Roundtable: SANDAG's New Math; Mexican Pride; Nearby Nuclear Waste

Measure A was supposed to improve the freeways but it never would have raised money and they knew that. The Mexican nationalism is on the rise as Mexicans are offended by talk from the Donald Trump administration. As they bury nuclear waste on the coast, they introduce a bill to move this toxic stuff. I a.m. Marj Saur and the KPBS Roundtable starts now. Welcome to our discussion. Joining me up around tidal -- Roundtable is Andy. It is good to see you today. The Metro reporter, hello, Andy. And Sandra is here. Watchdog reporter Jeff McDonald is here. Hello. Is good to have you here today. In the months leading up to the election, we were urged to back a cell stack -- sales tax hike. They pushed it saying it would raise $18 billion. That number was billions more than it was likely to raise. There trained 40 knew that but kept it to themselves. This is a draw -- jaw-dropping story. Plus how they got the -- this so wrong. They used the basis for the modeling that the Duke, all the forecast they do. That model that they used for forecast that became bit extension in 2004, and the one that became Measure A, they had the same law. The basic one was they say and everyone would get more rich Dente there was any real historical evidence for. The rate of the increase in the wages is something like .69% and they thought it would increase at 1.3%. It was almost double the amount. It is a simple series of events. If everybody gets more rich, everyone spends more money than they have before and everyone will generate more tax revenue. This was discovered a year before Measure A was voted on and it caused panic. We have the election in November 2016. The year before the fall of 2015, this was known. How did create panic? How did that come up in the organization? But you had one model who said to his supervisor the newly -- he said here are some numbers. They exchanged emails a couple of times before Ray Mager said am I understanding this right? And he laid out what I just said. He said yes. You got that right. He responded OMG. The next guy said, wait. I can think of a nether acronym that we could use and he responded WTF. We are talking about real concerns. They understood the implementation -- implications. They go on for a month putting together charts and refining the data and building a case, knowing that this is going to produce tax revenue expectations that are beyond anything that is supportable. They put it together in a presentation and they took it to the executives instead here is what we found. I want to be clear. The implications were explicitly spelled out in the presentation that this had major affects on the expectations that were already being felt and it would be applied. You in real life experience and the speculative thing in the proposal. You they are trying to sell the voters. Vote for this Measure A because it will be $18 billion and we will do all of these wonderful things. This was months ahead of that measure. They had been contemplating the measure and there had been discussions and negotiations among the board but it has not been finalized. This is in December when they were made of where this and it wasn't until April Wednesday voted. They had the months before they were out there campaigning in Saint $18 billion is coming. They did not do anything about that? They did not tell the oversight board that was created to watchdog the SANDAG . None of the board was made aware this. At that point, you make a minor adjustment and it is not becoming a major thing until you go to the voters with it. Instead of $18 billion? Are we talking $14 billion? That is a lot of real money. This measure was going to pay for a lot of infrastructure. There was freeway widening and public transit and new services. One of the interesting things on the project list was the same projects that were included in the 2004 transit extensions. It seems clear that Measure A was meant to fill the projects that could never actually get built on the timeline that they originally planned for the 2004 tax measure that was approved. There was priority programs that was meant to fast-track the most important projects and SANDAG said we would build these within 15 years but they gave themselves a convenient out to say if the economy goes down, if we are not getting enough revenue, we can vote to delay the priority projects in these revolutions seem pretty damning. I am throwing something to both of you. As far as what you can see how this came about, the various officials who sit on bed SANDAG boards were not made aware of this. They did not know. I talked to the chairman of the board and he said he was not and he should have been. Now, you know, there are 19 board members. I can't say definitively that no one knew. [ OVERLAPPING SPEAKERS ] Is there any accountability from the staffers that were responsible? So far, there does not seem to be. SANDAG had an annual retreat this week on Lakeside. All the board members and people who are not on the board are out there. There was discussions about this. There was hit -- handwringing about what should happen but no one talked about specific accountability measures. We will get into that in a moment about things that were discussed going forward but credibility with the voters, is that a big deal? Most people are not aware of what SANDAG does. Most people do not know who the members or the mayor is what they do. The danger with losing credibility is not the average board -- the voter, you are in danger among the advocacy organizations and political parties and other agencies that will or will not endorse a future measure. Piggybacking on that, I think that is true. You do not need to be aware of this right now for it to matter the next time it is on the ballot. There will be a campaign This had opponents on the left and right. They are feeling vindicated by this. You mentioned credibility. You interviewed Ron Roberts, a supervisor and let's see what he said. The public has a right to be concerned. That is why we need to be able to identify precisely how and what happened. You know, the broader public once these improvements. That is the one thing that we know. Whether SANDAG is in a position to deliver those or whether it is done by two different regional bodies, rate remains to be seen. If SANDAG is not paying for the regional projects, who might? We have a story on how they may scale back. Cities and counties have the ability to tax residents. They can use that money how they see fit. They do do that for roads and things like bike lanes and other things. They can coin -- form joint power agreements. Cities can build infrastructure together. SANDAG has a huge role in planning and transportation and every sort of aspect. It is difficult to imagine any future tax measure in which SANDAG had no involvement whatsoever. There has been discussions of MTS crafting a tax measure. They are not involved in a serious way with funding. That is an -- in the idea phase. They cover most of the South County. That is where Measure A got the most support and were most transit exist. They have research that and they found that it is complicated and they need new authority for the legislature. There are logistical questions to resolve. We're talking about subgroups raising money for transportation. We need to take a look. If there is a subregion that says we want Highway 78 so that the cities, they do not have to have anybody else for dissipating. They can say, these cities, we will agree whether it is in joint powers or whatever, they can do that. What kind of reaction are you getting in this revelation? We have quite a bit of feedback. Some people are appalled and do something about it but we will see. We Will. Thank you very much.