There They Go Again! More Ballot Text Hijinks!
Getting an honestly-worded ballot in Long Beach appears to be a never-ending quest.
The most recent case in point is the text of Measure JB, the Mayor's attempt to open the floodgates to corrupt hiring practices for the 6,000+ city workforce.
As noted in a previous email, the summary text of this ballot measure is already a corrupt farce, falsely implying an innocuous merger of departments, when actually this is an evisceration of the Civil Service Commission (the independent body that does not actually hire city positions but does serve to filter out corrupt and unqualified hiring).
As if that wasn't bad enough, the ballots now out show added text, making things even worse and more politically tilted to one side.
Take a look:
Among the "Supporters" listed is Yvonne Wheeler, the Mayor's close ally and head of the organization financing his political career, the LA County Federation of Labor (a.k.a. the organization at the epicenter of the racism and racial power politics scandal at the LA City Council two years ago).
Wheeler, a North Long Beach resident, served briefly on the Long Beach Civil Service Commission and has been afforded the unique privilege of using that title as a bona fide in her role as one of the Mayor's Yes on JB supporters... RIGHT ON THE BALLOT!
Do you think the Opponents were afforded that opportunity, or even asked if they would like to have an attribution printed RIGHT ON THE BALLOT in parenthesis?
Of course not!
Whether it's...
- misleading ballot summary language
- taxpayer dollars paying for veiled advocacy mailers (masquerading as 'informational' literature, including / abusing the official City Seal, and targeted at high propensity voters rather than all taxpaying residents)
- or now this....
...the Long Beach Reform Coalition is always on the lookout for the abuse of official resources and the official imprimatur of government, which belongs to all of us, as taxpayers, not just the incumbent officeholders (who wield them like personal campaign resources).
For more on Measure JB (or to get a No on JB yard sign), see our previous eblast updates below or go to NOonMeasureJB.com. |
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Fight Measure JB's Corruption of the City Workforce with a NO on JB Yard Sign—Available Now!
Free NO on JB yard signs are now available, delivered right to your front lawn, from the No on JB Campaign.
Just email your address to: no.on.measure.jb@gmail.com.
For more on Measure JB, see our previous eblast updates below or go to NOonMeasureJB.com. |
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Committee Forms to Fight Measure JB
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Proposed Long Beach City Charter Amendment Measure JB would destroy the independent Long Beach Civil Service Commission, a key check on corruption!
Fundraiser: Tuesday 9/24 6pm @ Joe Jost's
Back on August 5th we alerted you that the Mayor had his sights set on, effectively, a personal takeover of nearly all City of Long Beach hiring.
That's over 6,000 positions, a payroll in the hundreds of millions! All in the hands of Rex Richardson, by virtue of his de facto control of the City Manager!
This is an invitation to return to a 19th Century-style spoils system! Merit-based fair hiring would be replaced by political patronage!
It would represent the single greatest consolidation of power in the history of Long Beach.
In order to get this measure passed, we alerted you to the Mayor's enormous haul of corrupt quid-pro-quo special interest fundraising, back on Aug. 10th.
Now it's the community's turn to FIGHT BACK!
Please join the Long Beach Reform Coalition in attending the fundraiser for the No on JB Committee—called Residents Against Corruption, No on Long Beach Measure JB (FPPC ID# 1474993)—on Tuesday, Sept. 24th @ good ol' Joe Jost's on Anaheim:
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The Price of Admission at City Hall
In our continuing pursuit of the real story underlying City Hall's innocent-sounding messaging, LBRC has reviewed the contributions which will fuel the mayor's upcoming ballot measures campaign.
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Watch our new video⤴️
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The first thing to understand is that mayoral mid-term election year campaigns for ballot measures have become a way for mayors to milk the Big Money political machine players, both for mayoral self-promotion and to erode good government reforms from years past.
Keep in mind, while watching the video, that these donors did not even know or care what ballot measures they were donating for!
The measures had not been finalized yet, nor placed on the ballot yet by the City Council. (And thanks to the unpopularity of the tax measures, combined with Long Beach Reform Coalition's exposure of the illegal engineering of potential ballot language, those three were pulled.)
These inside players all made these ENORMOUS donations, all within the space of a few weeks, for one reason and one reason only: The mayor called and said: It's time to pay up to keep your seat at the table.
For several election cycles now, these ballot measure campaigns have been controlled by the mayor and served as 100% personal vehicles, but because they are for measures, not the election of candidates, there are no contribution limits.
That means that the mayor can squeeze hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the city's economically vested special interests to send hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign literature to Long Beach's 270,000 registered voters—all with his bright smiling face plastered everywhere.
He can also assemble the usual coterie of officials, party instruments, and labor groups to provide their stamp of approval endorsement logos. Those endorsement logos are an almost subliminal signal not to scrutinize the ballot item... 'Just vote Yes. See, everyone supports it.'
The end result is that mayors can usually pass almost anything, and thus the ballot measures are used to steadily degrade checks and balances in government, centralizing power in (and enriching) the political machine:
- Measure A (2016) Sales Tax: Voters are misled into passing the highest-in-the-nation local sales tax rather than auditing city finances. Sold as an expansion of public safety and infrastructure, it does nothing but pad police & fire union pensions.
- Measure M (2018) Utility Transfer Tax: Voters are misled into an illegal grab at public water utility money (later invalidated by the courts).
- Measure BBB (2018) Attack on Term Limits: Voters are told to vote yes to "limit" terms, but actually this charter amendment allows mayors and council members an additional third term (without even having to run a write-in campaign)
- Measure A (2020) Sales Tax: Bolder now, voters are misled into re-voting Measure A (2016) as an 'infinity tax' (to last forever, not just ten years).
- Measure E (2022) Degrading Police Oversight: Voters are misled into axing their own police oversight commission.
- Measure BB (2022) Utilities Merger: Voters are misled into merging the water and gas departments (an attempt to restart the illegal grab of water dollars by City Hall).
Donate to the good guys. Donate to the Long Beach Reform Coalition today, because every grassroots dollar is 100x more powerful than every corrupt special interest dollar:
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A Mayoral Takeover of City Hiring?
An update on the 'surviving' ballot measures up for City Council consideration at tomorrow's meeting
Tomorrow at the unusual time of 3:00 p.m., the City Council will consider three measures which should be of concern to all residents.
While we won a great victory in pressuring removal of the three direct taxation measures discussed in previous eblasts, Long Beach residents are not yet out of the woods.
City Hiring Takeover Measure
Here is the most concerning proposal (Council Agenda Item 34):
This charter amendment—by replacing the Civil Service Commission as the City's hiring body—would, in effect, empower the Mayor to place his political cronies in many of the highest paid positions in City Hall.
Technically the power would go to the City Manager, but the holder of that position has been the de facto underling of mayors (by virtue of their political control over Council majorities) for most of the last two decades.
In fact, we even caught the City Manager, during our recent investigation of illegal polling for ballot measures, making it clear that he was taking marching orders from the Mayor:
This charter amendment should raise a red flag in the minds of anyone aware of American good government history.
It was in 1883 that Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which created the US Civil Service Commission. (This followed the assassination of President James Garfield by a disgruntled man who believed he was owed a federal job under the 'spoils system', where political supporters were rewarded with government positions.)
The Pendleton Act ended the spoils (or 'patronage') system and put the commission in charge of administering the US Civil Service and ensuring that hiring would be based on merit.
What is especially concerning about tomorrow's proposal is that the draft ballot measure title and summary will NOT even tell the voter what they are voting on:
Nowhere in this proposed ballot summary are voters given any indication that the newly combined Civil Service and HR departments will both be under the direct control of the City Manager and that the Civil Service Commission is being ABOLISHED as the impartial hiring body for the city's civil service.
The commission will now only hear appeals.
To eComment your objections to Agenda Item 34, please click here and then click on this icon:
Harbor Commission Disempowerment Measure
In a similar vein, there is another charter amendment all about taking power away from commissions and centralizing it with the port director (Harbor CEO) and Mayor (Council Agenda Item 36):
This measure would take hiring for the Port of Long Beach away from the Harbor Commission, centralizing that power in the hands of the CEO.
It would also enhance the Mayor's power over both the Harbor Commission and the Public Utilities Commission (water, gas, & sewer utilities) by shortening commissioners' terms to four years. This gives the Mayor additional bites at the apple for reappointing or replacing commissioners, effectively keeping them on a shorter leash.
Removal of Utility Tax Exemption for Power Plants
Perhaps the least controversial of the surviving ballot measures will be the proposal to remove the exemption from the city Utility Users Tax currently enjoyed by the two power plants located within city bounds (Council Agenda Item 33):
This longstanding tax break benefits AES and LADWP, the owners respectively of the two electric power plants which straddle the banks of the San Gabriel River just north of 2nd Street.
The main concern with this measure is that the City anticipates a fight at the state utilities commission (CPUC) the minute this measure passes.
From the City staff report:
And that's your LBRC round up of the 'surviving' ballot measures still headed to Council for approval tomorrow at the 3pm City Council meeting.
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A Major Victory for Long Beach Taxpayers
The City Manager pulled three tax & fee hike measures from City Council consideration for the Nov. ballot.
Following our July 8, 2024 letter to the City Manager (see previous eblast below or our youtube video)—which called out the illegal nature of poll-testing official language for ballot measures—all three city-level proposed tax and fee increases on Long Beach residents have been removed from Council consideration!
They were proposals to:
- Hike REAL ESTATE TRANSFER TAX (a nearly 9-fold increase to the city’s home sale tax!) ❌ GONE!
- Hike BIZ LICENSE FEES (a doubling of the fee on small businesses and independent contractors) ❌ GONE!
- Hike the ELECTRIC FRANCHISE FEE (a tripling of fees passed-through directly to ratepayers) ❌ GONE!
As noted in our letter and video, the City Manager blatantly told the Council in June that he would be conducting further polling to continue refining the 75-word ballot summary text. Undaunted by bad polling, City Hall seemed intent on barrelling forward, confident in its ability to manipulate the electorate—niceties of the law be damned.
Following our letter, however, they have made a u-turn and removed these tax measures!
They now do not appear on the City Council agenda for August 6, the last day for Council to place items on the November ballot.
This is the vital work of the Long Beach Reform Coalition reaping results for all Long Beach residents!
The City Manager and City Attorney both did respond to our letter.
While they provided nothing but a thinly veiled excuse for the City Manager's admission (of illegally poll data-engineering the ballot), it gave us occasion to write them back.
In that second letter to City Hall, we revealed further evidence, more recently discovered, exposing City Hall's dishonesty.
The City Attorney's cover for the City Manager was that her lawyers had drafted the polling survey text. Little did they know that we had already acquired overwhelming direct evidence that that was utterly false.
Indeed, we have emails between City Manager Tom Modica and polling firm FM3 Research, showing him micro-managing the poll-testing of exact terminology intended to appear as the official 75-word summary for ballot measures.
And these taxpayer-funded polling surveys have lengthy sections devoted to testing a whole range of arguments for passage, asking which are most "convincing" to the survey-taker, on a scale of "very convincing" to "somewhat convincing" to "not convincing" to "not believable". They even test potential counterarguments which might be made by a Vote No campaign.
The City Manager even went so far as to insist that a proposed real estate transfer tax hike be described to voters as coming out of sellers' "profits".
He instructs the polling firm to have the script their callers read out, "State that it is a tax assessed to the seller who pays for it out of the profits of the sale."
Anyone whose bought or sold a home knows that transfer tax is negotiable between parties, and of course the term "profits" is very politically loaded language (probably intended to win renters' votes while failing to note that such a tax eventually raises the cost of housing for everyone).
You can view all our correspondence to and from the City Manager & City Attorney here:
Despite this important victory, there are still three ballot measures—which should cause varying degrees of alarm—which the City Council will be voting on during its Aug. 6th meeting.
Especially troubling is a push to remove civil service safeguards from the hiring process for City personnel, centralizing power around the City Manager and ultimately in the hands of the Mayor, whom he de facto answers to (so long as the Mayor controls at least five votes on Council, as he currently does).
We will have further information on these measures in a subsequent eblast.
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LBRC Warns City Manager Not to Corrupt Ballot Measures
with the illegal use of polling to write the title and summary text
Two weeks ago, we brought you news of unwarranted tax hikes (scroll down to previous eblast) that your mayor and council are soon sending to the November ballot.
Now we know the illegal strategy they have planned to fool voters into supporting their money grab.
How does a city get away with jacking up taxes on all homeowners, business owners, and electric ratepayers?
Easy, poll test manipulative language and then illegally use it to write the ballot wording.
Click here to read the Warning Letter we sent to the City Manager:
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Watch and share our YouTube, calling out City Hall:
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Watch the YouTube video: Long Beach City Manager BLATANTLY ADMITS to Corrupting the Nov. Ballot
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LBRC was formed EXACTLY FOR THIS REASON, to combat this kind of abuse and keep local government accountable.
We came together in 2018 because the City was abusing the ballot measure process to mislead voters into abolishing longstanding 8-year term limits. They did so by telling people to vote Yes to "limit" council and mayoral terms... to 12 years. They put that misleading phraseology right on the ballot.
They seem to want to bend, flaunt, and outright defy the law in when it comes to ballot measures or any use or misuse of taxpayer dollars wherever and whenever possible.
There is no other local organization that does this.
Your donations to the LBRC have been and continue to be used toward this goal of public awareness.
Our Mission Statement:
The Long Beach Reform Coalition is a local, non-partisan umbrella organization and political action committee that promotes and supports public policies, laws, and candidates toward the goal of a transparent, accountable, and inclusive government.
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What's on Our Radar
for the Long Beach Ballot in November
As your local taxpayer and government accountability advocates, we are closely monitoring the following developments. |
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In this update:
- TAX HIKES ON THE HORIZON
- 10.75% Sales Tax in Long Beach?
- Nearly 9-Fold Increase to the City’s Home Sale Tax!?
- Doubling the Business License Fee?
- Tripling Electricity Fees?
- What We Really Need Rather than Tax Hikes
- CIVIL SERVICE HIRING UNDER THREAT
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TAX HIKES ON THE HORIZON
10.75% Sales Tax in Long Beach?
The underlying measure—a jacking up of the County Measure H sales tax from a quarter to a half cent—has already been put on the November ballot by the County Board of Supervisors. Thanks to recent state legislation, this would have the effect in Long Beach of also increasing what the City gets for its municipal slice of sales tax (which is a layer cake of tax going to the state, county, and city), Measure A.
The current Measure H has the effect of crowding out Long Beach Measure A under the cumulative statewide (with a few exceptions) sales tax cap of 10.25%, allowing Long Beach to collect only a half rather than a full percent, until Measure H expires.
The Measure H replacement however would be, much like Measure A, an infinity tax with no sunset provision.
And thanks to changes in the law in Sacramento, not only would Measure A come back up to the full 1%, but the new half-cent version of Measure H would sit on top of it, taking the total sales tax rate on your receipt to 10.75% in Long Beach (whereas in much of Orange County the total rate is 7.75%, with 7.25% going to the state, 0.5% to the county, and no city sales tax).
The purpose of Measure H is supposed to be to aid in the battle against homelessness. But of course with the county, like the city, purchasing motels in Long Beach, for which it pays hundreds of thousands per unit, for units that never even seem to come online, as these projects sit idle, this represents a doubling down on the same failed approach.
What we need is not another huge tax hike, but a thoroughgoing audit of all the ‘homelessness industrial complex’ dollars already tragically wasted (as was recently ordered by a federal judge for the City of LA).
For more on all the above tax hike proposals, read the write up in LB4D.
Nearly 9-Fold Increase to the City’s Home Sale Tax!?
Yes, you read that correctly.
Long Beach City Hall is considering potentially jacking up local real estate transfer tax to City of LA levels.
Far and away the vast majority of cities in LA County and statewide have a 55 cent transfer tax, usually paid by the seller when you sell your home, plus a 55 cent county transfer tax. That means that for every $1,000 of the home’s sale price, you pay $1.10 in tax.
However, in the City of the Angels, that combined amount is $5.60 per $1,000.
Welcome to the New Long Beach, which seeks to emulate LA in all things, from high taxes to highly dysfunctional living conditions, from crime to homelessness: City management, which operates informally at the behest of the mayor (a contravention of the city charter but a longstanding practice), has provided the Council with a memo laying out this ‘LA option’, or an alternative to raise the transfer tax total to $3.30 per $1,000 up to $1 million in home price and for every $1,000 above $1 million to charge the full LA-rate of $5.60.
Read more on this straight from the source: City Memo 7/11/24
Such a tax increase would have to be approved by voters after being put on the November ballot by the Council.
Doubling the Business License Fee?
The above city memo lays out several other ‘revenue raisers’ for City Hall coffers, as long-anticipated oil extraction revenue (which is a small percentage of the overall budget and restricted to use in the narrow coastal zone) slowly begins to dry up.
This idea, given Long Beach’s already high business license fees, would have a negative impact on small business, especially independent consultants, gig workers, 1099 entrepreneurs, and mom & pop restauranteurs and retailers!
Tripling Electricity Fees?
This proposal would triple the 'electric franchise fee’ paid by SCE and passed through directly to you the ratepayer. The rate would sky-rocket from 1.66% to 5%!
This increase would, of course, come after already increasing city water, sewer, and trash collection rates.
Here's what we really need rather than any tax hikes:
Long Beach City Hall simply does not lack tax revenue, in this place blessed not only with supplemental income from a port and oil extraction, but a city sales tax (unlike many other cities), a utility users tax (unlike many other cities), and a high property tax base.
What it lacks is good, non-corrupt fiscal management, where the residents are the priority, not the lobbyists and special interests. What we desperately need is a top-to-bottom outside/independent audit of city hall, zero-based budgeting, and cutting out the hundreds of millions of dollars in special interest giveaways of all our tax dollars.
These massive giveaways are now built into the budget over years and years of political prostitution at City Hall.
CIVIL SERVICE HIRING UNDER THREAT
Speaking of corruption, another ballot measure of serious concern is the proposal to take hiring away from the Civil Service Commission and place it directly in the hands of the City Manager.
The concept of the civil service was a major 19 th century governmental reform to end the corrupt ‘spoils system’, whereby whatever administration came to power would fill all the plum positions in government with loyalists and those owed political payback.
Doing away with the Civil Service Commission locally could empower the mayor—who controls the City Manager via his political power over a majority of council members—to fill City Hall with his personal and political friends, both on the taxpayer’s dime and at the residents’ expense, when it comes to competent service.
Please consider supporting the work of the Long Beach Reform Coalition as we continue to ramp up our pre-election advocacy:
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Some of Our Previous Eblasts
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