Brown saves his election fire to blast gas-tax repeal measure
sand dwindling in the hourglass to Tuesday’s election, Gov. Jerry Brown held his first campaign event Friday: a rally to denounce Proposition 6, the measure to repeal a gas and diesel-fuel tax hike that Brown heavily promoted last year.
He appeared Friday morning beneath a patch of knobby sycamore trees at Greer Park in Palo Alto, with Highway 101 roaring in the background. At Brown’s side stood state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who authored SB1 — the 12-centper-gallon gas-tax increase and 20-cent-per-gallon diesel fuel hike that the Legislature passed to generate $5.2 billion annually for road repairs and transit improvements.
Rows of yellow- and orangeWith vested workers thronged the podium with “No on 6” signs, a mix of carpenters, pipe fitters, cement masons, iron workers, engineers and transit operators who stand to lose their jobs if the measure passes.
“Prop. 6 is a scheme and a scam, put on the ballot by — actually, they’re acolytes of Donald Trump,” Brown said in a fiery two-minute diatribe,
likely the only stump speech he’ll deliver before the election.
“Killing Proposition 6 is the right thing to do,” he continued. “It’s a bad idea. It’s dangerous. And it was cooked up by some shady politicians who used their campaign funds, because they thought they could fool the people. Well, the people aren’t fooled.”
GOP political action committees and donors spent more than $1 million to put the initiative on the ballot. Once it was certified, those patrons walked away, leaving the grassroots campaign and its San Diego-based talk-radio host chairman to fend for themselves.
“It shows individuals can be a force in politics,” Chairman Carl DeMaio bragged.
The battle appears to have personal dimensions for Brown, who otherwise sat on the sidelines this election. A champion of SB1, the governor served as a foil and bogeyman for the “Yes on 6” campaign: the guy in the top seat at the Capitol, whose big claim to fame is an ambitious but expensive effort to send bullet trains zipping from Southern California to San Francisco.
In September, the leaders behind Prop. 6 filed a 2020 ballot initiative aimed more directly at Brown. It would turn the state’s sales tax on cars into an alternative funding stream for transportation, and kill the governor’s pet project, a $77 billion plan for high-speed rail.
“Why did he choose this one issue in the campaign? Because it’s such a big deal,” Beall told The Chronicle. “Would you like to have a legacy where you failed to stop something like this, and then all the roads fall apart?”
Feelings of urgency pervaded the rally, which was quietly announced Thursday night with the location kept under embargo. Prop. 6 is trailing in polls — a new one from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies shows just 40 percent of voters support it — but its proponents aren’t lacking in pluck or enthusiasm.
DeMaio recently led a bus tour from San Diego to Sacramento, stopping at grocery store parking lots and auto body shops throughout the state, with an arsenal of yellowand-blue signs and a message about Democrats mismanaging taxpayer money. He frequently lambastes “the thieves in Sacramento” and accuses them of stealing everything from taxes to votes.
The coalition of unions, trade groups and transportation agencies that oppose Prop. 6 isn’t holding back, either. They raised nearly 10 times as much money as DeMaio and his allies: $45 million, compared with $4.8 million.
“We know Prop. 6 is a destructive initiative for California that must be stopped,” said Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss, who was among the speakers at Greer Park on Friday.
She and others touted some of the projects that transit agencies have completed with funding from SB1. In the South Bay, workers converted carpool lanes into express lanes to move traffic more swiftly between Highway 237 and Whipple Avenue. An effort is under way to repave most of Interstate 80 in the East Bay, and crews are hammering away at new connecting ramps to fix the crumbling intersection where Interstate 680 meets Highway 4.
Officials at Caltrans fear that construction on 400 state projects would be frozen if the gas-tax hike is undone, with thousands more efforts torpedoed at the city or county level.
Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters Union, cast the Prop. 6 debate as a matter of public safety. He listed the names of people killed when bridges collapsed during earthquakes because their foundations weren’t properly maintained. He noted that SB1 also funds shoulders on freeway lanes to protect construction workers, who would otherwise have to toil in the middle of traffic.
“If we allow a talk-show blowhard to sell Californians, and literally take them out in the desert with no water, then shame on us,” Rice said.
DeMaio criticized the gas-tax increase for raising California’s already high cost of living, and dismissed Friday’s rally as a political stunt.
“No amount of false partisan rhetoric changes the fact that nearly 1 million Californians — half of whom are Democrats or independents — put Prop. 6 on the ballot and will be voting ‘Yes on 6’ on Tuesday to repeal the unfair tax hikes,” he said.