San Francisco will lose special-election numbers game
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
February 3, 2009
I must admit to a lifetime of being math-challenged, but I understand enough to know when things don’t add up.
And that would clearly explain the addition/subtraction equation being bandied about by the great minds on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, who are trying to match their X’s and O’s against the formidable onrush of the state of the economy.
The supervisors, either this week or next, are prepared to vote up or down on a special election in June to give San Francisco voters the great opportunity to tax themselves silly in the worst recession since the late 1920s.
Why people who are losing their jobs by the thousands, have seen their once-mighty companies go belly-up and are wondering where their next paycheck may come from would support more self-appointed fiscal pain is a key question. But our supervisors have shown an ability to avoid the obvious in much the same way Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger managed to dance around the Arizona Cardinals’ defense in the waning moments of the Super Bowl.
Or to put it another way: Faced with a $575 million deficit, would you spend about $4 million in taxpayer money to hold an election that has a smaller chance at victory as a Chris Daly bid for mayor?
The answer should be self-evident, but I’m afraid our elected officials are steered not by the beacon in front of their eyes, but by the special union interests lobbying behind closed doors. And that is what will bring this episode front and center in the next week, when the board decides whether to raise about $55 million by upping the local sales tax to tackle its $575 million problem.
The most-lefty groups among us have rarely met a tax they didn’t like, and that’s why the so-called progressives on the board are considering a number of pie-eyed levies ranging from property, payroll and, incredulously, local vehicle-registration fees. The only problem with this idea is that the state is also considering a number of new tax hikes and the likelihood that voters are going to dip into their pockets not once, but twice, should be reason enough to delay any new fees.
But the real problem supervisors have is that no matter what taxes they embrace, they must be passed by two-thirds of the electorate, a benchmark so high as to essentially be unachievable. The last time such tax hikes were put on the ballot — when the idea was backed by both union and business groups — the measures went down in flames, and that’s when the economy was relatively flush.
As it is, each member of the board has been getting bombarded with e-mails and phone calls from small-business owners telling them not to hold a special election, showing that there is thin support for it — at least outside City Hall.
“It’s fairly simple — if they go for the ballot in June, they will lose,’’ said Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, one of the more thoughtful officials when it comes to dealing with fiscal reality. “The tenor of the debate has been so one-sided, but I think the reality is starting to resonate. It’s kind of like the World Series of Poker here, where people want to be all-in not realizing they’re facing an opponent with a straight flush up to the king.”
New board President David Chiu acknowledged that despite the long odds, the board will likely still have a vote on the June election.
“Obviously we don’t have a broad consensus on what should be on the ballot and it still begs the question about what we will be asking voters,” Chiu told me. “And whether we should spend $3.5 million [on the election] is a fair question and not one I’m taking lightly. I don’t think we should incur the cost unless there’s a good reason to move forward.’’
And there is not. As I have pointed out with as much humor as the occasion musters, The City doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. It spends wildly on public health programs and hospitals that most cities long ago curbed, and its health care costs and pension benefits spike around 25 percent each year.
So what the board must do, which it hasn’t to any formidable degree, is start cutting into the bloated bureaucracy our fearless leaders have created during the past 20 years, while the mayor tries to renegotiate labor contracts that always seem to sail through during election years.
And then cut. And then cut some more.
It may be new math to them, but it’s part of the curriculum that every elected official is being forced to learn.
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