ANOTHER SNEAKY TAX IN CALIFORNIA
Bridge Toll Increases
Look to the Past
It’s 2025, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) decided to raise Bay Area bridge tolls by another $2.50 phasing it in by $.50 a year until 2030. As any commuter knows, this is not the first time in the recent past when they did this, but at least back then, it was for bridge-specific work. In 1988, we approved Regional Measure 1 which added $1 to the price for operating, maintaining and replacing bridges, something we all knew was only going up in cost. Unfortunately, it also included money to improve BART (has it improved?), Caltrain and SF Muni. Another $3 was added in increments of $1 in 1997, 2007 and 2010. This was designed for the cost of seismic retrofitting and the replacement of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. But that should have been paid off at some point, shouldn’t it?
In 2004, voters again approved a measure—Regional Measure 2—to hike the toll another $1 and then, in 2018, approved Regional Measure 3 to phase in $1 hikes in 2019, 2022, 2025. The $2.50 requested is in addition to that. But although we might have all thought this was simply money for the bridges, it wasn’t. These measures were to help fund ongoing transit operations as well as improvements to transit, bike access and pedestrian projects (of which we’ve seen little). None of these hikes ever sunsets, even as some projects should be over at some point. Nor do any of the MTC agencies ever cut their budgets. In fact, they offer over-generous salaries and benefits to their employees and continue to hire, even during the Covid shutdowns when no one was riding.
Slush Fund Accounting
MTC didn’t bother to justify the $2.50 increase because they can’t. They comingle the bridge toll dollars, so no one knows exactly where the money goes. Most may assume that tolls only fund bridges, but that’s not so. The comingling also means no one appears to know how much money is still available to spend or what they will need in the future. There is no accountability and no independent audits, which are badly needed here. The increases are carefully managed to be small, but consumers, dealing with inflation and a bad economy have a heightened awareness when prices go up. At the same time, I did see BART had increases in their rates as well, unannounced. MTC commissioners just go along with recommendations without demanding any oversight.
There is some pushback, but not from the commissioners appointed to do it. Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, says he’s considering seeking a state audit of MTC finances. Cortese chairs the Senate Transportation Committee and serves on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which assigns tasks to the state auditor. “You’re asking the entire Bay Area to trust you with billions of dollars,” Cortese says. “You have to be able to show that your house is in order.”
When a project that was paid for using increased tolls is completed, there should be money that is no longer needed for the project. But there is no accounting for this. The argument is, “We are legally free to use any of the excess funds for bridge maintenance,” but how much are those funds? Why is more needed for maintenance? Where is the money going? It turns out MTC staff have also “borrowed” money from bond measures, but no one seems to know who got any of it.
Daniel Borenstein of the Bay Area News Group says he was approached by the MTC to provide editorial support for their plan to raise the bridge tolls again. That got him curious, so he requested accounting data to see how this demand was being justified. He also wondered why the money should be comingled, as that makes justification harder. The answer was that having a big “slush” fund made it easier to sell bonds. Okay. But you can still have accounting in the background. One should always know where money comes from and where it goes. We should all be able to get this data.
Why We Should All Care
First, any Californian knows that it is almost impossible to figure out where our tax money is going. The politicians keep this dark, especially when they have a massive fraud going on, giving unemployment checks to unqualified recipients during Covid. There are many examples of fraudulent payouts which are never clawed back.
If they get away with this time and time again, no agency will have an incentive to reduce their spending and manage their money prudently. Businesses must do this or they will go bankrupt. Our government should be held to the same high standard and be able to justify their current budget as well as any demand for new money. We should all know where our money is going at any point.
But it isn’t just MTC, and I suspect, it isn’t just California. Governments live on the dole, taking more and more money from our pockets because they aren’t audited deeply or often enough by independent auditors. We wouldn’t have the national debt if audits were done and publicly available. Any taxpayer in any state should be concerned. The MTC mismanagement has been revealed; where else is it happening? And more to the point, where is it NOT happening. In LA, the mayor took five international trips after swearing she wouldn’t use public money for this. What benefit did the people of LA get from her boondoggles? We need to crack down on this and deprive them of the freedom to waste out money.
I wish for a Taxpayer Initiative in every state demanding public audits of every agency with hard looks at waste, inefficiency, the over hiring and overpayment of employees. Imagine a smaller government, one we can afford. We’re all tightening our belts. Time to demand the same of our government.
