After repeatedly voting to raise taxes, Oakland voters to decide on parcel tax
On Tuesday, voters in Oakland will decide whether to approve Measure E, a parcel tax being pushed by local employee unions.
The city has faced chronic budget deficits in recent years, and residents have voted repeatedly to raise their taxes in order to preserve public safety.
Measure E is the latest initiative. Supporters say it will stabilize the city's finances, but opponents say they've heard that all before.
Marcus Romero and Alberto Parra were out on their Saturday morning canvassing neighborhoods in Oakland to drum up support for Measure E. The initiative would put an additional $192 annual parcel tax on each property, ostensibly to support essential city services. Romero said it's an important issue with the voters.
"They have already had issues with there not being enough essential services," he said. "So, it's important to them to continue the ones we have and even expand those. So, definitely the people we've been working with, our members, are supportive of Measure E."
According to the ballot language, the funding could go to a whole host of services focusing on public safety.
"It's an important part of making sure that we address our 911 response times, that we keep our fire stations open, address our problem with illegal dumping, and make sure we fund solutions to homelessness," said SEIU Local 1021 staff member David Padilla.
It is the city employee unions that have driven the push for Measure E. The president of the firefighters' union, Seth Olyer, said it will help keep fire stations open.
"Everyone is excited and passionate about Measure E," he said, "because they recognize this will enable us to get out of the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. To be able to fund essential services with a stable source of income. We understand every dollar counts. And these dollars are going to go specifically and only to essential services."
But opponents say that's not necessarily true. In the ballot language — written by SEIU Local 1021, Oakland's largest employee union — the words "such as, but not limited to" appear when discussing the list of essential services the money could go to.
"The words, 'such as, but not limited to' are included in this language," said Loren Taylor. "And that means that everything that's promised, whether it's more officers or fire stations or new trucks, etc. It's not guaranteed, it's not binding. And so, the council can choose whatever they want to."
Taylor is a former Oakland council member. He said the same language was used 18 months ago in another successful tax initiative, Measure NN, which promised the money would go to build the police force up from 600 officers to at least 700. That never happened.
This time around, there is a lot more opposition to the idea of another tax hike.
Marleen Sacks is an attorney who joined a lawsuit against Measure E, demanding public records to see if the city colluded with the unions to put the issue on the ballot as a so-called "citizens' initiative."
"Originally, back in June of last year, Oakland was saying that they were projecting a $40 million budget deficit and that they were planning on filling that budget deficit with a parcel tax that the city itself was going to sponsor," explained Sacks. "And then, lo and behold, the city did absolutely nothing at all to draft the measure or get it put on the ballot. Instead, kind of coincidentally, the unions ended up, SEIU Local 1021, ended up being the one that put together the parcel tax language and funded the petition gathering process."
That matters because recent court rulings say tax initiatives that derive from the people can pass with a simple majority, rather than the 2/3 vote needed for those generated by governments. Opponents of Measure E think the tax hike is simply to avoid making any staff reductions or cuts to employee compensation, which Taylor said accounts for about 70% of all city spending.
"When the voters say, we're not going to keep giving you more allowance when you're not actually doing anything better or different, then they're going to say, 'Alright, we need to do better with what we have,'" he said. "It's not easy to go to the unions — your partners, your supporters who help to fund your campaign — and say, you know what? We just don't have the money to get this done. But that's what leadership is. And that's what Oaklanders are expecting."
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association is sponsoring a statewide proposition in November that would close the "citizens' initiative" loophole for tax increases.
If passed, all new tax measures would require a 2/3 vote for approval. There were dire predictions about what would happen if Measure E doesn't pass.
But just in the last few weeks, Mayor Barbara Lee submitted a proposal that somehow balanced the budget without closing fire stations and without relying on Measure E money. The firefighters' union president addressed that by saying, "the projected budget versus actual budget are very different."
