Secret Government Spent $25,000 to Rig
LLAD Tax Vote

A secret group within Oakland City Hall spent $25,000 on a political consultant, plus uncounted hours of City staff time, plotting a rigged vote to increase property owners' Landscape and Lighting Assessment tax (LLAD).

The City awarded Strategy Research Institute (SRI) of Fullerton, California and its principal, G. Gary Manross, a contract to design a winning strategy. That was a challenge; a similar LLAD tax hike failed in 2006 when a grass-roots opposition campaign informed voters that most of the new money would not go for maintaining parks, trees, and street lights, the alleged purpose of the assessment.

Secret government and consultant plotted rigged tax vote

SRI not only took a poll asking respondents whether they would vote for various amounts of increase. Working with councilmember Jean Quan's staff and City officials, SRI developed tactics used to stuff the ballot box in the April-May mail-in vote.

Under public records law, citizen activist David E. Mix obtained documents that reveal SRI's heavy-handed work. In a Feb. 5, 2008 email Manross writes:

"There are three sets of property owners (not just one) who can make a difference. These are the Oakland Unified School District, the Peralta Community College District, and the Housing Authority. If City officials can persuade (them), then the proposed increase in the City's LLAD will secure the requisite vote needed for being authorized. Clearly, this is where the City's efforts should be focused."

In fact, as previously reported by ORPN, City leaders told chancellor Elihu Harris that the City would make no effort to collect Peralta's LLAD assessment in return for the district's voting cooperation.

After presenting detailed scenarios based on his analysis of poll numbers, Manross noted, "The City's vote will (for all practical purposes) OFFSET the lack of support from owners of commercial property in Oakland." As also reported by ORPN, the City, besides casting its own votes for the increase without public discussion, gave the Port of Oakland nearly a million extra votes. The Port cast all its votes in favor of an increase.

According to the documents obtained by Mix, participants in thwarting the voters' decision include Jean Quan and other councilmembers, Quan's policy analyst Sue Piper, public works director Raul Godinez and assistant director Brooke Levin. Mayor Dellums' chief aide Dan Lindheim was kept informed.

In addition to the SRI consultant, the City used Francisco & Associates to plot the ballot stuffing. Francisco prepares the list of properties and their alleged benefit from landscape and lighting services. Francisco was not an impartial technician. Its owner Joe Francisco eagerly participated in the scheme to force a Yes outcome.

"I worked on [the scenarios] with Dr. Manross," Francisco wrote in a Feb. 3, 2008 email to public works operative Brooke Levin. "We are doing some final evaluations on about 133 public parcels so the ... numbers may change," he added. At the same time that Francisco is supposed to be compiling an objective list of property assessments and hence weighted votes, he is working with the consultant figuring out whether "we [!] would barely lose" or "barely pass."

Francisco's contract is not included in the $25,000 figure. His firm has received more than $600,000 in City contracts for such services in various elections.

The vote-rigging, developed in late 2007 and early 2008, was never disclosed at a city council meeting. The council authorized the mail-in ballot.

It is one thing for a city to take a poll of voters, reporting the results to the public. It is another thing entirely when a secret government spends taxpayer funds on a political consultant for a plan to rig the vote. SRI was awarded the contract because Manross pledged to do the strategizing that the secret government wanted: "Of the three potential survey firms, only SRI proposed surveying ... governmental agencies – the largest voting block." (Memo by Jocelyn Combs, Dec. 3, 2007)

Councilmember Quan in particular has a history of corrupting democracy. For the 2006 LLAD vote, she and her staff aide Sue Piper arranged for 95,000 propaganda brochures to be stuffed into residents' garbage bills, designed and printed at City expense in the amount of $11,000. Opponents were not given a similar opportunity to distribute unpleasant facts omitted from the brochure.

Later in 2006 Quan raised $150,000 to campaign for bonds to build a $100 million palace library downtown. Nearly half was contributed by businesses holding and seeking contracts with the City. Fortunately, Measure N failed, again because of grass-roots opposition. The City was spared a debt burden that would have compounded today's budget and credit crisis enormously. Meanwhile, several of the contributing businesses have already been rewarded with renewed contracts.

Quan led a successful campaign for the Measure Y tax in 2004, insisting it would deliver a total of 802 officers or else the tax would not be collected. The city council ordered collection of the tax, but for more than three years we had fewer officers than when Measure Y was written. The City has 773 officers as of Sept. 29, 2008.

In meetings on the City's budget crisis, Quan and mayor Dellums repeatedly announced they are not giving up on the LLAD despite defeats in 2006 and this year. Last July, the council decided not to collect the increase on 2008-09 property tax bills but refused to rescind its banana-republic decision that voters approved the increase. Quan writes in her newsletter, "The Mayor and I asked for staff to prepare our legal options for conducting a LLAD election." (Oct. 17, 2008) It seems that some people never learn.

Now Quan supports, although with muted enthusiasm, Measure NN, a Son of Measure Y parcel tax on the November 4, 2008 ballot. Like Measure Y, its promise of more police is ridden with loopholes. A vote against NN is both good policy and a vote of protest against City Hall's corruption of democracy.

City Rewards Accomplice in Vote Rigging

The City of Oakland is rewarding a firm that helped rig a mail-in vote with a $143,000 two-year contract to do more of the same.

When City Hall proposed an increase of property owners' Landscape and Lighting Assessment (LLAD) parcel tax, Francisco & Associates prepared the property voting roll for a mail-in ballot held in April-May 2008. It also counted the votes. The firm eagerly participated in the City conspiracy to rig the outcome:

• Francisco without explanation gave the Port of Oakland a weighted LLAD vote counting for more than 10,000 homes. The idea that the industrial port receives that much benefit from the Landscape and Lighting Assessment is ridiculous on its face.

• Months before the vote, Francisco and another private firm worked with the City not merely to test public opinion but to figure out how to rig the numbers for a Yes vote. Abandoning all pretense of impartiality, Francisco reported in email to City officials that it was working with the other consultant to figure out whether "we [!] would barely lose" or "barely pass."

• Francisco tallied certain parcels owned by governmental bodies as casting a Yes vote, even though the body in question never returned the official ballot.

• Francisco dragged its feet providing requested data to David E. Mix, the citizen activist who exposed the various schemes to rig the LLAD vote. This is another reason not to privatize core governmental functions like counting the vote.

Setting aside the manufactured votes created by Francisco and the City, voters rejected the LLAD increase, but the city council accepted the rigged vote report and certified the opposite. However, bowing to public pressure last July, the council chose not to implement the increase on this year's property tax bill – tacitly admitting what happened – but it has refused to rescind the false declaration that the LLAD passed.

This Fall, three other firms responded to a City invitation for bids on a contract to prepare various property rolls for the next two years. The City made it clear in a pre-bid conference and interviews that the fix was in to awared the contract to Francisco, which has already received more than $600,000 in previous years' contracts with Oakland. (Budget office memo to council)

At the Dec. 16, 2008 meeting of the city council's finance committee, councilmember Jane Brunner ventured in general terms that there had been a "little problem" with the LLAD vote. Committee chair Jean Quan intervened to perpetuate the lie that the only problem was a state supreme court ruling. On the contrary, noted David Mix. He reminded the committee of the conspiracy by the City and Francisco to rig the vote and that a lawsuit on the matter is in progress. Quan, dismissing Mix with her signature sneer of the lips, remarked that councilmembers do not comment on pending litigation. There was no further discussion, and on a motion by Ignacio De Fuente, seconded by Nancy Nadel, the committee moved the contract award forward.

By this action the city council thumbs its nose at the thousands of residents who expressed their outrage when the LLAD vote-rigging was reported not only by this website but by the East Bay Express.