On May 18, 2010 MUTA settled its long running lawsuit against the County for the improprieties involved in the Ross Valley Flood fee election that deprived many of the right to vote on a "tax" that was called a "fee" to evade Prop 13's 2/3rds vote requirement. This was the first lawsuit filed by MUTA in its 30+ year history. It was necessitated after the County refused to redo the Ross Valley Flood fee election after remarkable improprieties in the election process. This was a "mail" ballot to members of a District that was created by the County who were all going to be "taxed" about $44+ million to fix the flooding of the Corte Madera Creek, which should have been fixed 15 years ago by the County with the tax money we already have been paying them to fix such things. They wanted more.
In order to get more, they called the "tax" a "fee", yet a "fee" requires that you show special benefit to each property hit with the fee. The County did not bother to show benefit. They said taxpayer-landowners a mile away from the Creek benefited, although they never flooded. They exempted properties with no basis, even though those properties had more impervious areas and actually contributed to flooding. They did not mail ballots to all those in the District so that they could vote. They eliminated the secret ballot by making taxpayers put their names on the ballots, with no Constitutional privacy. They had the Public Works Dept (of all things) handle the election instead of the Registrar of Voters, and contracted the vote counting to the daughter of the engineer who came up with the project details. The mail ballot that they sent out did not look like a ballot at all, it looked like a Publisher's Clearing House announcement. Worst of all they discarded all ballots that were not signed on their face, even though only those who lived in the District got the ballot. If the County had counted those ballots instead of discarding them, they would have lost the election by 147 votes; instead they slipped by with a "win" of only 65 votes to claim the prize: $44 million more in taxes.
MUTA repeatedly asked the County to redo the election so that a proper election could be held. Supervisor Hal Brown at first said he would consider it, and then, realizing it would lose after the "discarded ballots" were counted, he reneged and decided to shove the improperly obtained tax down taxpayers throats. Supervisor Brown knew litigation would result, but he and the fleet of County attorneys did not care because we the taxpayers were paying their bills to pound us down in Court. Two lawsuits followed, MUTA's and Ford Greene's. Ford lost his case in the local County friendly Superior Court, only to have that decision overturned by the Appeals Court which said the election fiasco violated the Constitutional right to a secret ballot. Not wanting to give up the $44 million, Hal Brown and the Supervisors appealed to the California Supreme Court, which to date has not issued its opinion, but we have reason to believe Ford will win.
MUTA then pushed for a change in overall election proceedings so that this could not happen again. This was of particular concern when it was learned that one Supervisor indicated she thought this mail ballot with open signatures and no accountable voting process, was great. Read: more taxes and easier to get. After extensive negotiations MUTA obtained written agreements to assure that ballots that look like general election ballots would be issued going forward; that the public would first have to be told specifically what state and federal money was "supporting" the project so that people would know if that claim was bogus; that the County would follow Prop 218 requirements in all ballot measures (which did not happen in the first election); as well as several other taxpayer/voter protections. MUTA got its costs and attorney's fees back so that they could pay their bills, and nothing more. There was one drawback, and that was that our past president sought a significant personal payment ($35,000) to her despite our bylaws, after she had committed to take no money other than reimbursement of her direct money outlay for the case, i.e., $1,500. This created a conflict for MUTA and great disappointment. That person was Basia Crane, who was later removed as President by the MUTA Board of Directors.
MUTA's considerable efforts and small settlement (compared to the flood tax or the County's unlimited legal budget used to crush all dissenters) for its expenses only, will pave the way for others to question the Board of Supervisors new taxes and fees; because what may be good for the Supervisors, is not good for the taxpayers who are paying their freight.