Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit demands transit agencies address waste, alternative funding sources, and non-binding oversight loopholes before locking in a 14-year tax hike.
WALNUT CREEK, CA — A five-county coalition of taxpayer advocates, transit reformers and civic leaders today announced Monday, July 6, 2026, a campaign to defeat the regional transit sales tax slated for the November ballot. The newly formed Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit warns that the 14-year measure will push total sales tax rates up to or over a crushing 11 percent in nine Bay Area cities across Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties.
Authorized by SB 63 (Wiener, 2025), the measure seeks to raise sales taxes by a half-percent in four counties and a full one percent in San Francisco. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) projects the tax, at inception, will extract roughly $1 billion annually from the local economy and rising with inflation to surpass $14 billion over its term. This funding would come on top of the estimated $6 billion in tax and toll subsidies regional transit operators already receive each year…