Our group of former members of the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury has devised a rating system to help voters recognize the deceptions in local measures on the March 5 ballot.
Traditionally, most local measures lack information that voters should have in order to make informed decisions. Worse, the local agencies behind the measures — cities, counties and school districts — often deliberately leave out that information.
Indeed, they usually hire consultants to help them craft the deceptive ballot language. They give you just part of the information — the good part that gets your vote of support.
State law requires that the ballot language “shall give a true and impartial statement of the purpose of the measure in such language that the ballot title and summary shall neither be argumentative nor be likely to create prejudice, for or against the proposed measure.” But the up to 75 words you see on your ballot for each local measure are reviewed and approved only by members of the jurisdiction proposing the measure, who want it to pass. It’s the classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
Typically, the language exaggerates benefits, glosses over costs and throws in meaningless stuff like “cannot be taken by the State” or “will only be spent in San Leandro” or hides the fact that the tax is permanent by saying, “until ended by the voters.”
General tax-increase measures regularly tout benefits popular with the public, like fixing potholes, more cops or housing the homeless. Unfortunately, those benefits are not actually required in the official ordinance raising the tax. Instead, the tax revenues could be spent on anything, and nothing need be spent on the improvements or services claimed in the ballot language.
This is not a Democratic or a Republican issue or a conservative vs. liberal issue. This is simply a question about transparency and good governance.
The ballot wording of Alameda County’s Measure W in 2020 was an example of the deception:
“Shall a County of Alameda ordinance be adopted to establish a half percent sales tax for 10 years, to provide essential County services, including housing and services for those experiencing homelessness, mental health services, job training, social safety net and other general fund services, providing approximately $150,000,000 annually, with annual audits and citizen oversight?”
If you thought this was about voting for money to fund homeless issues, it wasn’t. This measure would not require that a single dollar be spent on homeless issues. Instead, this was a general tax going into the general fund to be spent on any county expense. The giveaway is the phrase “and other general fund services.”
That’s just one example of how we’re being duped. To counteract this persistent problem, the 2021 Alameda County Civil Grand Jury recommended that the county Board of Supervisors create a watchdog review panel to check this abuse. Not surprisingly, the board refused, preferring to continue to mislead voters.
So the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Association, our group of former members of the grand jury, developed an effective review system of its own, rating measures on a five-point scale for accuracy and impartiality. Grand jury associations in other counties have shown interest in doing similar ballot-language evaluations.
Our ratings for the transparency of Alameda County measures on the upcoming March 5 ballot range from a low of 2.2 points for San Leandro Unified School District’s most-misleading bond measure language, to 4.2 for Piedmont’s parcel tax ballot wording, which was relatively straightforward and informative.
You can find the ballot title ratings on the Alameda County Grand Jury Association website at acgrandjuryassn.org.
Sandy McCabe is president and Michael Henn is a member of the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury Association.
