Stop trying to hide bond tax amounts from local voters
The ends don’t justify the means when public officials seek voter approval for school construction, road funding or other municipal improvements.
For far too long across California local elected leaders, including those in the East Bay and Silicon Valley, placed bond proposals before voters without revealing in the ballot language that the measures would result in tax increases.
Then, last year, under a new state law, local governments were required to disclose the cost to taxpayers. But, as we saw, the law didn’t go far enough.
The Legislature should tighten the rules to ensure greater transparency — and local officials who claim to want that transparency, like those in San Jose, should support the effort rather than trying to undermine it.
At issue is the 75-word ballot question. In years past, the language sought voter approval for bond issues and described in appealing terms things the money would buy — new classrooms, affordable housing, repaved roads. But the wording rarely mentioned the tax increase needed to pay off the bonds.
Transparency opponents argued that voters already understood their taxes would rise. Actually, when the state seeks voter authority for bonds, taxes do not increase. That only happens with local measures — and voters deserve to be told the amount.
Finally, in 2017, the Legislature passed, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed, Assembly Bill 195, which requires ballot language for bond measures to include the additional tax rate and duration.
It was commonsense legislation: Tell people what they’re buying and how much it’s going to cost. Who could object?
Answer: Local officials so wedded to passing bonds that they want to hide the full truth from voters. And the bond industry and campaign consultants who stand to make large sums.
Last spring, that coalition of interests pushed unsuccessful legislation to delay implementation of the new transparency rules. It turns out that San Jose, according to a recent city staff report, helped lead the effort. Moreover, the City Council, at the urging of Mayor Sam Liccardo, last month voted 10-1 to resume that push this year. Only Councilman Johnny Khamis objected.
On Sunday, CALmatters columnist Dan Walters chastised the council and Liccardo for their latest move. Liccardo tells us it was never his intent to undermine transparency, but rather to protect the city from legal liability.
He and city staff say that the city must now provide exact tax rates to voters even though it’s impossible to know the precise amounts because the cost of issuing bonds fluctuates.
He has a point. But it’s easily addressed: Most jurisdictions, including San Jose, that placed bond measures on the ballot figured that out last year. They used their official projected tax rates, which they already must calculate.
Moreover, legislation proposed last year, AB 2848, by Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, R-Big Bear Lake, would have codified that approach, cleaning up the law to address the issue Liccardo and other city officials raise.
The bill also would have prevented game-playing by jurisdictions like San Jose and the Orinda Union School District, which made their tax rates on the ballot hard to understand. Orinda, for example, described the annual tax rate for its measure as “levying 3 cents/$100 assessed value,” requiring voters to do the calculation to determine that it was a tax of $30 per $100,000.
Rather than working to block transparency, as San Jose did last year, local governments across the state should advocate for Obernolte’s bill to ensure voters know what they’ll pay.
What leaders of San Jose and other local governments do will tell us which side of this fight they’re on — whether they really want voters to know how much taxes will rise.