BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
Bay Area political leaders have revealed their strategy for getting voters to approve a half-cent sales tax increase for mass transit: Crying wolf.
Caltrain said on Thursday that if you don’t approve the tax increase, they’ll close 10 stations, end weekend service, stop trains at 9 p.m. and eventually wind down operations.
Horrors! We’ve never heard this before, right?
Actually, they pulled this stunt in 2020 in order to get voters to approve a sales tax increase called RR.
Caltrain said that if voters rejected RR, they’d have to close during the pandemic.
Voters passed RR. It was supposed to give Caltrain $108 million a year to help them deal with declining revenue because fewer people were taking the train.
‘Citizens initiative’
Now Caltrain is back for more money. Caltrain is part of a $980 million Bay Area-wide half-cent transit tax proposal headed for the November ballot.
The strategy is two fold:
1. Cry wolf.
2. Pretend it’s a “citizen initiative” so that it can pass with only a majority vote, not the two-thirds that a tax increase would normally require.
Usually, if the government wants to increase taxes, it would have to get a two-thirds vote of approval. But the state Supreme Court, in the 2017 case California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, said that the two-thirds threshold doesn’t apply if the measure was the product of a citizen initiative independent of the government.
Who are these ‘citizens’?
So with a wink-and-a-nod, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is pushing this transit tax, handed the baton to a recently-created citizens initiative committee. This committee is funded by Genentech, Meta, PG&E, Visa, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (that donates money on behalf of the super rich) labor unions (some of whom represent workers for transit agencies) and the owners of the Golden State Warriors among others. I guess they’re all citizens.
Now this citizen initiative is circulating petitions to put the tax increase on the ballot in November.
Of course, MTC says the committee is totally independent of the government. If they get the signatures they need, this tax increase will hit the November ballot in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties.
Does it need to pass in all five counties? Nope.
If voters in San Mateo County, for instance, were to reject the tax, but it drew enough votes in the other counties, the tax would go into effect in San Mateo County. Same for Santa Clara County.
In addition to Caltrain, the money would support BART and other transit agencies.
Audit their spending
Before going to the ballot, Caltrain and the other transit agencies should have hired outside experts to go over their spending to find fat that could be cut.
An outside observer would ask the question — why do these agencies have so many white-collar bureaucrats and why are they paid so much?
Michelle Bouchard, head of the San Mateo County Transit District and CEO of Caltrain, got $371,696 in total pay in 2024 and $500,733 in total benefits, according to Transparent California, the salary disclosure site.
The transit tax proposal would have more credibility if taxpayers were presented with an audit that showed whether they were spending money wisely now. Outside auditors like Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and KPMG perform such services for businesses all the time.
Sure, the agencies do a state-mandated bare-bones audit, but it doesn’t provide insight about spending.
Long-range thinking missing
Nobody is talking about the bigger issues, such as whether it makes sense to keep pouring money into Caltrain. Caltrain’s ridership was dropping before the pandemic. Today, it has only recovered 64% of its riders.
Caltrain may not be needed in the future because San Francisco isn’t the job center it once was. When Caltrain began, people needed a way to get from the Peninsula suburbs to the city for work every day. Now jobs are spread out throughout the Bay Area. Employers have fled San Francisco due to its high taxes, crime and filth.
Does Caltrain have a place in the Bay Area of the future?
Trains summons feelings of nostalgia. People like taking them to Giants games rather than dealing with the hassle of parking. Some Caltrain supporters dress up as conductors or engineers and run toy train sets in their basements.
Nostalgia is fine, but a half-cent sales tax penalizes everyone. Remember, the costs of this railroad were previously covered by people who paid fares to ride the train. Caltrain doesn’t work as a business anymore, so people are being asked to dig into their pockets to support this bloated bureaucracy that just got a $108 million annual tax bailout.
No more money, Caltrain. You got your tax increase in 2020. Live with it or die.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
This is exactly right. Transit agencies never tell the whole story they just try to scare everyone. Is this the way government should act?
Yesterday at Caltrain in SF, rush hour. A line of commuters waiting to board the express train. Four Caltrain employees are checking tickets with handheld devices to ensure everyone has paid.
This task could be performed equally well by a fare gate, supervised by one employee—not 4.
Caltrain does not need more money. Its well-compensated leadership must cut costs, including unionized staff, and will surely find savings for at least half the anticipated shortfall. Until they do this, absolutely no new tax dollars for our wasteful transit system.