Hard to believe but a potentially long San Francisco ballot in November is being driven by the expectation of a more liberal electorate. Excuse me, but we’re talking about San Francisco here. How much more liberal can the electorate get? Republican registration is in single digits, below 8%.
San Francisco’s ballot in November could contain as many as 39 measures for voters to decide. That is not including the 17 measures on the state portion of the ballot. Unlike the state ballot however, in which 88% of the measures were put on the ballot by citizen signatures, in San Francisco only 18% came by the initiative process. Of the total number of ballot proposals, potentially 28 measures could come from the mayor and supervisors.
It’s fair to note that 7 of the 28 measures are tax increases, which are required to go before voters. Another tax increase proposal comes from the city college board. Property owners potentially face two parcel taxes for sidewalks and the City College and a transfer tax on property valued at more than $5 million, there is a tax on sugary drinks and another on gasoline, a sales tax for homeless services, one for transportation, and a payroll tax on tech companies.
Most all the tax increases will require a two-thirds vote so that is a motive to search for that more liberal electorate.
In San Francisco, it is assumed most tax measures can reach majority approval or greater but can they get past the two-thirds marker?
As you can probably guess, politics is largely involved in the number of non-tax measures. Read Emily Green’s account in the San Francisco Chronicle and you’ll see that many of the issues are driven by political gamesmanship.
Examples: a supervisor in a tight race for a state senate seat offered a proposal to dictate to the police staffing requirements in neighborhood crime units. Competing measures, each introduced by a different supervisor, deal with homeless encampments.
There is still time to thin the number of measures on the ballot if the supervisors and mayor can come to compromise positions.
While San Francisco voters are used to long ballots its fair to ask exactly what do the taxpayers of San Francisco pay their elected officials to do if the officials want to shift so much decision-making responsibility to voters?