City Tampered with LLAD Tax Vote

The City of Oakland gave a privileged property owner – the Port of Oakland – extra votes in the recent mail ballot on a proposed increase of the Landscape and Lighting Assessment (LLAD) tax.

ORPN previously reported how the City rigged the LLAD vote with outlandish determinations of how much "benefit" one property or another receives from park maintenance, tree trimming, and street lighting. Although a flagrant violation of any democratic standard, it is not automatically illegal.

However, citizen activist David E. Mix has uncovered outright vote tampering. The votes of homeowners, apartments, and other properties were weighted by the proposed increase in their LLAD assessments – but the Port of Oakland's vote was given extra weight at its total proposed assessment. Port votes were simply manufactured out of thin air.

Instead of votes reflecting approximately a proposed half million dollar tax increase, the Port cast nearly three times as many votes: 1.4 million. Meanwhile, each homeowner vote was typically weighted at 67 or 72, the amount of their proposed increase, not their total proposed assessment of 169 or more.

Port of Oakland got votes for its entire proposed assessment, while single family homeowners got votes only for the proposed increase in their LLAD tax.

With the City's vote tampering, the LLAD "passed" by 400,000 votes. The Port was given about 850,000 illegal extra votes, all dutifully cast for the tax increase. (See the evidence here.) Without the tampering, the LLAD increase was defeated.

California law governing assessment districts like the LLAD requires, "The ballots shall be weighted according to the proportional financial obligation of the affected property." (California constitution, Art. XIII D, section 4e) City staff stated, "If the 'yes' ballots received, weighted by the assessment increase amount, exceeded the 'no' ballots received, weighted by the assessment increase amount, the City Council could impose the LLAD assessment increase at the June 17, 2008 City Council meeting." (June 17, 2008 memo)

David Mix raised the vote-tampering issue at the June 17, 2008 meeting of the city council. Councilmember Pat Kernighan replied with contempt, "Recognizing that Mr. Mix opposes every single bond issue that's ever happened, and has sued us many times, and I have many reasons to doubt what he says, I do think it would be good for the public to hear our attorneys or staff talk about why this vote was proper and accurate and legal." In fact, the tally was improper, inaccurate, and illegal.

The same councilmember Kernighan worries that the Dellums-Edgerly scandal is eroding "the public's faith that there is any accountability at all in city government." (San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 2008) Exactly, except councilmembers are worried only about public perception, not the reality.

Who masterminded the vote tampering?

• Councilmember Quan, smarting from voters' defeat of a LLAD increase in 2006, took the lead in pushing a LLAD increase this Spring.

• Dan Lindheim, formerly in the mayor's office, then head of the community and economic development agency, and now acting replacement for city administrator Deborah Edgerly, is believed to have worked out LLAD deals with the Port and the school district.

• Francisco & Associates tallied the vote on City contract. The firm dutifully reported a tally based on vote tampering. Outsourcing of democracy does not work.

• Kernighan and the city council as a whole refused to see the evidence of vote tampering.

City Hall specializes in tax-grabbing and failure to deliver promised services. Oakland officials are desperately trying to put the scandal of city administrator Deborah Edgerly behind them. They have violated Measure Y, the so-called violence prevention tax, again and again; residents have yet to see the additional police promised in 2004. Now councilmember Kernighan simply sneers at a resident who objects to the tampered LLAD vote.

Instead of providing an adequately staffed police force of 1,100 officers and other basic services, City officials tap the treasury to reward their favored supporters with giveaway grants and contracts. Every election seems to bring yet another tax proposal, named for a basic service but actually used to free up general fund money for political pork. Oakland winds up with half a police department and threadbare basic services, including reduced gardener staffing for parks, the supposed benefit of the LLAD assessment.

Oakland voters rejected a LLAD tax increase in 2006 and again this year. But in this city, democracy and the law are hard to find.

Unless something is done quickly, Oakland residents will soon pay more money to the City as a result of the city council vote rigging and tampering. The city council has a choice. It can admit that voters defeated its proposed LLAD tax increase and rescind its order to collect the tax increase. Or the council can force a lawsuit, suffering immediate exposure of City Hall's contempt for democracy while it waits for a judgment that indeed collection of an increased LLAD tax is illegal.