After none of the four candidates vying to replace Larry Stone as Santa Clara County assessor received a majority of votes in November’s special election, the race comes down to a Dec. 30 runoff between the two highest vote-getters — Neysa Fligor, a Los Altos-based ex-corporate and county lawyer who is currently the assistant assessor, and Rishi Kumar, a Saratoga-based mechanical engineer and tech executive.

County assessors in California have one job: assess the value of taxable property. They don’t set tax rates. They don’t collect property taxes. Their job is to apply state law to their appraisals of real and business properties.

And in Santa Clara County, the job leading the 250 people in the Assessor’s Office is especially complex. It’s not just the most-populous county in northern California, it’s also home to the world’s largest, most sophisticated companies, like Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet and Adobe, whose cutting-edge technologies must be assessed in addition to their headquarters’ land and buildings. All told, there are 500,000 taxable properties in the county with an assessed value of about $750 billion.

We asked the two remaining candidates to articulate why they deserve your vote. Here are their commentaries:

• Neysa Fligor: Ensuring the Assessor’s Office keeps working for taxpayers and residents.

• Rishi Kumar: The Assessor’s Office needs an outsider as leader — a changemaker.

The Mercury News editorial board endorsed Fligor. Here is our recommendation: Fligor is ready to be Santa Clara County assessor. Her opponent is not.

For official voting information about the Dec. 30 runoff, visit the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters website here.

We urge voters not to be sucked in by some of the campaign diversions amplified during the runoff. Instead, look for a candidate to replace retiring Assessor Larry Stone who will focus on doing the job.

The assessor doesn’t set tax rates nor rules for how properties are taxed. Rather, the assessor only sets the values from which those taxes are calculated for more than 500,000 Santa Clara County properties.

Neysa Fligor, the current assistant assessor, understands this. Her opponent, Rishi Kumar, a former Saratoga City Council member, does not.

Our editorial board endorsed Fligor in the special election. The seriousness of this job and the unseriousness of her opponent compel us to weigh in again for the runoff.

Fligor is well-prepared to lead the assessor’s 250-person office. That’s because she has already been its second-in-command since July. In this position, she has overseen many of the office’s most important responsibilities, including producing its $750 billion assessment roll and managing the multi-million-dollar replacement of its outdated software system.

Fligor, who also serves on the Los Altos City Council, has earned the endorsement of both ex-Assessor Stone and many county unions, with which he often disagrees. However, on Fligor, they are unified. That itself is a testament to her competency for this position.

Being assessor, unlike a county supervisor or a city councilmember, isn’t about politics and policy setting. It’s about strict adherence to the laws governing appraising real and business properties. Fligor, it should be noted, is the only certified tax appraiser in this race.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is her experience as a lawyer. Before working as an attorney for HP between 2015 and 2024, Fligor was deputy counsel for Santa Clara County for nine years, during which time she represented the Assessor’s Office.

That experience in legal battles over appraisal disputes with many of the county’s giant corporations makes her exceptionally qualified to lead the office.

The same cannot be said about Kumar. The mechanical engineer and longtime tech executive has mounted three failed bids for Congress as a Democrat. Now, desperately looking for votes among senior citizens, he has rebranded himself as a Howard Jarvis-style anti-tax crusader by promising to fight to exempt them from property taxes.

In campaign text messages and emails for months, Kumar has made exempting anyone over 60 years old from property taxes his central platform. Now in the final stretch of the campaign, Kumar is going into overdrive telling voters that he’s spearheading a fledgling ballot initiative effort to exempt senior citizens from paying property taxes again.

It’s a red herring.

Completely aside from whether a senior tax exemption is good policy or not, it’s not the assessor’s job to lower or raise taxes or even collect them. In fact, the assessor doesn’t even calculate property taxes.

Kumar either doesn’t know what the assessor does or, worse, he’s deliberately misleading seniors attracted to the idea he’ll be slashing their property taxes to zero. Whether he’s ignorant or deceitful, Rishi Kumar should not be Santa Clara County’s next assessor.

Fortunately, voters have an excellent alternative in Neysa Fligor. We urge them to vote for her.

Vote-by-mail ballots will be sent by next week. The last day to request a vote-by-mail ballot replacement is Dec. 23. Early voting begins on Monday at the Santa Clara County Registrar’s office. Voting ends at 8 pm on Election Day, Dec. 30.

Click here for a complete list of our Nov. 4 election recommendations.

Southern Alameda County’s Washington Township Health Care District is coming up short each year and now its leaders want to turn to property owners to make up the difference.

Measure B on the Nov. 4 ballot in Fremont, Newark, Union City and a small part of South Hayward would impose a parcel tax of $5 per 100 square feet of building area. For an average size single-family house in the district, that’s about $90 annually. The tax would last for 12 years.

But the district’s arguments for the measure are misleading, and officials are unwilling to discuss specifics of how they plan to address their financial shortfall, which is more than twice as big as the revenue expected from the new tax. Voters should reject Measure B.

The district, formed in 1948, today operates a 415-bed acute care hospital. For the current and past two fiscal years, the district shows operating losses of about $30 million annually, or about 3.5% of its operating expenses. Measure B would cover about $13 million of that shortfall.

Those taxes would be on top of the district’s bond program, which voters in 2020 agreed to increase to pay for hospital seismic improvements. To cover the cost of the bonds, property owners this fiscal year will pay $21.80 per $100,000 of assessed value, or about $167 for a home with a district-average assessed value.

The bond tax will likely increase as the district borrows more money to finance construction of a new seismically sound hospital tower for patient rooms.

But the issue on the ballot this year is money to cover the shortfall for hospital and other health care operations.

District operating expenses have increased 24% over the past three years. Officials blamed rapidly escalating salary-and-benefit costs and said they had to lay off employees last year. But staffing data shows the total employee count has been increasing steadily and is now 15% above pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, district revenues have increased 26% over the same three-year period. Officials first claimed that revenues were being dragged down because the district had experienced, since before the start of the pandemic, a huge shift to patients under government insurance like Medicare and Medi-Cal. That turned out to be flatly wrong when we pressed for supporting data.

There is no question that health care finances are challenging and are about to become more difficult with the recent federal cuts to Medicaid. And the hospital has taken on more responsibility with its 2022 designation as the trauma center for southern Alameda County.

But it’s not clear how the district plans to eliminate its budget shortfall. Asked about future financial plans, district CEO Kimberly Hartz said, “you can’t save your way out” of this problem. The solution, she said, is greater efficiency and creating new programs to bring in revenue.

Yet she declined to identify those new programs or provide financial forecasts, citing competitive pressures with other hospitals.

In other businesses, we might be sympathetic to arguments of proprietary information. But, in this case, hospital officials are essentially asking taxpayers to invest. And taxpayers deserve to know what they’re investing in.

Without clear answers, voters should reject Measure B.

Fligor is ready to be Santa Clara County assessor. Her opponent is not.

Neysa Fligor is, far and away, the best candidate to lead the office responsible for setting tax values for more than 500,000 properties assessed at more than $750 billion. Currently second in command, Fligor is responsible for the 250-person office’s day-to-day operations. Our editorial board endorsed Fligor in the special election. The seriousness of this job and the unseriousness of her opponent compel us to weigh in again for the runoff.

Kumar vs. Fligor: Santa Clara County assessor candidates make final pitches for Dec. 30 runoff
We asked the two remaining candidates to articulate why they deserve your vote. Here are the commentaries by Rishi Kumar and Neysa Fligor.

Opinion: Current Santa Clara County holiday season election wasteful and avoidable
Ranked choice voting could have saved taxpayers the $13 million cost of the Dec. 30 assessor race runoff

Yes on Proposition 50

California redistricting: Republican legislators in Texas, North Carolina and other states are redrawing their congressional district maps to deliver President Trump more seats. No state has more to lose than California if Trump gets away with manufacturing a House majority.

Borenstein: Proposition 50 provides California’s only hope to rein in Trump. 
Gov. Newsom’s measure on Nov. 4 ballot, responding to Texas redistricting, aims to stop president from stealing an election

No on Santa Clara County Measure A

Sales tax increase: The Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will squeeze Santa Clara County health care funding. But raising local taxes is not the solution. County supervisors should first stem their rapidly escalating spending, which has doubled in the past eight years and ranks highest per capita by far of the 10 largest California counties.

PRO/CON: Measure A would increase Santa Clara County sales tax. Is it worth it?
Adding another five-eighths cent levy to purchases would push the rate to at least 9.75% with San Jose higher at 10%.

No on Alameda County Measure B

Parcel tax: In Fremont, Newark, Union City and a small part of South Hayward a tax of $5 per 100 square feet of building area would help fund the Washington Township Health Care District. But the district’s arguments for the measure are misleading, and officials are unwilling to discuss specifics of how they plan to address their financial shortfall.

News coverage of the Nov. 4 election

Click here to read the Mercury News and East Bay Times news coverage of election.

Click here for a complete list of our election recommendations.

The Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will squeeze Santa Clara County health care funding. But raising local taxes is not the solution.

Instead, county supervisors should stem their rapidly escalating spending, which has doubled in the past eight years and ranks highest per capita by far of the 10 largest California counties.

And voters should reject Measure A, the five-year sales tax increase on the Nov. 4 special election ballot that has been in the planning stages since long before Trump won reelection.

The measure would add another five-eighths of a cent to each dollar of taxable goods, pushing the total rate to 10% or more in most of the county.

State data indicates that the average person in the county currently pays at least $1,700 a year in sales tax, which is distributed between state and local governments. Measure A would increase that by at least $113 annually.

Raising taxes before imposing long-overdue fiscal discipline puts the cart before the horse. While Measure A would expire in 2031, we expect it would be permanently built into the county budget by then and county officials would be begging for an extension to avoid cuts.

Soaring spending

There’s no question that the county will take a hit from the Trump Medicaid cuts. And there’s no denying the importance of county health services, which treat 40% of county residents and deliver 80% of trauma care. But it’s important to put county spending, the federal funding reductions and Measure A in context.

County spending has increased from $6.4 billion in the 2017-18 fiscal year to $13 billion in 2025-26. The biggest cause of that increase has been health care, which includes public health, mental health and, most significantly, Santa Clara Valley Healthcare’s network of hospitals and clinics.

The county, which already ran Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, rescued O’Connor Hospital in San Jose and Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy from bankruptcy in 2019, and purchased Regional Medical Center in San Jose in 2025. The county now operates a much larger health care system per-capita than any other California county, says County Executive James Williams.

PRO/CON: Measure A would increase Santa Clara County sales tax. Is it worth it?

Suddenly running four hospitals instead of one, the county found losses for its hospitals and clinics increased from about $97 million in 2017-18 to $532 million expected in the current fiscal year. That forecast was before Trump’s budget bill exacerbated the shortfall.

While we supported the 2019 hospital purchases, we never intended that to be a blank check. Clearly a major reorganization to cut costs and find savings through economies of scale has been needed for years. Instead, the county has increased fourfold the subsidies from the general fund — from money that would otherwise go to other county services.

The greatest concern from the federal budget is the cut to Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, which serves primarily low-income and disabled residents. Forty-six percent of patients in the county’s health care system are covered by Medi-Cal, which accounts for about half of the revenue.

Santa Clara County officials forecast the cuts in Trump’s bill will cost the county $223 million in the current fiscal year, escalating to $1.3 billion by 2029-30. That’s significant pain.

But what’s important here is that the proposed sales tax increase would only solve a fraction of the problem. Measure A is expected to raise $330 million annually. There is no plan for how the county would address the rest of the shortfall over the next five years.

Regressive tax

While the ballot wording of Measure A says it could be used for a variety of purposes ­— to “support critical local services such as trauma, emergency room, mental health, and public safety” — Williams says the money would be used solely to shore up the health care system.

Measure A is a “general” tax, meaning that county supervisors have the discretion to spend the money on any legally permissible county services — and that the measure only requires majority approval. Had county supervisors instead sought a “special” tax, restricting the use of the money to a specific purpose, the measure would have required two-thirds approval.

Sales taxes are regressive, meaning they disproportionately impact those who can afford it least. In Santa Clara County, the levy on taxable goods, which excludes prescription medications and most groceries, would increase to at least 9.75%, with higher rates in Los Gatos (9.875%), San Jose (10%), Milpitas (10%) and Campbell (10.5%).

For example, in San Jose, home to about half the county’s residents, the sales tax is currently 9.375%, meaning a consumer pays an additional $9.38 on a $100 purchase. If Measure A passes, the tax would add another 62 cents, making the total sales tax $10 for that same $100 purchase.

For homeowners in the county, that would come on top of property tax levies that are based on assessed value. For example, for a home assessed at $1.5 million, the county collects $2,700 annually as its share of the 1% base tax, plus special levies for county employee pensions ($570) and to pay off voter-approved county bonds for affordable housing ($84) and hospital seismic improvements ($78).

Tax history

The only reason Santa Clara County leaders were able so quickly to place the sales tax measure on the same ballot as Proposition 50, the statewide redistricting measure, is that they had been working on the tax increase for two years, long before Trump’s return to office.

In 2023, at the urging of county officials, Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, pushed through state legislation enabling Santa Clara County supervisors to seek voter approval for the sales tax increase. At the time, Cortese argued the tax was needed to address significant and growing budget challenges.

The legislation limited the increase to five-eighths of a cent. If not for that limit, Williams told us, he would have recommended the board place a larger sales tax increase on the ballot.

Which is exactly the sort of thinking that concerns us. In 2023, according to data from the state Controller’s Office, Santa Clara County spent $5,046 per resident, at least 19% more than any of the nine other California counties with at least 1 million residents, and more than double San Diego, Orange, Alameda and Fresno counties.

Before asking residents for more tax money, county officials should find a way to spend what they have more efficiently.

But, like much of the Bay Area, California’s third-largest city also struggles with housing affordability, homelessness, public safety and post-pandemic revitalization of its downtown.

As San Jose leaders look to change that, voters in District 3, which covers the downtown core, will be filling an unexpected City Council vacancy in a special June 24 runoff election.

The district’s 47,000 registered voters will have a choice between Anthony Tordillos, chair of the San Jose Planning Commission and a software engineer at Google, and Gabby Chavez-Lopez, executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, a downtown-based nonprofit.

The candidates have similar positions. But in this race, ideas, details and experience are also very important. That’s what makes Tordillos the superior candidate.

Tordillos would provide District 3 residents with a strong and articulate voice on the City Council. He is a detail-oriented, data-focused policy pragmatist who, as a planning commissioner, has direct, recent and relevant experience to help navigate the one problem at the confluence of many of the city’s problems: housing.

What’s at stake in this election is more than District 3’s representation; it’s also the city’s overall direction. The winner will likely cast decisive votes on key issues facing San Jose’s narrowly divided City Council, which for the last two years has been split between moderates aligned with Mayor Matt Mahan and public-union-backed councilmembers.

District 3 voters will pick someone to fill the last 18 months of the term of Omar Torres, who quit on Nov. 5, halfway through his term and hours before he was arrested on suspicion of child molestation, for which he was later charged and pleaded no contest.

The April 8 election to replace him ended with no candidate receiving a majority. Chavez-Lopez finished first with 30% of the 9,107 votes cast. After a recount, Tordillos captured second place, with 22%, qualifying for the runoff by edging out the mayor’s deputy chief of staff, Matthew Quevedo, by six votes.

What separates the two surviving candidates isn’t the problems they want to solve. Tordillos and Chavez-Lopez largely agree on San Jose’s issues. They both believe homelessness remains too rampant; housing, too expensive; building, too bureaucratic; downtown, too blighted; and the feeling of safety, too distant.

And at the 30,000-foot view, both Tordillos and Chavez-Lopez agree on many of the solutions.

They both say that the unhoused need less criminalization and more mental health care; more housing needs to be built; construction approvals need to be streamlined; the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, needs to be reformed; downtown needs revitalization; and the Police Department needs to fill its open jobs, speed up response times and rely more on non-sworn employees to handle some problems.

But when you drill down, Tordillos sharply distinguishes himself. Tordillos, who moved to the city in 2018 and has been co-president of the South University Neighborhood Association since 2022, can identify exactly what parts of the planning process need change to juice construction.

That’s not surprising given his experience. As he notes, “I’m the only candidate in this race … who has worked with city staff to get policy passed in terms of housing, land use, homelessness and economic development.”

Not only has he read the latest RAND research identifying the obstacles to lowering the per-unit cost of housing, but he can point you to its most realistic, actionable takeaways. For example, Tordillos notes, buildings are constructed faster in Texas cities, in part because inspections are conducted simultaneously not sequentially. That little difference adds up, he argues.

Chavez-Lopez, who served on Santa Clara County’s Planning Commission from 2020-22, doesn’t provide the same sort of specificity. She offered that she has the community-building skills to get things done. She works with people, not data, she says. A lack of communication and coordination within the city and across the region’s patchwork of overlapping jurisdictions are the core problems, not ideas.

Whoever wins this race will take office in July and will have to hit the ground running to make an impact before the 2026 election. Tordillos is best positioned to do just that.

Key election dates

• Week of May 26: Vote-by-mail ballots will be sent to voters.

• June 9 is the last day to register.

• June 17 is the last day to request a vote-by-mail ballot.

• June 24 is Election Day, the last day to cast a ballot in person or have it postmarked.

District trustees have called a costly special election for May 6 and are warning that critical funding will expire if voters don’t approve Measure A. The last-minute rush is yet another sign of the district’s dysfunction, which was the subject of a scathing grand jury report last year.

Voters should step back from the pressure tactics and examine the facts. If they do, they will see why we recommend voting no on the measure to extend a $72 annual parcel tax for another eight years.

To read all our endorsements for 2025 Bay Area special elections, click here.

For starters, the district does not, or should not, need the money. Over the past five fiscal years, from 2019-20 to 2023-24, student enrollment declined 13%, according to the district’s data.

Yet, no schools were closed during that time. The number of district employees actually went up slightly, by 0.4%. And expenditures increased from $366 million to $492 million, up 34% over five years.

Measure A would extend the $72 annual parcel tax that voters approved with Measure Y in 2016. The tax on properties in the district provides $5 million annually. So, we’re talking about slightly over 1% of the district’s expenditures. This is not a budget buster.

Indeed, given the decline in enrollment, district officials should be looking at ways to trim costs rather than continuing the rapid escalation of expenditures.

Then there is the dodgy political timing of Measure A. District officials certainly knew since 2016, when voters passed Measure Y, that it would expire on June 30 of this year. They have had plenty of time to prepare and seek voter approval of an extension.

But district officials made a deliberate decision to wait until the last minute before calling an off-year election that is almost certain to have low voter turnout. They first wanted to push through the more costly $1.15 billion school construction bond program that they placed on the November 2024 ballot.

Paying off those bonds will require 30 years of tax increases and cost property owners at the start $59 per $100,000 of assessed value annually. Combined with two prior voter-approved bond measures, the total yearly tax bill for school bonds would peak in 2029 at $120 per $100,000 of assessed value.

For a house with a district average assessed value of $723,870, that would total $869 annually. For homes recently purchased at a county average of about $2 million, the tax bill for the bonds is about $2,400 a year.

As we noted in our editorial last fall, the school board placed this exceptionally large bond measure on the ballot in a meeting held on 24 hours’ notice. Despite the big price tag, the measure lacked a spending prioritization plan.

The last thing district officials wanted then was to remind voters that they also paid another special school tax. They didn’t want voters to examine the total costs of the bond program and the parcel tax at one time, which would have been far more responsible.

So, despite having years to prepare for the parcel tax renewal election, they made the costly decision to postpone it until May 6. Because the election has just one item on it, the district must bear all the expenses for conducting the election, which will be about $2 million-$3 million. In other words, about half of the first year’s revenues from the extension would go toward offsetting the cost of the election.

That should tell you something about school trustees’ fiscal irresponsibility. Had they placed the parcel tax extension on the November ballot, the extra cost to the district would have been a quarter as much, or less, because expenses for balloting and vote counting would have been split with other government agencies holding elections.

None of this should be surprising considering the grand jury report chastising the district’s management policies and poor board meeting accessibility. This is a district plagued by a lack of transparency.

Voters should reject district officials’ politically manipulative behavior and, especially, this last-minute attempt to squeeze taxpayers for money the district shouldn’t need. Voters should reject Measure A.

Now trustees of the Central Contra Costa district are asking voters to approve another one. Rather than put Measure T on a ballot during an election year with other races that generate high public interest, they have called a costly off-year special election for May 6, when voter turnout and opposition will likely be low.

Voters should reject Measure T, not just because district officials are trying with the election timing to put their thumbs on the scale, but also because of the lack of ballot transparency about the special school taxes property owners already pay.

To read all our endorsements for 2025 Bay Area special elections, click here.

Measure T would impose a new $130 parcel tax for district operations that would escalate each year with inflation and last for eight years. It would generate about $4.5 million annually for the district.

That would be on top of two permanent parcel taxes that voters previously approved, totaling $301 annually, and a separate property tax to repay school construction bonds that adds about another $300 for a home with an average assessed value of about $1 million.

And because Acalanes is just a high school district, property owners also pay supplemental taxes for one of the four K-8 feeder districts, in Moraga, Orinda, Lafayette or part of Walnut Creek. For those K-8 districts, residents pay parcel taxes for operations and separate taxes for bond measures for school construction.

For homeowners, the total for all the supplemental taxes for Acalanes and its feeder districts ranges from about $1,000 to about $2,300 annually for a home with an average assessed value of about $1 million. The total tax can be significantly more for more-recently purchased homes in the district, which can easily be assessed at $2 million or more.

Those taxes are on top of the annual base 1% property tax and supplemental city, county and special district taxes.

In the grand scheme, the $130 Acalanes is seeking with Measure T is not a large addition, especially in the district of high-income households. But transparency and community representation through voter turnout matter.

None of the current supplemental taxes charged by Acalanes and its feeder districts are mentioned in the ballot wording from the district or in the voter guide’s impartial analysis from County Counsel Thomas Geiger.

Indeed, the district’s original ballot wording didn’t even disclose that the Measure T tax would increase annually with inflation. After a court challenge brought by concerned taxpayers, which the district opposed, a judge ordered Acalanes to include that information.

In the same order, Judge Edward Weil ordered Geiger to correct inaccurate information about the current parcel taxes property owners pay to Acalanes, or to delete reference to the current taxes in his voter guide analysis. Rather than correct the information, Geiger chose to delete the reference to existing taxes altogether. So much for transparency.

Meanwhile, Acalanes trustees’ decision to hold an off-year special election not only ensures depressed voter turnout, it also means that the district alone must bear all the balloting costs. That roughly quadruples, adding about $800,000 to, the district’s cost for the election. It’s perplexing that the district is pleading for more money while carelessly spending what it has.

In sum, taxpayers in the district already pay substantial school taxes. The measure lacks transparency. And the timing will drive down voter turnout and drive up election costs. Voters and taxpayers deserve better. They should reject Measure T.

Of the 10 mayoral candidates in the April 15 special election, only former Rep. Barbara Lee has the political clout needed to unify the city’s fractured leadership.

In District 2, Charlene Wang stands out among six candidates for her strong community support combined with a realistic approach to the city’s financial challenges and an emphasis on public safety.

It’s time for responsible leaders in City Hall who will address the city’s fiscal crisis and serious shortage of police. Oakland needs leaders willing to make tough decisions rather than dig a deeper financial hole.

The fiscal mess

The financial crisis has been a decade in the making.

Related: Editorial: Oakland’s Measure A would duplicate taxes residents already pay

Under Mayor Libby Schaaf, who took office in 2015, Oakland added more than 500 city employees, a 13% increase it could not afford. When Schaaf left, the city was facing a massive structural budget deficit driven by accelerating wages, public employee retirement costs and tax revenue effects from the COVID pandemic.

Then Thao, starting in 2023, failed to address the problem. Rather than pressing for necessary cuts, she appeased her labor backers by proposing use of one-time revenues from property sales to close what was described as the largest budget deficit in city history.

By fall 2024, with Thao fighting unsuccessfully to keep her job and the one-time revenues never materializing, city officials had to start making cuts, which eventually included laying off 42 city employees and reneging on promises to voters to increase the number of cops on the streets.

But those stopgap measures didn’t address the underlying problem: The city faces a nearly $140 million annual structural deficit starting next fiscal year for the city’s general fund, City Administrator Jestin Johnson and Finance Director Erin Roseman warned in a Feb. 20 memo. That’s an ongoing revenue shortfall of roughly 15% of projected expenditures.

Most candidates in the mayoral and council races talk of closing the gap by stimulating new business revenue. That’s fantasy. Improving Oakland’s business climate will take time and hangs on city leaders’ ability to first address concerns about public safety.

The city’s population-adjusted crime rate far exceeds that of the other two major Bay Area cities, San Francisco and San Jose. And the badly understaffed Oakland Police Department is near the lowest number of sworn officers in a decade, with response times remaining unconscionably long.

It’s little wonder that residents are on edge and business leaders are reluctant to invest. A survey of likely voters last fall found 69% of likely voters wanted more police, and half felt less safe than a year or two earlier.

To read all our endorsements for 2025 Bay Area special elections, click here.

Mayor: Barbara Lee

Ten candidates are vying to replace Thao, whose recall was backed by 61% of city voters and who was subsequently indicted on federal corruption charges. Only two candidates, Lee and former Councilmember Loren Taylor, are serious contenders.

Lee represented the city in Congress for nearly 27 years before giving up her seat last year to make an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate. In building her mayoral campaign, she has attracted support from labor leaders who championed Thao’s mayoral tenure and recall backers who drove her from office.

To be successful, Lee will need to similarly bridge divides on the City Council. That’s because the powers of Oakland’s mayor are limited. While the mayor proposes a city budget, it’s the eight members of the council who make the final decision. The mayor only votes in case of a tie.

So the mayor’s ability to right the city’s finances will depend largely on her power of persuasion. And her time frame will be narrow because the fiscal picture is so dire and the mayoral term is so short. The winner of this election will serve only the remainder of Thao’s term, through the end of next year.

Lee says she would be interested in seeking a full four-year term in November 2026. Let’s first see if she can bring financial stability to the city.

Everything must be on the table, Lee says, adding that the city must look at bringing in new revenues and “layoffs would be the last resort.” We hope that’s just political posturing because the city cannot bring in new revenues quickly enough to solve its budget crisis. No meaningful solution can avoid layoffs and/or significant concessions from the city’s labor unions.

Taylor understands that — perhaps better than Lee. But after narrowly losing to Thao in the 2022 mayoral election, he has failed this time to mount a strong campaign or build the coalition of supporters he would need to govern effectively.

Throughout the recall campaign, Taylor was adamant that he would run again if Thao were removed from office. Yet when the time came, he was surprisingly unprepared as Lee built her politically diverse campaign coalition.

Whether Lee is willing to make the tough financial decisions necessary remains to be seen. But she’s the candidate who is best politically prepared to meet the moment.

District 2: Charlene Wang

The District 2 vacancy was created by the election in November of Nikki Fortunato Bas to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

Bas, a favorite of the city’s powerful public employee labor unions representing workers outside the Police and Fire departments, was politically aligned with Thao.

In 2020, Bas advocated for cutting the Police Department budget by 50%, a proposal that was fortunately never carried out. As the council president starting in 2021, she was a key driver of the failed budgeting that brought the city to the current financial precipice.

Now voters in District 2 — which stretches from Jack London Square to the south side of Piedmont — have an opportunity to help politically temper the City Council by replacing Bas with someone who takes public safety and budget-balancing seriously.

In the six-person field, there are three candidates with solid handles on the gravity of the situation: Charlene Wang, Harold Lowe and Kanitha Matoury. In the city’s ranked choice voting, we recommend them for the first, second and third votes, respectively.

Wang, an East Bay native, is a special adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice. She’s an environmental engineer with a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard.

She says Oakland leaders need to address the budget deficit — which she has a solid handle on — while prioritizing key public services such as public safety, which she correctly identifies as a social justice issue and key to revitalizing the city’s business environment.

She’s realistic about the tough choices that must be made but sagely notes, “Every time we delay making hard decisions, it leads to harsher cuts down the line.”

Lowe, a financial planner and diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, has a similarly realistic handle on the city’s finances. Matoury, owner of Howden Market in Uptown Oakland, understands firsthand the challenges of running a business in the city.

The other candidates are: Paula Thomas, a former Sacramento radio station owner; Kenneth Anderson, senior pastor of Williams Chapel Baptist Church; and Kara Murray-Badal, who selects recipients of seed money from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

Murray-Badal, with strong labor backing and the support of Bas, is Wang’s leading opponent. Murray-Badel struggled to answer questions about police staffing levels and could not recall whether she voted in November to support an increase in the city tax for public safety.

For council candidates committed to public safety and seriously addressing the city’s budget shortfall, the best choices are, in order, Wang, Lowe and Matoury.

The city already imposes more taxes than most cities in the Bay Area and California. Oakland property owners pay 15 supplemental city taxes. Ballots in every election year since 2014 have contained new levies.

Now, in the upcoming April 15 special election, the City Council is asking voters to increase the sales tax for 10 years by 0.5%. The resulting 10.75% tax — 10.75 cents for every dollar of purchases — would match the top rate in the state. Of California’s 483 cities, only six others have a total tax that high.

Voters should reject Measure A. Backers say the money would protect services such as police, fire protection, street maintenance, parks and libraries. But residents already pay special taxes for all those services.

Related: Editorial: As Oakland finances teeter, elect Lee for mayor, Wang for council

Oakland voters should stop enabling their city leaders’ addiction to new taxes. It’s time for elected officials to plan for bringing spending in line with revenues, rather than trying to boost revenues to match uncontrolled spending.

There’s no doubt that Oakland faces a serious budget shortage. City Administrator Jestin Johnson and Finance Director Erin Roseman forecast a $140 million annual structural deficit starting next fiscal year for the city’s general fund. That’s an ongoing revenue shortfall of roughly 15% of projected expenditures. Other restricted funds also face structural imbalances, Johnson and Roseman warned in a Feb. 20 memo.

Measure A, raising about $30 million annually, would only be a small part of any solution. Before residents are asked to pay yet another tax, they should be shown how it would contribute to a viable plan to balance the city budget.

False ballot arguments

Backers of the measure — including leading mayoral candidates Barbara Lee and Loren Taylor — falsely claim in ballot arguments that Measure A is part of a “comprehensive financial plan” for righting the city’s budget.

Actually, there is no such plan. There’s not even a public accounting for Johnson and Roseman’s calculation of the $140 million structural deficit. We know because we asked repeatedly for more than two weeks and were finally told through a spokesperson that it wasn’t available. The lack of transparency is appalling.

To read all our endorsements for 2025 Bay Area special elections, click here.

Backers argue that Measure A sales tax expenditures — which could be used for any purpose — would pay for more police officers, keep fire stations open, fix streets and provide clean parks and safe libraries.

Safe libraries? Property owners already pay two separate taxes, approved by voters in 2004 and 2018 and totaling $225 annually, just for libraries.

Parks? A 2020 voter-approved measure levies a $182 annual property tax primarily for parks.

Street repairs? Under ballot measures approved in 2016 and 2022, property owners pay about $27 for every $100,000 of assessed value of their homes to cover the cost of bonds for street repairs. That tax rate will keep rising as the city issues more bonds.

More police officers? Less than four months ago, voters approved Measure NN, which increased the city’s public safety tax for police and fire services to $198 for a single-family home.

A lure of Measure NN was a promise to increase the minimum number of sworn officers in the city’s badly understaffed Police Department from 678 to 700. But before the ballots were even cast, City Council members had declared a fiscal emergency, enabling them to lower the target to 600 officers.

Despite the new revenues approved by voters, the council is effectively slowly defunding the police by not replacing officers who retire or leave for other reasons. As of March 7, there were 681 filled officer positions, according to the city, with the number declining with each departure.

All told, in addition to the base property tax of 1% of assessed value, and supplemental taxes levied by schools and regional park and transportation districts, Oakland property owners also pay about $2,000 annually for the 15 supplemental taxes for city services.

Then, when it comes time to sell a house, the buyer and seller split the city transfer tax, which works out to $16,100 on a $1 million sale — almost all of which goes to the city.

Piling on

Now city leaders want to pile on with a sales tax. The city currently does not have its own sales tax levy. The tax in the city is currently 10.25%. That’s comprised of a statewide rate of 7.25% — of which the state keeps 6%, 0.25% goes to county transportation funds, and 1% usually goes to cities — and Alameda County’s addition of 3%, the highest for any California county.

Measure A would add another 0.5% for Oakland, bringing the total to 10.75% — and making the city even more expensive to live in. In California, sales tax applies to purchases of tangible personal property. Prescription medicines and most groceries are exempt. Nevertheless, sales tax is regressive, disproportionately impacting those who can least afford it.

The 10.75% rate would add $107.50 to the price of a $1,000 television set, or $4,300 to a $40,000 car. The six other California cities with such a high sales tax — Alameda, Albany, Hayward, Newark, San Leandro and Union City — are all in Alameda County.

Perhaps it would be justified in Oakland if the city didn’t already levy special property taxes for many of the same services that the sales tax is supposed to cover. And perhaps the record-high sales tax would be justified if it were part of a binding plan to resolve the city’s fiscal crisis.

But, right now, Measure A is just another tax grab. Voters should reject it.