Who backs $3 toll hike? You might be surprised
Some of Silicon Valley’s tech behemoths and other large employers are putting their money behind Regional Measure 3, the proposed $3 toll increase on the June 5 ballot.
If approved by voters, the toll would rise by $1 next year on every bridge but the Golden Gate, followed by subsequent $1 increases in 2022 and 2025, raising an estimated $4.45 billion over the next decade to pay for traffic-busting highway and transit projects.
Several groups have lined up in opposition to the measure, including transit advocacy groups TransDef and the Bay Area Transportation Working Group, as well as the taxpayer associations in several counties. But none of the opposition efforts appear to have filed the paper-
work to form a campaign to defeat the measure with the secretary of state’s office.
The Yes on Regional Measure 3 campaign has so far raised over $2.4 million.
That includes the two largest contributions, $350,000 from Facebook, which has a history of supporting transit in the Bay Area, and $250,000 from Kaiser Permanente, the region’s largest employer. BART Board Director Nick Josefowitz, who is running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors, also kicked in $150,000 of his own cash. Also in the top 10:
• Dignity Health: $125,000
• Salesforce.com $125,000
• HNTB Corp.: $100,000
• John Doerr (of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers): $100,000 Inc.:
• Silicon Valley Community Foundation: $70,000
• Google LLC: $50,000
• John Edward (Jed) York & Affiliated Entities, Including the Forty Niners Football Company LLC: $50,000.