Don't File This One Under 'Stupid'

Perhaps you, too, received a 17-inch by 17-inch full-color mailing promoting Ignacio De La Fuente for mayor.
 
First on the list of promises: "Ignacio De Le Fuente will reduce crime." In support of the claim the brochure asserts, "Ignacio De La Fuente helped write Measure Q to hire 63 new police officers."
 
At first we thought, how stupid to send out a fancy mailing in full color, and you can't even keep Measure Y straight from Measure Q.
 
But we were wrong. De La Fuente knows that all parcel taxes feed into one budget along with the general fund revenues. The game is, you sell voters a new tax promising something nice. Once City Hall starts getting the money, however, the insiders replace general fund spending with the new tax money. That frees up general fund money for a political grant or more top-level managers serving the city council.
 
After all, the councilmembers would never submit a parcel tax by telling you, we will give some of the proceeds to PUEBLO, a private agency whose officers will rip off $185,000 for travel and jewelry – and also finance a campaign against more police. Yet that is exactly what happened, and De La Fuente has never called for an investigative hearing.
 
Measure Y, whether you call it Measure Q or not, fits the pattern. The money is being used in place of what used to be general fund money. We have fewer police now, around 700, than we had when De La Fuente "helped write" the measure.
 
Although De La Fuente adopted a limit on campaign spending, the brochure came from a group called OakPAC, not from De La Fuente. However, unless De La Fuente disavows the brochure's doubletalk about crime in Oakland, we must assume he is happy that OakPAC spent $40,000 printing and mailing the brochure.
 
To be fair, while De La Fuente made and broke promises for more police with Measure Y taxes, voters should set his worthless words against Nancy Nadel's outright antagonism to police and against the vague rhetoric of candidate Ron Dellums. Perhaps the key question is, which one would be least able to duck, evade, and stonewall as Oaklanders become increasingly insistent upon peaceful neighborhoods?