Oakland voters have repeatedly approved taxes with clear promises to (fund libraries, maintain parks, ensure public safety) yet the city has loosened or bypassed tens of millions of dollars a year by waiving those requirements under the extreme “fiscal emergency” loophole. Officials rewrote the rules midstream, turning protected funds into flexible backfill for a strained general budget. And now, we’re being asked to approve another $34 million a year in new parcel taxes through a measure heading for the June ballot.
I love Oakland. But loving this city means telling the truth about it, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Here’s the truth: before Oakland residents vote yes on yet another parcel tax, city leaders need to answer for a pattern of mismanagement that no amount of new revenue can paper over. How will they ensure past shortcomings don’t reoccur?
Let’s start with the basics. The 2024–2025 Alameda County Grand Jury (an independent investigative body) devoted five of its six investigations entirely to Oakland this year. Its finding was blunt: the city suffers from a “fundamental disconnect” and failure of citizen oversight and internal controls. City finance staff warned internally of possible insolvency. And the City Council prematurely budgeted $40 million in anticipated parcel tax revenue before a single vote could be cast, spending money voters haven’t approved yet.
That’s not fiscal management. That’s faith-based budgeting.
Pre-committed funds
Then there’s the question of where the money actually goes. An independent analysis found that 44 cents of every dollar this new tax generates ($14.9 million annually) is pre-committed to pay raises and won’t increase services provided to residents. Oakland’s workers deserve fair compensation and I support them. But voters deserve to know that when they’re told this money funds fire stations and cleaner streets, nearly half of it is pre-committed before a single new service is delivered. And the other half can be used by the city for any purpose regardless of what was promised in the ballot.
We’ve seen this movie before. The city has budgeted for 839 fillable positions that it simply hasn’t hired — many paid for by past parcel taxes. That’s a nearly 20% citywide vacancy rate and half of those slots sit empty because departments haven’t even filed the paperwork to start hiring. As one councilmember put it, qualified Oaklanders want these jobs and “they’re not even on the website.” Also, for many past measures (e.g., Measure Q) no baseline was ever established to measure whether the spending worked. And the spending protections voters thought they were approving were quietly suspended.
This new measure contains the same structural loopholes: vague “not limited to” spending language that lets the Council redirect funds at will, with no real anti-supplanting protections, an oversight commission without independent authority, and a fiscal emergency escape hatch used by city officials to override promises to voters for the past two years.
Here’s what Oakland residents actually deserve: a tax that earns their trust before it asks for their money.
First, eliminate loopholes that override the will of voters when spending voter-approved taxes. Our vote for specific spending conditions should not be ignored.
Second, binding spending categories — not aspirational lists. If the ballot says this funds fire stations, the ordinance should legally require it.
Third, an oversight commission with genuine independence: members selected by a neutral panel, auditors hired without City Hall approval and real authority to halt disbursements when funds are misspent.
Fourth, a shorter duration (four years, not nine) conditioned on demonstrated compliance, so voters hold the leverage, not the Council.
Structural deficits
Oakland voters have been generous. Since 2020, we’ve approved over $150 million in new annual revenue. Yet the city still projects structural deficits exceeding $130 million a year through the end of the decade. We are not undertaxed. We are undergoverned.
The question on the June ballot is not whether public safety and clean streets matter. Of course they do. And it’s not whether we love and support our city. Of course we do. The question is whether a city government that has failed to audit $1.45 billion in voter-approved bonds, can’t close its books on time, and built its latest “surplus” on one-time transactions and fund transfers has earned the right to collect $306 million more without hard commitments to improve the underlying structure.
Not yet. Fix the structure first.
None of this requires waiting long. A more binding, transparent, and confidence-building measure can return as soon as November, just five months away. SPUR, the Bay Area’s leading good-governance organization, put it plainly: Oakland must “take stronger financial accountability measures to regain the public’s trust.” A No vote in June is how we get that better measure by November.
Loren Taylor is a former Oakland City Councilmember representing District 6, a two-time mayoral candidate, principal of Custom Taylored Solutions, a social impact management consulting firm and CEO of The Black Action Alliance.