Private Poll for Public Decisions

Lawmakers use data they’ve never seen to aid in decisions on
major transportation policies
San Jose – Santa Clara County lawmakers are poised to make major policy decisions on transportation and the future of healthcare and other social services based in part on information they will never see.

This week, county supervisors and officials from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority disclosed they are negotiating the details of a potential joint ballot measure for a half-cent sales tax to extend BART to San Jose and fund a number of county departments.

The momentum behind those conversations is based on worries that two competing sales tax measures would both fail, a fear fed by a recent poll funded by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business consortium, and a variety of other local labor and business interests. 

But almost no one has seen the poll.

“I can’t tell you how many times I have asked to see the polls and analyze them for myself,” county supervisor and VTA board member Liz Kniss said.

In an e-mail sent to select county leaders and obtained by the Dispatch this week, SVLG director Carl Guardino wrote that “if the county and the transportation advocates worked together – even though the total (a combined half-cent) would be the same as two competing quarter-cent measures – the chances of winning are very strong.”

But Guardino didn’t provide any data to support that claim or his assertion that a measure for county services would be defeated by a well-funded opposition campaign. Nor did he reveal how far short of the necessary two-thirds majority a quarter-cent tax to fund the VTA and its $4.7-billion BART project would fall. 

Not all VTA board members received the summary, including Greg Perry, a Mountain View city councilman vocal in his opposition to the BART project.

“The private lobbyist comes in with information he says he has, but doesn’t show and they change public policy on it,” Perry said. “It’s horrible for the open public process. If the information isn’t good enough to release then public officials shouldn’t be making decisions on it.”

The SVLG is a private organization and has no obligation to release the poll. As it has with previous polls – the group conducted polling and financed the campaign for Measure A in 2000, when voters approved a half-cent initiative that promised BART would be built to San Jose – the group is singling out certain individuals to receive select bits of information.

Still, the SVLG poll is being used to inform VTA policy and could have significant influence when county supervisors decide whether to pursue their own tax measure. 

The notion of a joint sales tax has been discussed on and off for months, but San Jose Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez, who is also chairwoman of the VTA board, said Friday that the leadership group’s polling has given the talks more urgency. In recent weeks, VTA board members have not been able to find consensus on a spending plan for a VTA sales tax that would require two-thirds support to pass.

“It was definitely their initiative and their desire to help us all move forward,” Chavez said. “I think it’s important that we have a relationship with the private sector.”

Chavez added that she will want to see additional polling, a point echoed by VTA board member and Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, though Gage also said he has more faith in the SVLG poll than the public poll the county released late last year. 

The county poll found that about 60 percent of voters would support either a quarter or half-cent sales tax to fund healthcare and social services. Gage has not seen the SVLG poll, but he did help craft what he said are better questions.

“I think they ask the right questions,” Gage said of the SVLG. “If you ask someone if they support healthcare, no one is going to say no. The leadership group asks people what they prefer and what they’re willing to pay taxes to support.”

Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy, also a VTA board member, said he considers the SVLG poll one resource among many. 

“I view it as an additional resource but not the overriding factor,” he said. “There are a lot of other things we need to consider.”

Kennedy said he thinks the joint tax idea is a good one, but conceded that Guardino’s summary of the SVLG poll is not enough to set VTA’s policy course. Guardino was critical of the county’s tax measure but offered no evidence that it would fail.

Guardino could not be reached and the SVLG declined multiple requests to view the survey.

Eugene Bradley, the head of a grassroots organization pressing for VTA reform, called Guardino’s summary “fraudulent.” Bradley has not seen the poll.

“It is yet another example of the VTA basing government policy and fiscal responsibility on polls sponsored by the business and labor community,” Bradley said, noting that Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury recently slammed the VTA’s close ties with the SVLG.

The report, released in 2004, said “it is the fiducial responsibility of the board, not a committee, a business lobbying group, or business community leaders, to provide oversight and direction.”

The VTA will try to finalize the spending plan for its tax measure March 2. That decision has been delayed four times since November because board members have not reached agreement on the projects that a new tax should finance in addition to BART.