Santa Clara County is facing an investigation by California’s election watchdog after complaints alleging the county used public funds to influence the campaign for a voter-approved sales tax increase known as Measure A. In a Tuesday letter, the Fair Political Practices Commission said it would probe the county over allegations tied to mailers sent ahead of the November election, according to reporting distributed through The Associated Press.
The complaints were filed in December by the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association and the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County. They alleged the mailers amounted to “political propaganda,” and they argued the county’s outreach “skirted election laws” while aiming to scare voters into approving the sales tax increase, the AP report said.
The AP report said FPPC informed two regional anti-tax groups of the investigation in the Tuesday letter. The watchdog declined to comment, and the AP story quoted Jason Bezis, an attorney for both anti-tax groups, as saying the issue was not merely the content of the mailers but the public funding behind them.
Bez is told San José Spotlight that it is “illegal for a local government to take sides in an election and by spending public tax dollars to support Measure A, the county took sides.” The AP account said county leaders reject that framing, asserting that the mailers were informational and did not depend on whether recipients were registered voters.
The mailers at issue, the AP report said, were sent to residents’ mailboxes under official county letterhead last year ahead of the November election. The mailers did not explicitly endorse Measure A, but they warned about life-threatening hospital closures and jeopardized health care access if the county faced a budget crisis tied to federal spending cuts.
Santa Clara County officials placed Measure A on the ballot in response to the federal spending bill H.R. 1, the AP report said, describing it as threatening the county’s largest source of hospital funding. County Counsel Tony LoPresti told San José Spotlight that the county’s position was that residents had a right to know the severe budget impacts associated with H.R. 1, which he said created a nearly $1 billion deficit.
LoPresti also said in comments to San José Spotlight that “the county’s investment in informing the public about this crisis is entirely appropriate,” adding that the county was not concerned about FPPC investigating what he characterized as informational activity. He contrasted the county’s approach with restrictions that would have applied if the tax were structured differently.
Measure A is described in the AP report as a general tax, with spending not restricted to a specific use. The county opted not to make it a special tax, which would have required 66.7% voter approval rather than a simple majority in order to limit funds to hospitals.
The AP report also described the policy debate among officials and unions after the vote. It said District Attorney Jeff Rosen, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and unions representing county prosecutors and deputies with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office initially refrained from endorsing Measure A, while questioning the county’s expansion of the hospital system and urging cuts elsewhere.
According to the AP account, the concerns “apparently subsided” after law enforcement leaders said they received assurances from the county that they would see some Measure A revenue. But after the county executive, James Williams, announced he would recommend a full allocation of Measure A revenue toward the health system, Rosen threatened an investigation into Williams and said in public remarks the checks and balances had failed locally, the AP report said. The report said no DA investigation has been announced, and Rosen’s office declined comment on the FPPC investigation.
Maria Noel Fernandez, executive director of Working Partnerships USA, told San José Spotlight that residents understood what they were voting for when casting ballots on Measure A. She said H.R. 1 created a large budget hole that she said affected the public health system, and that “Measure A was a direct response” with voters acting “to save public services,” the AP report said.
Separately from the mailer dispute, the AP report said the FPPC previously informed Bezis in February that it would investigate a separate complaint he filed in October. That complaint, as described by the AP story, alleged that a pro-Measure A campaign committee set up by law enforcement unions failed to timely report subvendor payments, and the committee’s attorneys dismissed the allegation as baseless in a November response letter.
This article is part of a continuing chain about election-law scrutiny involving ballot-related communications.