Dems want to tax Bay Area residents for BART, whether they ride or not
Sacramento Democrats have found a creative new way to raise taxes.Instead of asking voters in five Bay Area counties to decide separately whether they want to rescue failing transit agencies, they created a regional taxing district that treats millions as one giant voting bloc.Now supporters are celebrating the submission of approximately 306,000 signatures to place a sales tax on the ballot.Do not miss the point: The signatures were not the obstacle course.
They were the shortcut.Only 186,000 valid signatures were required to qualify the measure.The proposal would raise roughly $1 billion per year for 14 years, or about $14 billion.The new transit taxing authority could have placed the measure on the ballot itself.
Had it done so, however, the tax would have required two-thirds voter approval for passage.Instead, supporters chose the signature-gathering route, allowing them to seek voter approval with a simple majority vote.That was not just about qualifying the measure.
It was about lowering the hurdle required to pass a $14 billion tax increase.This is usually described as a BART rescue, but that understates the scope.The money would also prop up Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, VTA, SamTrans and other Bay Area transit agencies.It is a five-county transit bailout, with BART as the most visible patient on the operating table.The tax itself has not yet been approved.
What Sacramento Democrats passed, and Gov.Gavin Newsom signed, was legislation creating the regional taxing structure and authorizing voters to decide whether to impose the tax.Under this arrangement, residents of five counties are pooled together.
If enough voters across the region support the measure, everyone pays.A taxpayer in San Jose could pay a tax driven by voters in San Francisco.That may be legal.
It is politically convenient.If supporters believed every county would approve this tax, they would not need a regional super-district.But the vote structure is only part of the story.The question ...