Measure AA: take a double look

Measure AA on the June 7 Primary Election ballot may be double-lettered because it deserves a double look. It supports a worthy goal of protecting and restoring the San Francisco Bay, but it asks voters to pay an annual $12 per household tax that grants new and unprecedented taxing powers over the entire nine-county Bay Area.
Measure AA pits voters’ environmental stripes against their native anti-tax creed. Which side voters come down on may depend on how well they read Measure AA and research its background.
Measure AA is being proposed by the San Francisco Bay Area Restoration Authority. It proposes a $12 parcel tax on all properties in the nine counties with a shoreline on the San Francisco Bay. (Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Solano, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara.) If approved by two-thirds of all voters in the nine counties the tax would generate about $25 million a year. Measure AA funds would be spent to “reduce trash, pollution and harmful toxins, improving water quality, restoring habitat for fish, birds and wildlife, protecting communities from floods and increasing shoreline access.”
Shouldn’t all nine of the local governments already be doing this? Can’t the very prosperous Bay Area afford $25 million for Bay restoration without more taxes?
 The San Francisco Bay has suffered a long history of human abuse, dating to the Gold Rush era when marshes and mud flats were filled to build San Francisco, Oakland and many docks and levees. Later, entire developments like Foster City, Treasure Island and the San Francisco International Airport (to name just a few) followed.
The basic argument in favor of Measure AA is that we are all Bay Area inhabitants that benefit from the San Francisco Bay. Measure AA argues that only a regional response can address the web of environmental, economic, recreational and climate change challenges.
This regional approach is both similar and different to other Bay Area regional agencies. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is another nine-county board. The MTC has appointed representatives from each county and serves as a clearinghouse for federal and state transportation funds. Taxpayers do not pay a direct tax to MTC.
The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is another nine county joint powers agency that influences housing laws, open space, zoning, transit, air quality, water projects and more. ABAG is led by a 38-member executive board, appointed by participating counties and cities. (Each of our county’s nine cities has an appointed representative.)
Measure AA’s San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority is actually a subcommittee of ABAG. Its members are appointed by ABAG appointees. Measure AA funds would be handled by an advisory committee to this subcommittee. It is this byzantine layering of appointed boards that has critics of Measure AA calling it “taxation without representation.”
Supporters of Measure AA are resting all their arguments on the altruistic goal of “saving the Bay.” They have the support of not only elected officials and environmentalists, but also prominent business groups. This coalition was formed around the need to find additional funds in larger counties like Alameda and Santa Clara, where both past and present development pressures on the Bay’s shoreline persist. Efforts like Sonoma County’s recent Sears Point and Tolay Creek wetlands restoration and trails projects have not proven to be enough. Yet our county completed these projects without the need for new special taxes.
Will too much reliance on Measure AA taxes erode the many local volunteer and grassroots efforts already in motion? Or, will the new tax be an indispensible boost to these projects? Will Bay Area elected officials fall dangerously in love with this “tax from afar” mechanism? Something just doesn’t sound right when voters in Cloverdale, Bodega Bay, Gilroy and Tracy all share the same parcel tax.
What’s next? A super train parcel tax?
— Rollie Atkinson