Spoiler alert: S.F. voters will reject tax hikes
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
February 23, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — The liberal ruling majority in San Francisco may not believe in trickle-down economics, but based on the actions of state lawmakers last week in passing billions of dollars in budgetary tax hikes, it probably should.
That’s because politicians only get so many bites of the apple, and the recent budget brawl pretty much chewed state taxpayers down to the core.
For those still reeling from Sunday’s Academy Awards show, the $64 million question facing city officials is whether San Francisco residents will support a series of new local tax measures to bail the mayor and supervisors out of their long-standing, free-spending ways.
And the answer in this corner is no, absolutely not, especially with a two-thirds majority needed for passage. There is a big gap between bleeding hearts and shrinking wallets, and the state just made it a lot more expensive to live and survive in our once Golden State.
State legislators — with a boost from one maverick Republican senator — just approved nearly $13 billion in new taxes for our fair citizens. Everything from clothing to electronics to cars is going to cost more at a time when people have less and less spare change for themselves.
A majority of our supervisors somehow believe they can piggy-back on that notion by asking voters for similar fee increases and property assessments so The City can beat back a looming $460 million deficit the board and Mayor’s Office have been putting off for years instead of dealing with it in a reasonable way.
That bill comes up in June, and the chances of getting voters here to double their taxes to quench the insatiable money thirst of our elected leaders are smaller than the odds were of Heath Ledger not winning a posthumous Academy Award.
I commend board President David Chiu for at least trying to slow the tax advocates down by pushing to get his fellow supervisors and union leaders to move off the concept of a June special election. But when I spoke to him before the state finally passed a budget deal full of new tax increases, it still sounded very much like a plan was alive to move ahead with a batch of added taxes.
“I think it’s still an open question based on what the state decides to do,” Chiu said.
The state has decided. It’s now an open question on what the board plans to do. Based on its recent history, it will likely ignore the obvious — people opposed to being charged more for less — and plunge further into the great tax-and-spend abyss.
It’s a fantasy borne out of an ideological belief that San Franciscans will support every public health and social program that crosses their path — hence the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent on so-called homeless programs that only brought more homeless people to San Francisco looking for free cash. Or, the fact that San Francisco essentially operates two major county hospitals at a time when most cities are desperately trying to get out of the business.
Meg Whitman, the newly announced GOP candidate for governor, last week summed up California’s fiscal nightmare as a situation in which the state can no longer afford its government. The same could have been said of San Francisco 20 years ago.
It’s not just a new series of proposed taxes coming our way, every conceivable fee, fare hike and parking raise is steaming toward us from every city department that can come up with its version of a public pay increase. The Recreation and Park Commission last week voted for a vast jump in fees for services the Recreation and Park Department supplies, and then capped it off with a plan to add 2,000 more parking meters in The City’s green spaces, including Golden Gate Park.
At some point, the buck has to stop. The generous citizens of San Francisco have supported billions of dollars in bonds for schools, libraries, parks and hospitals in recent years, but there is a limit to compassion — especially at a time when people are losing jobs at a rate not seen since the Great Depression.
“I think we’re getting to a point where you’d be hard-pressed to find a San Franciscan who hasn’t been laid off,” Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said. “I think the appetite for paying [The City] more is weak.”
Or, you could think of it this way: If supervisors really do push for a sales-tax increase on top of the one the state just passed, we could end up paying a 10 percent tax on all goods sold in San Francisco.
We could call it the Marin Stimulus Package, or the Peninsula Recovery Act, because there’s little doubt that’s where our happy shoppers will go.
Ken Garcia appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Examiner. Check out his blog at sfexaminer.com/opinion or e-mail him at kgarcia@sfexaminer.com.
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