Do you remember Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” comic strip in the 1970s, during the Watergate hearings? One strip showed hearing Chairman Senator Sam Ervin asking his assistant to call the first witness for the day. The assistant sheepishly admits that no witnesses were available to testify. This doesn’t disturb Senator Sam. With just a slight pause, he says, “Well, then, I open the floor to rumor and innuendo.”
This is the rumor and innuendo edition of Open Trench, in which fact and fiction may or may not coexist. You be the judge.
Topic 1: How did both the SMART train and Highway 101 widening get approved by voters? I think voters in Sonoma County twice failed to approve a quarter-cent “transportation” sales tax increase that was required before the state would widen the highway. And I remember that voters in Marin County failed to approve a quarter-cent SMART train sales tax increase. And yet both taxes ultimately passed. How did this happen? Well, the rumor is that a group of environmentalists sat down with a group of construction industry leaders and hammered out a deal: The environmentalists wouldn’t oppose a sales tax for highway widening if the construction industry would agree to support the SMART train tax.
Voila? Not quite. The freeway tax passed. But there was still vocal opposition to the SMART project in Marin County, where voters in favor of the tax increase didn’t reach the required two-thirds majority. The rule was that voters in both counties, Marin and Sonoma, had to approve the tax by two-thirds. In the first vote on SMART, Sonoma voters reached the required level but Marin voters did not. Magically, the rule got changed for the second vote. Instead of two-thirds in each county separately, an overall two-thirds vote combining the counties would be sufficient.
That, evidently, wasn’t enough to provide a margin of comfort for SMART’s leaders. They knew it was illegal to spend taxpayer money (from a previous transportation tax increase) to run a political campaign to get the SMART tax passed. So they cleverly decided to fund what they called an “education outreach campaign,” using more than $1.5 million of taxpayer money. There were tons of TV and newspaper ads showing crowded traffic on Highway 101, urging viewers/readers to approve SMART. There was no disclaimer saying, “We all know SMART will have virtually no impact on freeway traffic.” The ads were effective. The ads, plus the change in voter approval rules, plus the rumored environmentalist/construction industry agreement, led to a “yes” vote in Sonoma County large enough to overcome the less-than-sufficient “yes” vote in Marin County.
Topic 2: Let’s make a deal. A North Bay city needed to distance itself from a public safety employee who’d experienced some domestic difficulties. The rumor is that the city decided the most expeditious method of getting rid of this employee was to offer him an immediate disability pension, even though he wasn’t disabled and even though the employee was well short of normal retirement age. The employee saw the wisdom of this deal, especially since the “disability” designation made a major portion of the pension non-taxable. As a result, the now-ex-employee’s net take-home income actually went up.
Topic 3: Let’s make a deal, again. A North Bay city wanted its city manager to vacate his position. The rumor is that the city decided the most expeditious way to encourage a departure was to offer the employee lifetime health insurance for him and his family. Once again, the employee saw the wisdom of this deal. Such benefits, especially under the typical government employee Cadillac health plan, could be worth $20,000 or more per year, for life.
Topic 4: Just say “no” to transparency. A North Bay city contracted with a forward-thinking broker to handle employee benefits. As a value-added proposition, the broker offered to provide each employee with an individualized summary of his or her pay and benefits, with the value associated with each benefit: defined benefit pension plan, health insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, disability and life insurance, paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid holidays, built-in overtime pay, car allowance, numerous types of special pay, education incentives, health savings accounts—you get the idea.
But the whole proposal came to a screeching halt when the city dropped the “communication” project. Why? The rumor is that firefighters strenuously objected because they worried pay and benefit summaries would get into the hands of reporters, with a resulting public outcry about the high costs involved.
Topic 5: The benefits of coffee. A North Bay city is subject to a charter provision that entitles public safety employees to pay and benefits “comparable” to those offered in a group of comparison cities. This resulted in a steady—some might say soaring—level of pay and benefits for police and firefighters. The rumor is that city officials didn’t realize how ingrained the comparable-benefit mentality was until firefighters demanded free coffee in each firehouse because this benefit was provided in a majority of comparison cities. The rumor is that the city complied with the request.
But the story gets better. The rumor is that firefighters came back to the city nine months later, saying that the average cost to provide the coffee in comparison cities was $1.90 higher per firefighter per day than what this North Bay city paid. Therefore, the city should increase each firefighter’s pay by $1.90 per day.
Topic 6: Barriers to building. There’s a certain predictability in the way some proposed building projects in the North Bay are stymied. It isn’t just zoning issues, EIRs, design reviews, politics, tiger salamanders, the California Environmental Quality Act and litigation. It can be something quite devious. The rumor is that a proposed affordable housing project in Sebastopol ran into (yet another) roadblock when endangered wildflowers were surreptitiously transplanted onto the property. And it’s rumored that the same technique was used in opposition to the location of a proposed Highway 101 exit in Windsor. Let’s file this technique under Gather Ye Endangered Wildflowers While Ye May.
