The Alameda County Taxpayers Association filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that the city of Oakland improperly coordinated with union leaders in an effort to place a new parcel tax on the June ballot and is withholding public records related to the alleged scheme.
The lawsuit alleges the city is using its largest municipal union, SEIU 1021, as a shell organization to skirt elections law and has violated the California Public Records Act to cover its tracks.
“This case concerns a coordinated and deeply troubling effort by the City of Oakland to evade California’s constitutional and statutory requirements governing both public records access as well as the enactment of parcel taxes by what appears to be outsourcing what is inherently a governmental function — the drafting, framing, and qualification of a tax measure – to a public employee union,” according to the suit, filed by Oakland-based attorney Marleen Sacks.
At issue is Measure E, a proposed $192 annual parcel tax increase that would raise $34 million a year for nine years to support the city’s 911 system, police and fire services, homelessness solutions and anti-illegal dumping efforts.
Despite being a tax proposal, however, Measure E only requires a simple majority vote to pass since it was placed on the ballot by a privately financed “citizen” signature gathering effort, rather than by the Oakland City Council.
The council, however, telegraphed the need for the funds when it passed a two-year budget in 2025 that closed an enormous $265 million deficit by, in part, anticipating tens of millions of dollars in new income.
At the time, councilmembers said they were anticipating that some of that income would come from a new bond measure or parcel tax. In February, the city’s unions delivered by successfully completing a signature gathering drive to put Measure E on the ballot.
The lawsuit alleges that the city worked with union officials to have SEIU 1021 spearhead the petition drive that placed Measure E on the ballot, which allows the city to duck the more difficult two-thirds voter approval threshold that would have been required if the City Council placed it on the ballot itself.
“The city is basically conspiring with the union to have the union do the leg work to avoid the two-thirds vote,” Sacks said.
“The city stopped working on the parcel tax at the exact same time that the union picked up work on the parcel tax,” she said. “It really does look like something shady is going on behind the scenes.”
The suit alleges the city then compounded its wrongdoing by illegally withholding public records related to the scheme in order to deliberately hide evidence of potential illegality.
The city said no such records exist, provided extremely limited information or failed to respond at all when Sacks made multiple requests for communications between city officials and SEIU 1021 regarding polling data and records relating to the drafting and promotion of the parcel tax, the suit alleges.
“We have previously sued the city of Oakland for previous violations and just last year we secured a settlement under which the city agreed to some changes to improve compliance with the Public Records Act,” Sacks said. “Instead of things getting better, things actually seem to be getting worse.”
The suit also says Measure E “falsely and misleadingly claims” it would replace an expiring property assessment with a lower one that reduces taxes even though the city has failed to produce records that verify that claim, Sacks said.
Sacks said she hopes the city will comply with the Public Records Act and its own sunshine ordinance without the need for a court order and that it will fix its chronic PRA recalcitrance.
“Once we see the documents, we can evaluate what that means for the purposes of the parcel tax,” she said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it but we will definitely make an issue about it one way or another.
Representatives from the union and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sacks has previously sued the city over records related to former mayor Libby Schaaf’s alleged use of her personal email account for city business and over allegations that the Oakland city clerk allowed now-former mayor Sheng Thao and two other candidates to file their nomination paperwork late for the 2022 election.
