CalCoast News

Reed recasts 911 fee opinion

Mayor Called for Public Vote During 2006 Campaign; Now He's Reconsidering

By John Woolfolk
Mercury News
February 9, 2008

As a candidate for San Jose mayor in 2006, Chuck Reed hammered his opponent for supporting a fee that funds the city's 911 emergency dispatch service, telling voters he "opposed a new phone tax without a vote of the people."

But now that he's mayor and struggling to fix the city's chronic budget deficits, Reed is considering maintaining the fee rather than putting it on the ballot. Without that fee, the deficit would be $24 million worse.

Cindy Chavez, who as Reed's mayoral opponent proposed extending the fee without a public vote, said Reed as a candidate put political expedience over the difficult choice of imposing needed fees to support services.

"Elected officials playing politics with what is good policy," Chavez said recently, "is part of the reason people don't trust politicians."

Reed said he's not being inconsistent - just bowing to the wisdom of the 6th District Court of Appeal, which has jurisdiction over San Jose and upheld Santa Cruz County's decision to impose a similar fee without voter approval.

"My position has been that it's a tax, but the 6th District disagreed with me," Reed said. "Right now, the 6th District says it's a fee and the council has the power to extend it."

But that appellate decision came down in December 2005 - six months before the city council meeting where Reed joined two other council members in unsuccessfully opposing Chavez's proposal to extend the fee through June 2009. The fee tacks an extra $1.75 per month per line for most telephone customers.

At that June 2006 meeting, Reed argued the city should put it on the ballot despite the court's ruling, to eliminate any legal uncertainty over whether it was a tax that would require voter approval.

"I don't think it should be extended without the vote of the people," Reed said at the meeting. "If we have it on the ballot, we would at least know what's going to happen, instead of a Court of Appeal tells us somewhere we have to stop collecting it or refund it or something."

That legal uncertainty remains today. The 6th District's decision was unpublished, meaning it established no precedent. Nearby Union City is appealing a trial court ruling that a similar fee was a tax requiring voter approval. And there is another pending challenge in Stockton.

Reed says he hasn't ruled out asking voters to approve the fee before it expires in 2009. The council, he said, could decide during the June budget approval process to put it on the November ballot.

But Reed's not sure he'd recommend that.

"I don't know," Reed said. "It depends on what else is on the ballot and the state of the law."

With the city already facing a $25 million deficit in next year's budget and a cumulative shortfall of $133 million over four years, Reed has made his top priority bringing revenues and expenses into balance.

To that end, he has hired consultants, polled residents and convened an advisory group to find solutions. He and his advisory group last week recommended a shared-pain approach of equal parts spending cuts, service reductions and revenue increases such as taxes.

Voters whom the city polled this month were generally hostile to the idea of paying more. But the poll indicated they might let the city shift existing property-transfer tax money from construction to maintenance uses, which would ease the operating-fund shortfall.

Reed is strongly considering asking the council to put such a request on the ballot and is concerned that adding approval of the 911 fee to the mix might hurt chances for both. The city's poll did not ask whether voters would extend the 911 fee, which likely would require a difficult two-thirds approval.

City consultants Management Partners have recommended the city extend the fee and warned against risking voter approval for what they called a "crucial revenue source." While noting the ongoing legal uncertainty, the consultants said such phone fees have been imposed since the early 1990s and are widely used in California.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors last month also approved such a fee over the objection of chairman Pete McHugh, who also considered it a tax voters should approve.

San Jose Councilman Pete Constant, also a critic of the 911 fee, appreciates Reed's dilemma. He hasn't decided whether the council should seek a vote on the fee, noting that "we haven't been very successful" asking voters to approve taxes.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, said Reed is realizing the folly of campaigning against a badly needed revenue source.

"You can't say there's a problem, there's a deficit, and not be supportive of raising revenues," she said.

Contact John Woolfolk at jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com or (408) 975-9346.