Connect Bay Area organizers pushing for sales tax to fund public transit

By Max Darrow

With every signature she gets, Lian Chang is a step closer to what she believes will be the answer to the Bay Area avoiding a public transit catastrophe.

“We are at a true crossroads,” she said.

She’s an organizer for Connect Bay Area, or SB 63, a proposed ballot measure that would change the funding model for public transit as numerous agencies veer towards fiscal cliffs that would result in major service cuts, if left unaddressed.

“If you think about cutting half of the service? It’s not super usable anymore,” Chang said. “A lot of people who can choose are going to be choosing to get into their cars and creating traffic for everyone. The people who can’t choose – Are they even going to be able to get where they need to go?”

The solution proponents like Chang hope to put to in front of voters is $1 billion in yearly funding for public transit, through a half-cent sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, and a one-cent sales tax in San Francisco.

“It’s a heavily negotiated measure that brought a lot of people to the table for two years to discuss and come to a very difficult consensus across the Bay Area,” she said.

In her conversations with potential voters, she says some people are immediately on board. Other times, people are somewhat skeptical about service cuts.

“They hear it and they’re like, ‘Oh, this all looks terrible with service cuts, but they wouldn’t let that happen. Like, people would do something about it.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, right now, this is us doing something about it,'” she said. “I think we should be scared. I think getting this information out is really crucial. It’s real information and what would really happen.”

Others see the situation differently.

“Yes, I do think it’s a scare tactic,” said Marc Joffe, the President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association. “We’re really subsidizing public transportation quite a bit. They’re looking for quite a bit more. I think at some point, we have to have a limit.”

Joffe believes transit agencies can be run more efficiently and in a more cost-effective manner.

“We’re in a long-term trend of increasing costs and stagnant to declining ridership,” he said.

He suggested some agencies could even consolidate.

“We have four different bus agencies [in Contra Costa County],” he said. “Why do we need four agencies with four managing directors and four personnel directors and so forth? Why not merge those into a smaller number of agencies and reduce administrative costs?”

Joffe doesn’t think taxpayers should be the ones to bail out the system.

“If the tax doesn’t pass, BART is still receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of federal and state aid, and local taxes,” he said. “If they can’t run a system of 50 stations with several hundred million dollars in their budget, I think that’s a problem.”

On top of that, he takes issue with a second possible sales tax measure on the ballot for Contra Costa County.

“Let’s say both of those pass. There are places in Contra Costa County where we are going to be above 11% sales tax,” he said. “That’s 11 cents per dollar that you have to pay extra for the government. I think ultimately, it becomes a question of, how much is too much?”

But Chang says action needs to be taken now to ensure transit can move into the future. Without a strong system in place, she says, there would be serious economic and environmental fallout.

“There are all times when we all rely on public transit. It’s a public service that we need to function as a society,” she said.

Proponents of SB 63 need to gather over 186,000 signatures by June 3 for the measure to qualify for the November ballot.