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OPPOSE AB 1487, A BIZARRE PLAN BY INCOMPETENT TRANSIT BUREAUCRATS TO CONTROL OUR HOUSING PROGRAMS

 

Assembly Bill 1487 is a disastrous bill that taxes small counties to help out big counties, is overseen by an unelected transit board that knows nothing about housing, and will be directed by officials who have failed miserably in the Bay Area. 

Please oppose AB 1487, a bill ghost-written by the very land investors who will benefit from overpriced housing dreamed up by bureaucrats who can’t run the buses on time.

A respected state senate bill analyst has ripped apart AB 1487. If forced upon the Bay Area,  these unelected transit boards will soon control land use and housing policy across Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and many other counties.

The bill strips elected city leaders of powers and creates a bureaucracy that cannot be unelected.

We agree with an official state analysis showing that this fatally flawed bill will wreak havoc:

  • Who decides? AB 1487 creates a bureaucracy that voters do not elect, then gives this absurdly unaccountable bureaucracy the power to repeatedly place taxes on the ballot. As the state senate analyst warns, voters won’t decide whether this bureaucracy “should have these powers in the first place.”

 

  • Who gets ripped off? The new bureaucracy “could use tax dollars raised in Solano County on projects in Santa Clara County,” and there is zero guarantee that this new shadow government “will distribute regional funding equitably across the region.”

 

  • Excuse us, but what is the goal here? All of the powers AB 1487 provides to create this new shadow government “are tools that local agencies already have at the local level.”

 

  • We have seen, across California, the collapse in transit ridership overseen by the very people now grasping for our tax dollars to get into the housing business. Los Angeles transit ridership has collapsed to 1986 levels.  Bay Area transit capacity has been poorly planned and provided. Should any of these people now try to run the housing business? Clearly, no.

 

AB 1487 is the camel’s nose under the tent. If  the legislature approves this bill to override Bay Area cities and let a bloated unelected transit bureaucracy grab the taxes, next year a new bill — backed by the same investor interests — will grab for that power, from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

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