Oakland Admits Its Budget Is a Ponzi Scheme

Well, not quite, but almost. What it does admit is that it has not expressly “appropriated” funds sufficient to maintain the police force at 739 non-Measure Y officers, as required by Measure Y. But it claims that doesn’t matter, because it can find the money somewhere in the budget, if need be, and that I can't force them to spend it on new officers. The problem is, it’s nowhere in the budget, and the argument that the money is there, but I can’t force them to spend it, is completely contrary to the intent of Measure Y. How can the City fight crime when it doesn't actually hire the officers it was supposed to with the money we so generously gave? Nevertheless, these are the best defenses the City has to offer against my pending suit.

Next Thursday, my motion for a preliminary injunction (where I am asking the court to order the City to stop collecting all Measure Y taxes) will be heard by Judge Roesch of the Alameda County Superior Court. It should be really, really interesting.

One of the objections people have to parcel taxes is that it lets the government reduce the amount of funding that is supposed to support basic services like the police, so they can spend it on whatever other wasteful garbage they choose (like, for example, loaning money to incompetent bakery owners that drive Ferraris, a chauffeur for the Mayor, legal fees to defeat taxpayer rights etc.). So if the generous taxpayers fork over $20 million a year to the City for police in the form of a parcel tax, the City says, “oooh, looky here, we got ourselves an extra $20 mil, now we can underfund police by that same amount and spend it on whatever wasteful garbage we want!” Some people in City Hall know that people like me think they do stuff like that, so to calm us down, they first told us, “Oh, now, don’t you worry your pretty little head - that won’t happen. Measure Y promises that regular police (non-Measure Y) staffing will be maintained with at least 739 officers out of non-Measure Y sources.”

The City conned us good, they did, and started taking our money. Lo and behold, the force dropped like a rock, and the City got sued. Then the City said, “Oh, no, we didn’t actually mean that staffing would be maintained at 739. What we actually said - if you read the really fine print - was that we would just ‘appropriate’ that money out of non-Measure Y funds. We don’t actually have to employ those officers.” Like money sitting somewhere in a budget is actually going to prevent crime. Yeah, right. So anyway, they’ve gotten away with that argument so far (it’s on appeal now).

Now, of course, things have gone from bad to worse. The City is no longer even pretending to try to maintain the force at its authorized strength. It was at 837, now it’s at 770, and we’re losing nearly five officers a month. No full academies have been scheduled since 2008, and the City pretty much admitted, in documents presented to the Public Safety Committee, that the reason was the “fiscal crisis.” Okay, but Measure Y promises that the City needs to “appropriate” enough funds to “maintain” the size of the police force. So the money is guaranteed to be there. They can’t claim the money’s not there when they “appropriated” it specifically for that purpose. Last week, I got to hear the City’s defense for the first time. And it goes something like this:

“We’re broke. We’re so broke we were actually contemplating laying off officers last year. Then we heard about all this federal funding out there in the form of the COPS grant. But they said we couldn’t get our grubby fingers on the money unless we were actually threatening to lay off officers. So we had to convince them that we were serious. If we scheduled an academy, they’d know we were lying. So we didn’t schedule an academy, and we successfully conned the feds into giving us the money. We deserve a frickin medal! Now, about this ‘appropriation’ language. Well, here’s the thing. We can’t actually show you in the budget where we have money for police academies. But it’s in there somewhere, I swear. Most of it is officer salaries anyway, which is definitely in there. And the rest, well, it’s not that much, and as long as we still have somebody to lay off, or a building we can sell, or mortgage, well, we can find the money somewhere, and that’s all we think we have to do to satisfy the 'appropriate' language under Measure Y. So it’s all good. Really. Trust us. Yeah, the police force is dropping. We couldn't give a rat’s patootie! Measure Y just requires ‘appropriation’ of money. We don‘t actually have to spend it. We can do whatever we want with it. You can‘t force us to actually spend it on officers or fighting crime or anything like that. So just go take a hike.”

This argument is so LAME on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. But I might start by suggesting that those City officials, with their fancy law and economics degrees and whatnot, might start by opening the dictionary and learn what the word “appropriate” means. Then, I might refer them to the Wikipedia page on “Ponzi scheme,” because their accounting methodology seems awfully similar. I should also point out that their argument does not address why they didn’t immediately schedule an academy after they successfully conned the federal government into giving them the COPS grant. Nor does it explain why they cancelled the last full academy to supposedly save $4.5 million. I mean, if the money had been “appropriated,” then it shouldn’t have been used on anything else. But of course, it was. Also, if the money for recruitment and academies is “somewhere” in the regular budget, why did they need to raid the Measure Y fund in March, 2008 for $7.7 million? (Which, of course, they now owe back, as a result of my previous suit).

The fact of the matter is that the City did not “appropriate” the necessary funds, and the City has been deliberately allowing the size of the police force to drop, because it in effect is the same thing as a layoff, and the City save millions and millions of dollars using this strategy. But not for long, if I have my way. Any of you folks out there still willing to support yet another parcel tax?