Why do governments have to vote twice to support what their citizens want to do with taxes?

This time, sanity prevails. But escape clauses and tricky book-keeping hide how tax monies can get spent in opposition to voter preference, as recent Measure B kerfuffle illustrates.

On January 28, 2020, the San Jose City Council voted to oppose efforts to reallocate funds from 2016's, voter-approved half-cent sales tax hike (Measure B) away from their stated purpose--roadway improvements--and toward mass transit options that were not identified in the Measure.

While the council vote reaffirmed voter intent, the drama highlighted two notable trends regarding how and why governments can thwart voters' direction as expressed at the ballot box.

* Governments can change their mind about how to spend tax monies after they have been allocated. The upcoming San Jose Measure E, if it passes, may never be spent on its stated intent--subsidizing affordable housing--and may, because it's a General Fund tax, ultimately be spent on union pension payments. Similarly, built into the Measure B initiative language was an escape clause that allowed the VTA to redirect funds from the measure if they can get 75% of the VTA board to approve the change. Note that the VTA does not have to go back to the voters to change the allocation. As Pierluigi Oliverio of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers' Association puts it, "sometimes governments put in broad language to give them flexibility, but it can be overbroad and certainly does not build trust with the taxpayers."

* Governments can essentially treat tax monies from different sources as fungible--pretending to cut expenditures from one account, and then shifting monies from another account to make up the difference. Alert readers will note that the VTA, in 2019, responded to its financial troubles by cutting a number of lower-performing bus routes and focusing resources on more popular, high-ridership routes. Transit advocates, however,  suggested that VTA use Measure B Funds identified as road improvement funds, to essentially undo the VTA cuts and re-start bus routes that the VTA previosuly tagged as lower-performing.

According Oliverio, "Moving money around like this, away from projects that voters say they want and towards other projects they didn't vote for is disingenuous. Governments that do this will lose the trust of the community, especially when they propose another tax increase down the road.

"The suggestion in this instance, to move money from roads to busses, is really diverting taxpayer money from infrastructure improvement--improving roadways--and towards personnel that drive busses. This is not what people voted for with Measure B.

"Taxpayers can lobby their elected officials to remind them of what the measure was meant to pay for. But if they are unsuccessful, litigation is always an option. But not everybody has the  power to litigate, so sometimes that is left to taxpayer groups to provide that check on government malpractice."

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