
There are three other c ompe t it ive ra c e s for BART board this year.
Board President Lateefah Simon is facing a challenge from Sharon Kidd, a consultant who has worked with the BART Police Department, for the district covering parts of San Francisco, West Oakland and West Contra Costa County.
Director John McPartland has two challengers — Steven Dunbar, an engineer and bike advocate, and Mike Wallace, an analyst in the finance department of an East Bay water agency. The seat represents Hayward, Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore.
A nd Director Bevan Dufty faces three challengers — activist Michael Petrelis, bike advocate Patrick Mortiere and engineer David Wei Wen Young — for his San Francisco district.
But none of those races has attracted the level of attention the board’s progressives have put toward unseating Allen.
With a professiona l background in accounting and finance, Allen describes herself as a budget hawk whose top priority is “being fiscally responsible for the taxpayers’ money.” Her focus on fiscal accountability helped her soundly defeat a threeterm incumbent in 2016.
BART ridership plummeted in March and is recovering at a snail’s pace — it now hovers around 50,000 trips per weekday, about 12% of pre-pandemic levels, which averaged over 400,000.
Still, Simon and other board members so far have been able to avoid laying off BART workers, leaning heavily on one-time emergency funding to keep the agency afloat.
Allen says that those decisions are irresponsible and that BART needs to make “some pretty deep cuts” to stay financially stable through what could be years of low ridership.
“To me, that’s just common sense: You have to start cutting the budget when you know you have a long-term problem,” Allen said.
Salcido, who has been endorsed by labor groups, including two unions representing BART workers, agrees that the agency needs to cut costs and “put everything on the table,” including layoffs. But she cautioned against cutting too aggressively, warning that the process of eventually rehiring and training workers for BART’s specialized jobs can be long and costly.
Allen, who has highlighted riders’ anxieties about crime in the system, has pushed for BART to hire more police officers and, despite its financial struggles, make a $90 million project installing more secure fare gates a top priority. As protests against police abuses spread this summer throughout the Bay Area, Allen has pushed back against that criticism.
“My role is to stand up for our law enforcement,” Allen said. “They are BART employees, and they are an integral part of our BART system.”
She believes voters in her suburban district back her up. The message she hears “loudly” from her constituents, Allen said, is, “We want more police, not less.”