By Marc Joffe, Contra Costa Taxpayers Association and Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit
This November, voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties will decide on the largest regional tax increase in Bay Area history. The measure, authorized by Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 63, would raise sales taxes by half a percentage point in four counties and a full percentage point in San Francisco for fourteen years, extracting roughly $1 billion annually from Bay Area consumers to subsidize BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, VTA and other agencies.
The Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit (CABAT) is leading the opposition, and our case is straightforward. First, this is a regressive tax. Sales taxes fall hardest on working families who spend most of what they earn, and several Bay Area cities already have combined rates above 10 percent. Second, the agencies seeking this bailout have refused to right-size themselves. Ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels, yet transit operators have preserved bloated payrolls, with hundreds of BART employees collecting total compensation packages well into six figures. Third, taxpayers already contribute generously: Bay Area transit agencies collect billions in subsidies each year while covering only a small fraction of their costs at the farebox. Handing them a fourteen-year revenue stream removes any incentive to reform, consolidate overlapping bureaucracies, control labor costs or migrate to driverless operation. The measure asks taxpayers, most of whom rarely if ever use transit, to pay more so that the agencies can change nothing.
This is also a fight we can win. Sales tax measures need only a simple majority under the citizen-initiative route the proponents chose, but recent county tax measures have shown surprisingly soft support once voters learn the details. We defeated a sales tax on the June ballot in Contra Costa County by a wide margin. A five-county measure gives suburban voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, who see little benefit from San Francisco-centric transit spending, every reason to vote no. The proponents will spend millions to scare voters into compliance; our job is to give voters the permission they need to follow their inclination to vote against another increase in the Bay Area’s already excessive cost of living.
That is where you come in. The opposition effort is a coalition of Republicans, independents and centrist Democrats across all five counties, and it offers something Bay Area Republicans rarely get: a chance to be part of a local majority that builds relationships beyond the party. We need more people willing to spread our message on social media and to post yard signs.
To learn more, visit our website at transitaccountability.com, where you will find our sales tax calculator, agency compensation data and campaign updates. If you can, please donate to the campaign to help us reach voters before the proponents define the measure unopposed. Ballot fights are often won by the side that shows up, so let’s show up.
