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Measure A is against the spirit of democracy

by Greg Perry

On June 6, we will be asked to approve a half-cent sales tax, called Measure A. We should vote no — Measure A is a political deal to pass an unrestricted tax for an inefficient agency.

Measure A is a combination of two taxes, one for the county and one for the VTA.

Multiple polls over two years indicated that the VTA tax could not pass. So they slipped the VTA tax inside a county tax that was polling better.

This is against the spirit of democracy. We should be allowed to vote for the tax increases that make sense, and against those that don't. We don't hide city taxes inside school taxes, and we shouldn't hide a VTA tax inside a county tax.

Which leaves us with a tax, unofficially half for the county and half for VTA.

The county tax is arguable. But county finances are pretty strong. Total revenues are up 6.8 percent over last year, and projected to continue to increase well above inflation. That's a lot better than most families get.

And county needs are relatively modest. Our county's poverty rate is half the poverty rate in the state as a whole: 7.5 percent versus 14.1 percent. With strong revenues and relatively moderate demands, we should be fine.

What problems the county has are the result of past county decisions. If you grow during the boom, you have to cut during the bust. But it certainly isn't a crisis.

Which leaves the VTA tax.

The VTA is one of the least efficient agencies in the nation. It costs us more to run a bus for one hour than nearly every other agency in the nation.

It isn't a question of cost of living. San Mateo, Oakland, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Boston, L.A., New York and Chicago all have a high cost of living. And we spend considerably more than every one of them.

It's a question of productivity. It also takes us more people to run a bus for one hour than other agencies.

It's expensive to run an agency that way, and, as a result, they have difficulty paying all the bills. One response to this would be to reform the agency and increase efficiency. Sadly, VTA costs continue to rise at roughly twice the rate of inflation.

VTA's response was to take nearly one fifth of the money from the 2000 tax and designate it for existing operations. Instead of getting more service, we're just paying more for the same service we already had.

And that tax had spending restrictions. This tax has none. What will happen this time?

We can be certain it won't be the long list promised by tax supporters. That list is a VTA list based on $2 billion more revenue than the county predicts.

Once you cut out that $2 billion, the transit portion isn't enough money to build and operate BART, let alone everything else. Add in cost overruns and ridership shortfalls, and it isn't even close.

This isn't the first time we've been promised these projects. Just six years ago, we passed a sales tax for the exact same list of projects. Only after the election did they mention that there were more projects than they could pay for.

Now, six years later, we have more promises and another tax. This time we should say no.

Greg Perry is vice mayor of Mountain View and is the city's representative on the VTA board.