BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A lawyer has accused a Bay Area housing agency of misleading voters on a regional bond measure, prompting the agency to consider revising the ballot question with a more expensive price tag.
Attorney Jason Bezis sent a letter to the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority on Aug. 2, saying the agency understated how much money would be raised by the $20 billion bond.
The ballot question for Regional Measure 4 says the bond would raise $670 million for housing each year, when the correct number is $911 million, Bezis said.
Attorney Kathleen Kane, representing the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, said she agrees with his calculations. Kane is recommending the agency update the ballot language with the accurate number — 36% higher than what’s currently slated for the November ballot. Bezis brought up 10 other issues with the language of Regional Measure 4 and threatened to sue the agency if the measure isn’t revised.
An executive committee for the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which was created in 2019 to oversee the measure and distribute funds to nine counties, will meet this morning in San Francisco to consider changing the dollar amount. The board will also discuss the lawsuit threat behind closed doors.
The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority is technically its own agency created by the state in 2019, but the board is one and the same as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is considering a transportation measure in 2026.
The board is made up of locally elected officials from around the Bay Area. Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez and San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa are on the committee that will vote today (Aug. 8).
The housing agency unanimously approved the measure on June 26, despite polling data showing that 54% of respondents in a poll would approve the measure. This bond requires two-thirds approval to pass, but officials are hoping that another statewide ballot measure passes in November that would lower the threshold to 55%.
Regional Measure 4 would increase property tax by about $19 per $100,000 of assessed value, or around $760 a year for a home with an assessed value of $4 million.
Supporters say a $20 billion bond measure would pay for the construction or preservation of 72,000 affordable homes in the nine-county Bay Area over the next 15 years. That’s double the number of homes built or preserved without the bond, the housing agency said.
The total cost of the bond is an estimated $48 billion, paid off by 2078, according to the tax rate statement in the voter guide.
So Biden opens the borders so that 10 million or so illegal immigrants flood into our country. They get free health care (the bills of the insured go up to pay for this), free food (taxes increase), free schooling (crowded classrooms, school violence) and we’re going to be taxed directly to house them in our cities. And now we learn that they won’t even be honest about how much money they’re going to take from us. I urge people to vote NO!
California uses to be known for Transparency. They have taken things for granted. Once notified of error they had an emergency closed door session? Own up to the mistake and make sure there are none going forward.
There goes their $241 million per year slush fund. Vote no on Regional Measure 4.
Any group that is lying to you on the ballot measure will spend your money poorly.
The questions for local ballot measures are limited by law to this question:
“Shall the measure (stating the nature thereof) be adopted?”
The quotes are in the statute, Elections Code section 13119.
The “nature thereof” according to the California Supreme Court (Boyd v. Jordan (1934) 1 Cal.2d 468) is just what the dictionary says — its essence.
3 b : the inherent character or basic constitution (see CONSTITUTION sense 2) of a person or thing : ESSENCE
the nature of the controversy
Its essence is that the measure authorizes bonded debt and a tax (above the 1% limit) on the value of all property to pay the principal and interest.
This lawyer is poking at insignificance while the gorilla in the room is a ballot title and summary (prohibited by law for local measures, only statewide measures have ballot titles and summaries) that even has bullet points to direct the voter’s attention to what the government wants the voters to know.
Any description on the ballot of what a measure does violates the First Amendment (viewpoint discrimination, compelled speech) and the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection). It’s impossible not to, because a description or summary or whatever, by its very nature, is choosing what’s significant, but only from the government’s viewpoint.
By the act of writing a description, rather than stating the nature of the measure, the government is taking an unconstitutional point-of-view and forcing it down the people’s throats. The very act of deciding what to include in a description violates the rights of everyone with a different viewpoint.
The landmark case Stanson v. Mott ((1976) 17 Cal.3d 206) made the use of public moneys by the government to take sides in an election, not only unconstitutional, but also made the officials making those expenditures criminally and personally liable.
We need better lawyers.
The MTC has squandered millions engaging in “social engineering” initiative that are never adopted but cost millions to “Study”. For example making 37 a 3 lane road to discourage autos with complete disregard for the thousands stuck in traffic commuting to our schools in Marin with no public transit option. Why study how to put people in their cars for months out of the year when the solution is obvious and no three-lane road will ever be built? This is the wrong crowd to use billions of our money to “experiment” instead of only building affordable housing. Vote No until we get a housing first regional oversight organization.
Where is my comment?
Vote no.