Measure J Transit Tax Election Results: Mayor Villaraigosa's $45 Billion For Rail Falling Just Short of 2/3 Vote

By LA Weekly Wed., Nov. 7 2012 at 9:31 AM

By Hillel Aron

Update: Los Angeles County voters rejected Measure J, which needed 66.7% to pass, by two percentage points, 64.72 to 35.28. See next page for more.

Things are not looking good for Measure J. With 33% of precincts reporting, the proposal is about two points shy of the 66.67% it needs to pass, according to the Registrar's website.

Its proponents better hope that the votes already counted come from outlying areas and not the city of LA, which stands to benefit the most from light rail construction. If passed, Measure J would accelerate the construction of a number of transit projects funded by Measure R, the 30-year, half-percent sales tax passed by LA County voters in 2008.

An internal poll obtained by LA Weekly showed the tax extension clinging to a 68% lead.

Update: Well, internal polls are often wrong, and Measure J is dead.

Deep-pocketed proponents organized by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and rail advocate Denny Zane spent a small fortune trying to convince voters to tax not only themselves, but future generations not yet born, until the year 2069.

That may have been the proposal's undoing -- but a hearty band of bus riding activists also persistently attacked the proponents' idea of extending a current sales tax hike, just approved in 2008 and known as Measure R, by another 30 years.

The Bus Riders Union pointed out repeatedly that the lion's share of the existing Los Angeles County sales tax hike was being spent by Metro on costly light rail and subway projects, while the vast majority of working residents countywide who use transit use the bus.

Metro has spent only about 20 percent of Measure R money improving bus service.

Measure J may also have been hurt by LA-centric Metro spending 35 percent of its billions in Measure R taxes collected so far on Los Angeles. Bustling, dense San Gabriel Valley has received only 5 percent of the tax hike revenue paid by all consumers in Los Angeles County.

Tags:

Bus Riders Union, election results, Measure J, Measure R, sales tax hike, transit tax

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abramsrl topcommenter

1 Like

Although a majority of the voters were fooled, the 2/3 requirement saved Angelenos. The fraud of these Transit Measures is that they are part of a larger Real Estate Swindle that has been going on in Los Angeles for decades.

Back when the real estate developers were pushing the Beverly Hills Freeway (late 1960's very early 1970's), UCLA's School of Business released the "position paper" proving that the goal of the freeway was not to improve traffic, but rather the purpose was to justify the extreme densification of Hollywood from Silver Lake to Century City and to allow the super-sizing of Century City. Specifically, they planned to destroy all the R-1 neighborhoods along Santa Monica Boulevard and also to wipe out the "fags" since Gay businesses had congregated in the unincorporated part of the County which years later became West Hollywood. They pointed with pride how the 60 Freeway had been plotted to destroy certain "undesirable" Mexican neighborhoods in East Los Angeles. The City of Beverly Hills killed the Beverly Hills freeway by requiring that the freeway be cut and covered for the entire length of Beverly Hills and by denying them any land for an entrance or exit ramps.

The subway to the sea had the same agenda as the Beverly Hills freeway -- to destroy R-1 neighborhoods in favor of mixed-use projects, like the ones which have destroyed Hollywood in the last decade. If all the condos they planned to construct along Wilshire had been R-1 homes siting side by side, they would stretch from the ocean to Las Vegas -- The subway to the sea will not reduce traffic by 1%, but it will decimate adequate bus service. There are literally trillions of dollars to be made by corrupt international construction companies on building subways and the high rises. Improving bus service, however, provides not such loot for the crooks.

Angelenos certainly dodged a bullet, but with trillions of dollars at stake, you can be sure that the crooks will try again -- they've been at it since the end of WW II. But the people are beginning to win -- AB 2531 was vetoed (The Kelo'ing of Los Angeles),the CRA's are dead, Prop J defeated, and now if we had an honest judge, the Hollywood Community Plan would be stopped. It too is 100% fraud

MK_LA

@abramsrl sounds like lots of conspiracy. Doesn't somebody eventually have to live in those dense places for the developments to make fiscal sense? Development is usually good. Not always, but we all need places to live work and play.

abramsrl topcommenter

@MK_LA @abramsrl No, no one has to ever live in them for them to be financially viable for the developers. The reason is known as Accounting Control Fraud http://bit.ly/JZXxfU

If profit could only be made by projects which would make a reasonable financial return over time, then you would be correct. The modern era of Accounting Control Fraud is usually dated from Equity Funding in 1970. Accounting Control Fraud occurs when those in Control use Fraudulent Accounting to loot their own businesses. The above byte is only to one article which should start off your own WWW search for more data how the billionaires make more money by destroying companies in the short run than running them for long term viability.

Not all companies have been subjected to Accounting Control Fraud. Enron maybe the most famous company where the executives looted the company's assets by lying about how much money Enron was making.

The January 12, 2011 LAFD report was another example of Accounting Control Fraud whereby the success of the LAFD was fraudulently hyped allowing council Prez Garcetti to steal $200 M from the LAFD budget to give to his developer buddies.

Google Henry Pontell and William K Black and you will understand how many, if not most, of the CRA's projects, like the Hollywood Highland Project, lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to fraud with the city picking up the tab. Since Lacey won as DA, we will never have a County DA investigation into the billion dollar + corruption in the CRA projects.

In order for Accounting Control Frauds to work with these development projects like subways and mixed-used projects, the city and county need billions of tax dollars to funnel to the developers when their projects go BK. That is why Riordan and Eli Broad want to privatized all the pensions from the city workers -- to free up all that money to give them their developer buddies. Then, they will end Prop 13. It's child's play to fool 50% of the voters, but following 67% is much harder.