Ethicalego Speaks

Vallejo's 2007 survey results showed that voters would not approve a tax to support public safety. Still, some council members insist that it showed the opposite that voters would have supported the tax.

Another oddity in the Vallejo Times Herald article was who did and did not believe survey results supported passage of the tax. Allegedly, City Manager Joe Tanner said last June 2007 that the poll indicated voters were strongly against any new taxes. Council members Tom Bartee and Erin Hannigan disputed him, saying their reading of the survey showed results different from what Tanner claimed.

As union head, Kurt Henke had a strong motive to report how Joe Tanner reported false survey results and mislead voters. However, the news article reported he said the survey showed the public had a high opinion of public safety and disapproved how the previously council majority handled the budget. He said that he gave survey copies to some council members. That is all folks, not even a hint of an attack on Tanner’s report of survey results.

The roles of the people in this drama seemed strangely reversed. Council members charged with promoting voters’ interests and supporting their city manager expressed what someone would expect from unions. Union head Henke makes a disinterested response of fact in the article.

Other comments credited to Hannigan and Bartee seemed out of character for council members representing residents’ interests. Hannigan said that after reading the survey "it shows there was an inkling the community would support a tax to continue services." Surveys report conclusive or inconclusive results and not vague inklings.

I suspect that Hannigan decided as I did the survey results showed that voters would not support a tax for public safety employee salaries. If so, she had a duty to share this conclusion with Vallejo residents who did not have the full report. Instead, she gave a vague answer that softened the blow to public safety unions’ negotiating position.

Hannigan also said that whatever support there was for a public safety tax was eroded by recent attacks on police and fire department salaries. This was strange statement for a councilmember to make about taxpayers receiving and discussing information about how public safety employees’ pay affects the city budget. Her comments show a preference that Vallejo residents vote a tax to support public service employees’ pay without discussing current salaries and budget conditions.

Council member Bartee said that Joe Tanner should have released the results of the telephone survey because taxpayers paid for them. This claim makes no sense except maybe to someone trying to undermine Tanner’s position and influence. Taxpayers paid for everything in every government file, but this does not mean they should have access to all of it. The untimely release of some information could work against the public’s interest, especially during contract negotiations.

I could understand if City Manager Tanner conducted the survey as a working document to help decide labor negotiations issues. Why would Bartee want to force the release of survey results to the public if he believed they showed voters were willing to pay more taxes? This information would give union negotiators advantage over city negotiators if they knew voters would vote a tax increase to meet their pay raise demands.

On the other hand, why would Joe Tanner release the survey results to union boss Henke now? It would make sense to do this if he knew the report showed that voters would not approve a tax and he believed this information would make union negotiators more compromising. If so, he misjudged some council members and Vallejo residents’ willingness to believe that up is down.

Two questions printed with the newspaper article convinced me that survey results did not show voter support for a tax for public service employee wages. The first question: "Maintaining fire, paramedic and police services in Vallejo should be top priority, even if it means raising taxes—70 percent of responders strongly or somewhat agreed." Considered alone, this answer supports a conclusion that Vallejo voters would support a new tax for public services.

However, another question followed. "The city doesn’t need more money; they just need to spend what they have more efficiently—71 percent strongly or somewhat agreed.

Combined those two answers say, "We voters agree public safety is so important we should raise taxes if the city needed more money to support it, but we do not believe it needs more tax money. It needs to spend what it has more efficiently." Voters were not likely to agree to pay more taxes for anything if they believed the city had enough money that it spends unwisely.