A Contra Costa County Superior Court ruled that the county must revise the question for a proposed sales tax on the upcoming June ballot, after county voters petitioned that its language was misleading and argumentative.
The Board of Supervisors voted last month to put Measure B, a 0.625% sales tax to backfill federal cuts to health care, on the June 2 ballot.
If a majority of the county’s voters approve the measure, the tax will raise about $150 million annually for a period of five years.
But two local voters filed a petition alleging that the language in the ballot question sought to influence voters in favor of the measure. This, they argued, violated California’s elections code, which requires that the language describing a measure on the ballot be neutral.
The ballot question previously read: “To help Contra Costa County address deep cuts in federal funding; support critical local services such as health care, supplemental food assistance, and other general county services; and reduce the risk of closures at Contra Costa’s regional hospital and health clinics, shall Contra Costa County adopt a five-eighths of one cent temporary general sales tax for 5 years, providing an estimated $150,000,000 annually, not available to the federal government and subject to annual audits and independent citizens oversight?”
In his ruling, Judge Leonard Marquez of the Contra Costa County Superior Court agreed with the petitioners and directed the County to revise the ballot question.
Specifically, he ruled that the new ballot question must not describe federal cuts as “deep” or the county services that the tax will fund as “critical.”
The percentage matters
Another prescribed change is that the question must include a description of the tax amount in percentage terms — 0.625% — in addition to its current representation as “five-eighths of one cent,” to give voters more clarity.
Marquez also directed the registrar to remove a clause suggesting that failure of the measure would result in the closure of health facilities in the county.
Finally, the ruling also calls for the removal of the clauses “not available to the federal government” and “independent citizen oversight.”
One of the two petitioners was Sandra Kallander, the chair of the Libertarian Party of Contra Costa County.
“The judge’s order to add ‘(0.625%)’ helps,” Kallander said in a news release, “but the ballot question the County Supervisors provided was also so full of scary-sounding consequences for voting ‘no,’ such as the risk of hospital closures and starvation, that it read like a campaign mailer, taking sides — rather than being properly neutral. And the judge agreed.”
The revised ballot question now reads, “To help Contra Costa County address cuts in federal funding; support local services such as health care, supplemental food assistance, and other general county services; shall Contra Costa County adopt a five-eighths of one cent (0.625%) temporary general sales tax for 5 years, providing an estimated $150,000,000 annually, and subject to annual audits?”