Here’s how Sacramento voters cast ballots on Measure C, the city-backed business tax hike
Though ballot counting is still underway, the final update provided Tuesday by Sacramento county election officials showed Sacramento voters on their way to rejecting Measure C.
At 8 p.m. when the polls closed, the measure was behind with 60% of voters voting down the sole county ballot measure. The percentages didn’t change much once a second batch of results were unveiled at 10 p.m. or during the third round of numbers released just before midnight.
Measure C, sent to the voters by the City Council on Nov. 14, seeks to amend Sacramento’s business tax for the first time since 1991. The city-backed measure would raise an estimated $3.7 million in its first year and $6 million by its fifth year to help address a $66 million budget deficit.
If passed, city officials have said the majority of businesses affected would receive a tax decrease and major corporations would face the brunt of increasing rates. The initiative also carved out different categories of professionals — such as attorneys, veterinarians, dentists, surgeons and others — who would face a tax hike no matter their income.
In total, 34,799 votes had been tabulated by about 11:50 p.m. There are 19,293 residents who voted no and 12,570 who approved the tax, according to the Sacramento County election’s office.
Ballots continue to be counted. The next round of results will be released at about 4 p.m. Friday.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg publicly said he didn’t believe Measure C would pass during an interview with the Sacramento Business Journal and during a budget and audit committee hearing. Steinberg said in a statement that it’s clearly not the right time for voters to consider a change because “there has been considerable controversy over how it was noticed.”
“The silver lining is that we can take this time to look at and improve our noticing procedures, which we will do,” Steinberg said in the emailed statement.
His comments came after he acknowledged a “mistake” during a Feb. 13 City Council meeting in which city staff failed to post the ordinance’s language in the Sacramento Bulletin, the city’s contracted paper of record, in a timely manner.
“The original mistake was a mistake,” Steinberg said during the meeting. “But, it was not a mistake that ... in any way was attempting to mislead.”
The law requires ordinances to be published in the city’s official newspaper, chosen each year by the council, within 10 days of the council’s approval to provide residents with its notice. However, the notice didn’t appear in the Bulletin until Feb. 7, months after its passage in November, and after The Sacramento Bee’s Editorial Board had asked for a copy of the notice’s publication.
The No on Measure C campaign, North Natomas attorney Tiffany Clark and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which describes itself as the state’s largest taxpayer watchdog association, have rallied against the measure.
The Jarvis association questioned Measure C’s legality because of its noncompliance with Sacramento’s city charter public notice requirement, according to an letter sent to City Council. The letter added it expects the city to file a “validation action” in court if the measure passes to determine its legal status.
Groups involved in the No on Measure C campaign included the California Medical Association, Sierra Sacramento Valley Medical Society, California Dental Association, the Sacramento District Dental Association and the Doctors Company. They made more than 168,000 phone calls and sending 94,000 texts to urge voter’s rejection, according to a news release from the campaign.
The campaign’s push to reject the measure was propelled by the failure of the Sacramento City Council to provide proper notification, the release said.
