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The feds may be giving, but the local counties want to be taking. President Donald Trump has floated the idea of a $2,000 tariff check for citizens, while local governments are turning to the taxpayers for more revenue.
Following the example set in the South Bay by Santa Clara County, the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors have directed its staff to prepare a ballot measure for June to ask voters to raise the county-wide sales tax by 5/8 of a cent. The measure, if passed, would raise an estimated $151 million annually for five years. Like all regressive sales tax measures, it will hit the poorest residents the hardest should it be enacted.
It will take a legislative act to exceed the 2% maximum, but Berkeley state Sen. Jesse Arreguin, a former mayor, apparently has agreed to carry it in Sacramento. Whether voters will agree is another question.
The rationale is that it will offset cuts to health care and other social programs in the Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump. The media reports do not note that one of the Congressional efforts was to tighten eligibility because costs have soared and get states to address fraudulent users. The pandemic and the actions by both parties resulted in a gusher of federal money designed for the short term—not forever. But pulling something that people view as an entitlement is tough, to put it mildly.
During the hearing, a few people, naturally including government labor reps, spoke for it, while the taxpayers’ association went on record opposing it. Given the testimony, unless there’s a grassroots surge of opposition, expect to see it on the ballot come June.
Fairly high on the list of things I do not understand is the push in California, a non-slave state, to pay reparations to descendants of slaves. There can be arguments for this in the slave-owning South, but I cannot see any for this state. Nonetheless, both the state and Alameda County are in the process of talking more input on the plan.
The county has scheduled a convenient “listening session” for Saturday at the Pleasanton Library. The promotional material list free food (it’s at lunch time from noon to 2 p.m.) You can check out additional info at reparations@alamedacountyca.gov.
Updating last week’s mall items, the once wonderful San Francisco Centre, with its own BART exit and a prime Market Street location, will be shuttered for good on Monday. What it will be going forward is an open question.
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Floating an idea and implicating it are different realties. The lunatic is always proposing wild ideas that never happen, like taking over other countries. Besides, if they ever gave a $2000 check from tariffs to citizens, we would only be getting our money back, as tariffs have all ready been passed on to consumers.