There they go again, the parcel tax crowd. Not content with already having imposed the highest property taxes in the Bay Area, the union-dominated lefties of Oakland are now proposing massively higher parcel taxes on homeowners. The June ballot is likely to raise parcel taxes by an additional $150-$220 a year per property, according to Oaklandside, which stresses that “the idea dates back to the budget proposed by then-Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins earlier this year and approved by the City Council in the spring.”
Thanks, Kevin.
Meanwhile, Oakland Report adds, “The City of Oakland is coordinating with public employee unions” to ensure the parcel tax gets on the ballot and passes.
What’s really going on? Oakland claims to need the money because of “extreme fiscal necessity,” which is bureaucratese meaning they can’t balance the budget because the unions won’t let them. Homeowners already are crushed beneath the highest parcel taxes in the Bay Area, yet greedy Jenkins and his City Council insist on still more. The City Council could itself vote to put the parcel tax measure on the June ballot, but there’s a twist: if it did, the measure would be considered “city-sponsored” and thus the approval threshold would be two-thirds (66.67%) of the total vote. But if the measure is “citizen-sponsored,” it requires a simple majority (50% plus 1). The former is not likely to pass; the latter, in this renter-dominated city, is guaranteed.
But having a ballot measure be “citizen-sponsored” is difficult. You need lots and lots of signatures on petitions, far more than a normal citizen could gather on her own. That’s why you see so many young people standing in front of supermarkets and on street corners urging passersby to sign their petitions. As I wrote here two weeks ago, young, dumb people circulate the petitions, for which they’re hired by the unions and paid good money too. Then, dumb people sign them, not least in hope of punishing greedy old homeowners, whom they see as exploiting poor people.
Where does all the money to pay signature gatherers come from? From the employee unions, of course. Led by SEIU, they’ve formed a fake group, called Oaklanders for a Safe, Clean & Healthy City, which makes it sound like a group of concerned citizens when it’s anything but. They then hire unemployed people looking to make some easy money to circulate those petitions. It’s all a scam.
California Franchise Tax Board documents show that the contributors to Oaklanders for a Safe, Clean & Healthy City are the firefighters union ($150,000), the electricians union ($50,500), SEIU ($200,000), and, oddly, PG&E ($50,000), which does a lot of contract work for Oakland. The total is $450,500.
Where did all that money go? The vast majority—in fact, even more than the total raised—went to private firms that hire petition gatherers. Four large ones dominated: AdMail Express, On The Ground, Coco Partners and West Coast Petitions, together collecting a total of $472,300 in payments.
So this is what “the City of Oakland coordinating with labor unions” means. Meanwhile, and not entirely unrelated, our glorious Mayor, B. Lee, wants to remove fewer homeless camps in Oakland, in order to “to respect the humanity of people who fell into homelessness.” Not only that, according to the East Bay Times, she wants to “pay homeless people to pick up litter”—trash and garbage that they, themselves, dumped.
Well, that should work out nicely. The more that homeless people litter our city, the more money they’ll make! Look, you live in a city where your leaders like homeless people. They want them to move here—remember, Libby Schaaf invited them! And these leaders, from Lee and Jenkins on down, have formed a devil’s pact with the unions to keep each other in power, even as we watch Oakland spiral, spiral down the toilet. They don’t give a damn. Do you?
Steve Heimoff