Commentary: Cities must stop using tax dollars to advocate under the thinly veiled guise of education

After Stanton residents voted to increase their own sales tax, the city’s finance director crowed to his fellow municipal finance directors about his city’s successful campaign in the May 2017 issue of the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers magazine. According to his article, the only thing that “went wrong” was that Stanton “didn’t suppress the opposition with one-on-one meetings early.”

Cities throughout our state have been using Orwellian tactics to “suppress” opposition to tax increases through coordinated and premeditated “education campaigns.” These campaigns operate in a gray legal area because each campaign uses public resources to accomplish its goals.

The California Supreme Court, in Stanson v. Mott, stated resolutely that “a fundamental precept of this nation’s democratic electoral process is that the government may not ‘take sides’ in election contests or bestow an unfair advantage on one of several competing factions.”

The Supreme Court, in Vargas v. City of Salinas, then created its own gray area exception by allowing governmental entities to express publicly an opinion on the merits of a ballot measure so long as the governmental entity “does not expend public funds to mount a campaign on the measure.”

Cities undeterred by the Stanson prohibition, or blinded by their own fiscal desperation of their own making, have driven Mack trucks through the Vargas limited exception. Cities throughout our state are hiring political campaign consultants or public relations firms to “educate” the public on the cities’ opinion. At what point, though, do campaigns move from education to advocacy?

In 2010, for example, the city of Tracy hired a political campaign consultant, the Lew Edwards Group, in connection with a sales tax increase. According to the city’s PowerPoint presentation, the consultant conducted a poll to determine “campaign messaging,” draft the “ballot arguments” and create the “ballot question wording.” The city then sent “education materials” to voters through broadcast television and city-created newsletters, presentations, emails, and even sent the materials through utility bill inserts.

Campaign consultants respond to cities’ requests for proposal by touting their “wins” or “successes,” which they define by whether a tax measure passes. Where the objective is supposedly public education, though, winning and losing or success and failure cannot be measured by ballot box results.

Enough is enough. Cities must stop using tax dollars to advocate under the thinly veiled guise of education.

The city of Newport Beach recently passed a resolution prohibiting public expenditure on these “education” campaigns. We invite other city leaders to use our resolution as a model. We also invite residents throughout the state to demand that their leaders stop hiring campaign consultants who view tax increases as “wins.”

WILL O’NEILL is mayor pro tem of the city of Newport Beach.