There’s only one problem: He probably didn’t win.

The troubled school board election exposed deficiencies with how Alameda County handled ranked choice voting and highlights the need for statewide standards.

To its credit, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday asked, and agreed to pay, for a recount of the school district election, the controversial Oakland mayor’s race and two close races in San Leandro, which also uses ranked choice voting.

But it’s unclear in the school board race whether the determinative result will be the official certified count, which showed Resnick the winner; the corrected tabulation conducted after an error was discovered, which placed Mike Hutchinson on top; or the recount.

The fate of the District 4 election ultimately will be decided in court. For now, Resnick will continue to serve.

It should not have come to this point of uncertainty. Given the growing use of ranked choice voting, it’s important to examine the Oakland school board race to avoid repeating mistakes.

Why use ranked choice voting? RCV provides a method of ensuring that winners have majority support without costly runoff elections. (It would have avoided, for example, the razor-thin, three-way Antioch City Council race in which the winner had just 34.3% of the vote.) And, in at-large elections with more than one seat at stake, ranked choice voting can increase the diversity of ideological and demographic representation.

In 2022, more than 100 elections in U.S. jurisdictions used ranked choice voting. In the Bay Area, San Francisco has used it since 2004; San Leandro, Berkeley and Oakland since 2010. In California, there’s growing interest and use among small municipalities, such as Albany and Palm Desert, that consider it a legal alternative to splitting their citywide elections into small geographic districts.

How it works: In a single-seat race, voters rank their candidate preferences. If no one wins a first-round majority, the candidate in last place is eliminated, and votes of those who preferred that candidate are reallocated to their second choice. The process is repeated until one candidate has a majority.

The Oakland school board race: In the first round of the official count for District 4, Resnick led with 38%, followed by Pecolia Manigo with 31.1% and Mike Hutchinson with 30.9%. So, Hutchinson was dropped, and his voters’ second choices were allocated, giving Resnick 51% and Manigo 49%. Resnick was the winner in the count certified Dec. 8.

What went wrong: On Dec. 23, members of FairVote, a ranked-choice advocacy group, after reviewing the data, advised Alameda County Registrar Tim Dupuis of a problem.

The issue pertains to counting of ballots in which a voter lists a write-in candidate as a first choice or makes no first-choice selection but lists subsequent choices. According to Dupuis, there were 235 such ballots. According to FairVote, about two-thirds of those had marked a first-choice write-in candidate and one-third had no first-choice selection.

The tabulation software the county uses allows either counting those ballots as having no first choice or counting those ballots for the next-highest-ranked candidate. The software was set using the former option. But the Oakland charter calls for the latter option, which, according to FairVote, is the way all U.S. jurisdictions using ranked choice voting handle ballots with no first choice.

The recalculation: After consulting with Dominion Voting Systems, the software vendor, over the Christmas holiday weekend, the county registrar on Dec. 27 retabulated the vote data to conform with the city charter.

The change reordered the candidate first-round finish, with Resnick still leading with 37.9%, but Hutchinson in second with 31.1% and Manigo last at 31.0%. Rather than Hutchinson being dropped, Manigo was eliminated. Then, Manigo’s voters’ second choices were allocated, resulting in Hutchinson winning with 50.5% and Resnick second with 49.5%.

Now what? The new tally came after the first count had been officially certified. It also came after the deadline for a recount request, which Resnick might have sought if earlier results had shown him losing.

Hutchinson’s lawyer argues that he should not be deprived of victory just because the software setting error was discovered late. Resnick’s lawyer argues that the certified count should be the final word.

Resnick’s lawyer also questions the recalculation process. He argues that the Oakland charter rule to ignore a write-in or blank first-round selection is an unconstitutional determination of a voter’s intent.

No state guidelines: The lack of state guidelines has made this more complicated for the county registrar. For most election issues, state law or the Secretary of State’s Office provides uniform rules. But for ranked choice voting, Dupuis relies on direction from the city clerks of the four cities in his county using ranked choice voting.

So, for example, the city clerks agreed to give voters the ability to rank up to five candidates in each contest. But Oakland’s charter requires voters be allowed “to rank as many choices as there are candidates,” which in the case of the mayoral race was 10 candidates. That didn’t happen.

The state could also require the county to release the anonymized vote data earlier, or in real time. That would have allowed observers such as Fair Vote to flag concerns before the vote tally was certified.

There’s been lots of griping about the complexity of ranked choice voting. But it’s much fairer, and more democratic, than the system used in most local elections in California in which someone can win with just a plurality.

Rather than end it, we need to fix it. For that, the state should provide uniformity so each county, indeed each city, doesn’t have to figure out ranked choice rules on its own.

In a stunning public airing of the internal fight for control of the businesses, Albert D. Seeno Jr., 78, has sued his son alleging that Seeno III, after his appointment in July 2020 as chief executive officer, improperly spent money and tried to shut out his father and uncle from their own companies.

While this court battle may seem like an internal business and family dispute, the allegations about Seeno III’s behavior and finances should concern members of the Concord City Council as they consider whether to partner with him for 40 years to develop the Concord Naval Weapons Station site.

Seeno Jr. says his son previously had taken hundreds of millions of dollars without permission from his father and his father’s companies, has debt of over $100 million, bullied his father to hire him as CEO under threat that he would otherwise never see his grandchildren, and has been abusive and misogynistic toward employees.

“Your anger is out of control, you need anger management, counseling and medication. The way you treated multiple … employees is unlawfull (sic), malicious, vindictive, mean spirited and outright wrong,” the father says in a handwritten note to his son contained in the court file.

“Have you asked yourself what would Jesus do? Are you choosing to follow God or have you been blinded by Satan?”

Seeno III, 48, in his legal filings, denies that his father was bullied into signing the employment contract and disputes that Seeno Jr. was inadequately represented by an attorney. The son says claims that he is diverting money, mismanaging workers and construction jobs, concealing documents and otherwise breaching obligations to his father’s companies are untrue.

Seeno III asserts that his father can’t fire him because his 20-year employment agreement is so airtight that he can only be terminated if he is convicted of a felony that exposes his father’s companies to “material criminal liability.”

Three related lawsuits are pending in Contra Costa Superior Court. In the main one, Seeno Jr. tries to regain control of his companies. In another, Seeno III accuses his father of trying to disrupt the operations of the son’s separately owned business, the firm seeking the development deal for the weapons station.

And in the third legal case, Seeno III has sued the trustee of the trust his parents set up for him in 2000, claiming that millions of dollars he was supposed to receive last year have been improperly diverted without his permission to paying down his debts to his father.

As the court battles wage, Seeno III’s company has obtained a temporary restraining order against his father that requires the elder to keep at least five yards away from one of the firm’s employees.

Meanwhile, Seeno Jr. has taken back control of his companies’ bank accounts, cutting off his son’s check-signing authority and company credit cards. Seeno Jr. is demanding from his son supporting documentation before signing off on bill payments. Seeno III says he has provided that information to prevent “operational collapse” of his father’s firms and his own.

Weapons station deal

The City Council, in a special meeting Saturday, is set to decide whether to continue to the next phase of negotiations with a consortium that includes Seeno III for development of the weapons station.

The consortium previously had only 3-2 support on the five-member council. The upcoming meeting is the first on the topic since the Nov. 8 elections in which one of those supporters lost his reelection bid.

Discovery Builders, the firm solely owned by Seeno III, has a 45% interest in the consortium, Concord First Partners. The other partners are a subsidiary of the Southern California development firm Lewis Group of Companies, which has a 45% interest and is the designated managing member, and California Capital & Investment Group, which has a 10% interest and is run by Phil Tagami, who is also seeking to build a controversial coal-export terminal in Oakland.

In 2021, the council chose the consortium over other prominent developers because it offered a more-lucrative deal for labor unions. But Concord First Partners later said it could not make the deal work financially and last year tried, unsuccessfully, to leverage major concessions from the city.

Now, Concord First Partners is trying again, this time seeking council approval of a radically revised deal for the 2,275-acre site that would include 16,474 homes, a 34% increase from the original terms agreed to when the consortium won the bidding over the other prospective developers.

The intrafamily legal battle should raise concerns for the council. Seeno III’s leadership of Discovery Builders is not in question in the litigation. But the court filings show how deeply tied his company is to his father’s five firms, from which Seeno Jr. is trying to oust his son. Moreover, it raises troubling questions about Seeno III’s management.

The council should not continue with Concord First Partners without first thoroughly investigating the allegations in, and financial implications of, the Seeno v. Seeno litigation. And if the council is willing to approve so many more homes for the same massive site, which completely changes the economic calculations, it should reopen the bidding for all interested developers.

Legal history

The city’s deal with the consortium was questionable from the start, given the Seeno family’s troubled legal past.

The Seeno business empire started with Albert D. Seeno Sr., who in 1938 began to build single-family houses. The construction business was passed to Seeno Jr. and his brother, Thomas Seeno, in the 1970s. And in 1997, Seeno III launched Discovery Builders.

The family has wielded great political power, especially in Pittsburg. In the early 1980s, a study by the local newspaper found that Seeno Sr. was the most influential person in the city.

In 1999, before voting on Seeno projects, then-Pittsburg Mayor Frank Aiello, with help from Seeno Jr. and a business associate, obtained a favorable home mortgage to buy a new Seeno house. Aiello also accepted from Seeno Jr. hotel lodging, a Raiders luxury suite ticket and a flight to Reno, Nev., on the developer’s private jet. The California Fair Political Practices Commission fined Aiello $20,000 for failing to report the three gifts and exceeding state gift limits.

In 2003, then-Pittsburg Councilman Frank Quesada was sentenced to 300 hours of community service after pleading no contest to conflict-of-interest charges stemming from his votes on Seeno Jr. projects while $370,000 in debt to the developer.

Meanwhile, the Seenos faced their own legal problems. In 2002, a Seeno Jr. company was fined $1 million for destroying endangered red-legged frog habitat in Pittsburg.

Two years later, the Nevada Gaming Control Board fined the Seenos, who own casinos there, $775,000 for not alerting the agency of their environmental violations and other issues.

In 2008, a Seeno Jr. company reached a $3 million settlement relating to improperly permitted grading at an Antioch development.

Then, in 2016, Seeno III pleaded guilty to bank fraud on behalf of his home sales company, Discovery Sales. As part of the plea deal, Seeno III was ordered to pay fines and restitution totaling $11 million.

Current cases

Until now, the Seenos’ publicly reported legal fights have been with outside parties. Now they are turning the battle inward.

At issue in the largest of the three current Contra Costa County cases is Seeno III’s management of five businesses headed by Seeno Jr. and Thomas Seeno. The brothers are the majority voting shareholders and only members of the boards of directors for the flagship Albert D. Seeno Construction Co., West Coast Home Builders and North Village Development. Seeno Jr. is the sole shareholder of Seecon Financial & Construction Co. and Seecon Built Homes.

When the brothers agreed in 2020 to make Seeno III CEO of the five companies, they struck a second deal that made Seeno III’s Discovery Builders the construction management firm for developments of the Seeno brothers’ five firms.

But the relationship quickly soured. Seeno Jr. alleges his son engaged in unauthorized transfer and sale of land, and authorized payment of employee bonuses, including a significant one to himself, without his father’s required approval.

Seeno III also blocked access to the companies’ books, records and computer systems and refused to allow his father to exercise his corporate-director duties required by state law, according to Seeno Jr.’s lawsuit.

It alleges that Seeno III’s “bizarre dictatorial control and secrecy” left his father and uncle, who have guaranteed bank loans related to the five companies, with unknown obligations and interfered with their duties to make disclosures to lending institutions.

The son denies he has blocked his father’s access to records. He says he has managed the day-to-day operations of his father’s firms for more than 20 years. Unless he remains at the helm of them and his separately owned company continues constructing homes for his father’s enterprises, Seeno III asserts, work will come to a halt, and job sites will be left in hazardous conditions.

Key employment agreement

Central to the litigation is the 2020 employment agreement’s provision that Seeno III can only be fired if he commits a felony affecting his father’s business.

Seeno III’s attorneys argue that the language of the agreement is clear and gives the son complete managerial control of the companies. Seeno Jr.’s attorneys claim the key provision does not override state law protecting the ability of the Seeno brothers, as company directors, to fire their CEO.

Seeno Jr. alleges that the attorneys who drafted the deal had a history of representing both Seeno III and the Seeno brothers’ companies but, unbeknownst to Seeno Jr., drafted the employment agreement at the direction of his son. The Seeno brothers say they were never represented by independent counsel.

Moreover, Seeno III coerced, intimidated and then bullied his father into the deal “by telling him that if he did not sign the Employment Agreement, Seeno (Jr.) would never see his three grandsons again,” Seeno Jr. alleges.

Seeno III’s attorneys’ response: “Of course, none of those allegations are true.”

Millions in debt

According to Seeno Jr., in the mid-2000s his son took hundreds of millions of dollars without permission from his father and his father’s companies. Seeno Jr. says his son initially denied what he had done but eventually acknowledged his deception. The father says his son still owes more than $100 million in principal and interest.

That debt is central to the litigation over the trust payments. The trust, which initially was funded more than two decades ago with $19 million, receives income from the Seeno family-controlled Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nev.

For over 15 years, according to the trustee, the primary purpose of the trust has been to pay down Seeno III’s debts to his creditors, including his father. The trustee’s attorney says Seeno III’s current debt to his father is approximately $160 million.

Seeno III says his debt to his father has been either paid off or paid down ahead of schedule and that the trustee has no right to divert his trust payments to his creditors. Seeno III says that for the last nine months of 2021 alone, the trust paid out $5.7 million that should have gone directly to him.

Judge Susanne Fenstermacher ruled in May that the trustee had not violated the terms of the trust. While the case proceeds, the judge has blocked further distributions. The next hearing is scheduled for March.

‘War of the Roses’

The legal battle in Contra Costa Superior Court threatens to turn into mutual self-destruction. “The Seeno Companies cannot endure a business version of ‘War of the Roses,’ ” Seeno Jr.’s attorneys warn in a court filing.

That could be a reference to the 15^th century series of civil wars over control of the English throne or the 1989 dark comedy movie in which a divorcing couple played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner end up dead in their fight over their cherished house.

Rather than a battlefield in Europe or a fictitious East Coast home, the scene of the Seeno intrafamily fight is 4021 Port Chicago Highway in Concord, the office building that houses the father’s and son’s businesses, that Seeno Jr.’s entities own and from which he is trying to evict Seeno III’s Discovery Builders.

The employees of the father’s and son’s companies are victims of, or soldiers in, this war.

In court documents, Seeno III accuses his father of violent and erratic behavior. Discovery Builders obtained the restraining order after Seeno Jr. allegedly grabbed and tried to remove an employee with HR responsibilities from his office by force. The employee says that resulted in a scratch and a bruise on his arm.

The next day, Seeno III alleges, two men who worked for his father broke into the HR employee’s office by dropping in through the ceiling tiles, then removing the door to the office and stealing his computer.

Seeno Jr. says he never grabbed the worker. And, “I can assure the court that I do not have employees who dropped through the ceiling tiles of (the) … office like spies to remove his door; they removed the door from outside the office, not inside the office.”

Seeno Jr. says leaving his son as CEO “will cause grave damage to the Seeno Companies and their employees, who will be forced to suffer under the thumb of a tyrant who routinely abuses employees.”

In a court declaration, the Albert D. Seeno Construction Co. controller says that in 2019 Seeno III leveled misogynistic expletives at her when she carried out his father’s wishes to keep information about one of his companies confidential.

The chief financial officer of that company separately declares that Seeno III repeatedly threatened to fire him. Seeno III also allegedly hired an employee who had previously threatened the CFO’s life and then placed him in an office just down the hall.

It was “a clear act of retribution” for the CFO’s forensic accounting work at Seeno Jr.’s request, tracking down and confirming Seeno III’s taking of millions of dollars from his father, according to Seeno Jr.’s attorneys.

In court filings, Seeno III has not replied to the declarations of the controller and the CFO, which were made under penalty of perjury. Late Wednesday, he issued a statement through a spokesperson, saying, “None of those allegations have an ounce of truth.” He did not answer questions about the specifics of the allegations.

Who’s in charge?

The legal standoff leaves uncertain who is running the five Seeno Jr. entities.

On Sept. 16, Seeno Jr. sent an email to the employees of his companies telling them that he had resumed his position as CEO and that his son had been “relieved of all duties.”

Hours later, Seeno III sent an email telling workers that he was still in charge. “(P)lease disregard these messages being sent by ADS Jr. as ADS Jr. cannot terminate me nor is he the CEO of these entities.”

In October, Judge Jill Fannin rejected Seeno Jr.’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking his son from continuing to act as CEO. However, in December, Fannin rejected Seeno III’s request for an injunction essentially declaring him CEO and reinstating his access to the checking accounts and credit cards.

Case management conferences are scheduled for March in the litigation over control of Seeno Jr.’s companies and for Jan. 12 in Seeno III’s lawsuit accusing his father of trying to disrupt the operations of Discovery Builders.

With the cases unresolved and without an independent investigation of the allegations, the City Council should not commit to a 40-year deal with Seeno III and the Concord First Partners consortium.

As she departs because of term limits, Schaaf leaves the mayor’s office and seven of the eight City Council seats in the hands of her political opponents, a hard-left, union-driven coalition that swept the table in last month’s balloting.

Polling showed Schaaf was widely popular in 2015, the year after her first mayoral election. She easily won reelection in a 10-candidate field in 2018. But by the time this year’s election season began, the Libby brand had plummeted so far that her endorsement was considered by some to be a liability.

To be sure, Schaaf shouldered more blame than she deserved for the city’s homelessness, rising gun violence and troubled municipal finances. In Oakland’s weak-mayor governance structure, the mayor can propose a financial and policy agenda, but the ultimate power rests with the eight-member City Council. The mayor has only a seldom-used tie-breaking vote.

So the council, which shifted from roughly evenly split to labor dominance during Schaaf’s tenure, has had the final word on the city’s budget and the votes to stymie the mayor’s police-staffing goals. The mayor, on the other hand, never seemed to find her political message, vacillating between her progressive goals and claims of fiscal responsibility — and unable to articulate a vision that captured both.

Moreover, she never capitalized on her early popularity and the bully pulpit of the mayoral post to build an effective fund-raising and grassroots political operation that could be mobilized in support of political allies. It was her most-consequential failing.

Naïve thinking

Oakland politics do not divide between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives. Rather they split between progressives. There are those on the left who also respect the financial realities, such as Schaaf and Loren Taylor, the self-described “pragmatic progressive” councilmember who ran unsuccessfully to succeed her. And there are those on the far-left, such as incoming mayor Sheng Thao, who are politically underwritten by key city labor unions.

In any big city, the key to successful policymaking begins with effective politicking. The mayor cannot press an agenda without the votes on the council. But, as Schaaf stood by passively, Oakland labor leaders over the past eight years built a potent campaign organization that financially and organizationally dominated the 2022 election.

When elected in 2014, Schaaf benefitted from following Jean Quan and Ron Dellums, two largely ineffectual mayors, said veteran political consultant Larry Tramutola. “But she didn’t galvanize that into a political force.”

That wasn’t her goal, Schaaf said. “I hope people appreciated that I was focusing my attention on addressing Oakland’s challenges, not building a political pipeline.” She and her followers are now paying a huge price for that naïve thinking.

Her political allies on the council when she became mayor were all eventually ousted or opted not to seek reelection. And the new candidates Schaaf backed often entered the races late, lacked sufficient funding and were unprepared, inexperienced and/or poorly vetted.

She is right that the contentious environment on the council discouraged prospective candidates. “I was surprised by the lack of willingness or interest to run for office in Oakland,” Schaaf said. But the reticence was reinforced by Schaaf’s lack of a political organization to support campaigns.

Failure to unify

When it came to the mayoral race this year, Schaaf’s popularity was so tarnished that business leaders who shared her concern about a labor takeover of city government failed to unify behind a candidate, and some dismissed Taylor’s candidacy because he was endorsed by Schaaf.

In the business community, “there were a lot of people concerned about Loren initially based upon his support from Libby,” said Greg McConnell, who spearheaded an independent expenditure effort for former Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente. “Libby had disappointed so many people.”

De La Fuente finished a distant third. His candidacy was always a longshot, especially given his troubled two-decade tenure on the council, but it sucked up more than $500,000 of outside spending that could have helped Taylor counter more than $700,000 of independent expenditures for Thao. “The amount of money that was spent on Ignacio was a waste,” said Tramutola. “I did not feel he had a path to victory, no matter how much money was spent.”

De La Fuente’s entry into the campaign, the division in the business community and the lack of a potent Schaaf-backed political operation cost Taylor the race. When the ranked-choice balloting was completed, he lost to Thao, a union-stalwart, by just 677 votes.

Political vacuum

As Schaaf exits on Jan. 2, she leaves behind a crime-ridden city with inadequate police staffing, unfunded retirement liabilities that have grown from about $2.4 billion a decade ago to $3 billion in 2021, and general fund budget shortfalls projected to reach more than $100 million in each of the next two fiscal years. The state auditor’s financial-risk review of California cities ranked Oakland the 11^th-worst for 2020-21.

Despite new property taxes championed by Schaaf and rapidly rising revenues, the city remains plagued with the same key problems present when Schaaf was elected mayor eight years ago. Meanwhile, homelessness is worse. And the pandemic has undercut the growth in business migration to Oakland that was so promising just a few years ago.

Since 2015, the first year of Schaaf’s mayoral tenure, Oakland residents have become increasingly pessimistic about the city. That first year, 24% of likely voters said the city was on the wrong track and 61% said it was headed in the right direction, according to the Chamber of Commerce annual poll. In October of this year, those numbers had flipped to 64% wrong track and 18% right direction.

In 2015, 68% of likely voters had a favorable impression of Schaaf, according to the chamber poll. By October, that had plummeted to 35%. The City Council today is similarly unpopular.

Come January, Thao, as the new mayor, and her labor allies on the council will no longer be able to use Schaaf as their political foil to hide their own failures to address the city’s problems. They will now be fully in charge and accountable.

Meanwhile, with Schaaf gone, more politically moderate residents who once backed her and this year subscribed to Taylor’s pragmatic progressive approach have almost no representation or political organization to fall back on. And the business community must decide whether it wants to unify to be a potent force in the city’s electoral politics or become irrelevant.

Unless the two groups can somehow coalesce, labor leaders will continue to fill the political vacuum.

But it’s explained by two modern-day realities. Political polarization has gripped all of America. And in California, most voters have lost all confidence in the Republican Party. They’ll choose most any Democrat over a GOP candidate, especially for statewide office.

That and the fact there are nearly twice as many Democratic voters as Republicans. Both parties are polarized, but it’s a lopsided matchup.

This was illustrated in a statewide survey released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

With less than two weeks remaining before election day, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom leads Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle among likely voters by a virtually unsurmountable 55% to 36%. Newsom is ahead in every major region of the state except the Central Valley, where the two are statistically tied.

More voters intend to vote for Newsom than approve of his job performance, although the difference isn’t that much — 3 percentage points.

But another statistic is eye-opening: 54% of voters think California is “going in the wrong direction.” Only 43% believe we’re headed on the right path.

Yet, Newsom is running away with the election.

“To me, one of the biggest findings of the survey was that even at a time when 54% of voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction, the majority are willing to support the governor,” says Mark Baldassare, PPIC‘s president and pollster.

“That says a lot about the current political context. Voters are so polarized in California.”

The Democratic governor dominates politically on many things.

His decision to side with the California Teachers Association and oppose Proposition 30 may have doomed that ballot measure.

It would raise state income taxes on the richest Californians, mainly to help motorists buy electric vehicles — including drivers for ride-hailing Lyft, the measure’s big bankroller. The powerful CTA is opposed because schools would be cut out of the measure’s new tax revenue.

Newsom ran TV ads calling Proposition 30 “a Trojan horse” and a “terrible, terrible initiative.”

The new PPIC poll shows it trailing for the first time — 41% in favor, 52% against. A September survey before Newsom’s ads found the measure ahead, 55% to 40%.

“With a ballot proposition, the burden of proof is always on the ‘yes’ side,” Baldassare notes. “Certainly, doubts are raised when the governor says, ‘Don’t vote for it.’ And the CTA says, ‘Don’t vote for it.’

On another front, Newsom was strong enough to set up the pathetic excuse for the campaign’s only gubernatorial debate.

The timing was almost laughable: At 1 in the afternoon on a beautiful fall Sunday. If voters weren’t enjoying themselves outside, they were probably watching pro football on TV.

Newsom tried to morph Dahle into a MAGA Trump disciple. He called his underdog opponent a “passionate supporter” of the former president, who’s the devil incarnate among California Democrats.

A Trump voter, yes, but never with any sign of passion.

Dahle attacked Newsom as a governor who’s so busy running for president that he’s ignoring his own state’s problems of homelessness and unaffordability.

If there was any news out of the debate it came when a moderator asked Newsom whether he’d commit to serving a full four-year term, thus passing up a possible 2024 presidential run.

“Yes,” the governor replied.

But we’ve heard that before from other politicians. It’s a pledge that can be quickly broken without much of a penalty.

Ask Newsom again a year from now — after he’s reelected despite people being unhappy with the direction the state’s heading.

George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist.

But when asked about Measure U in our endorsement interview last week, she didn’t understand how the measure would work and grossly understated the tax property owners would be required to pay.

The encounter exemplifies why Thao is not ready to lead a city of 450,000 people that is confronting a 24% increase in homelessness over the last three years, homicides in 2021 that hit the highest level in 15 years, and inadequate police staffing. A city where, despite strong general fund tax revenues, leaders keep coming back to voters every election year for new tax hikes.

Thao is the candidate most labor unions and the city’s hard-left faction are trumpeting in the Nov. 8 election to replace Mayor Libby Schaaf, who has served the maximum two terms. Thao’s tenure on the council has been concerning. Most notably, she is among the council majority that has squeezed police funding and slow-walked Schaaf’s proposal to increase the number of training academies needed to speed up hiring of officers.

Like it or not, Thao’s position on law enforcement seems one of policy that is carefully politically calculated in a city that’s divided on the issue. In contrast, the discussion of the upcoming bond measure simply shows how uninformed she is.

Thao boasts that four years on the City Council and four prior years serving as policy director and then chief of staff for Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan have prepared her to be mayor. Yet, when asked about Measure U, Thao was clueless.

VIDEO: Oakland Mayoral Candidate Sheng Thao’s endorsement interview

CLICK HERE if you’re viewing on a mobile device.

She claimed the measure would cost property owners $198 a year; actually, for most homeowners the levy would be far more. She claimed the tax would be the same for all property owners; actually, it would vary depending on the assessed value. She claimed Measure U was merely an extension of an existing tax; actually, it’s a new tax piled on top of a similar old one.

Thao even seemed uncertain about how voter-approved bond measures work. Asked how they are usually paid off, she responded, “City revenue.” Nope. Voter-approved bond measures such as Measure U require property tax increases to pay off the debt.

Property tax basics

Thao wants to lead the Bay Area’s third-largest city. Voters deserve a mayor who understands the basics of taxes that city residents are being asked to pay. It should be bare-minimum knowledge to qualify for the job.

Here are the fundamentals that, after eight years in city government, Thao should know. There are two primary types of voter-approved property tax increases. One is a usually flat annual levy, often called a parcel tax, for a specific purpose or to supplement a city’s general fund. That’s what Thao wrongly claimed Measure U is.

The other type is a tax proportional to the assessed value of the property. The higher the assessed value of a house, the greater the annual tax. The money is used to pay off over decades bonds the city issues for a specific purpose. Measure U is such a bond measure.

City officials estimate that the property tax to pay off the Measure U bonds would be an average $67.35 per $100,000 of assessed value and last about 40 years. For a home with an average assessed value of about $500,000, that works out to about $337 per year.

One reason city officials opted to use a bond measure for Measure U is that the associated taxes are considered more “progressive” — those with greater assessed property values pay more. (To be sure, under California’s arcane property tax system, assessed value often doesn’t reflect the actual value of property.) In contrast, a flat parcel tax would have been a greater proportional burden on those with less means — it would have been more “regressive.”

Thao said she wasn’t sure she was going to support Measure U even though she had voted to put it on the ballot, and then said, “I’m actually not a fan of regressive taxing.” That answer would make sense if Measure U were a flat parcel tax. It isn’t.

Measure U details

Asked how much she thought the tax would be, Thao said, “I believe it’s $200” and then added with a laugh, “or $198 because it polls better.”

Thao also said that Measure U would not raise taxes because it was a renewal, at “the same amount,” of Measure KK, approved by voters in 2016 also to fund roads and housing. “They’re not raising taxes because it’s already an ongoing tax on it right now. It’s just a renewal, right.”

Thao is correct that Measure U would go for the same purposes as Measure KK. She’s incorrect that it’s merely an extension and that it would not raise taxes.

Like Measure U, Measure KK was a bond measure, not, as Thao claimed, a parcel tax. The ongoing annual taxes for repayment of the Measure KK bonds are projected to last through 2053. The taxes for repayment of Measure U bonds would begin in 2024, ramp up significantly in 2027 and last until 2062.

Thus, Measure U taxes would not be a replacement for Measure KK; they would be piled on top. City projections show that property tax payments for the two measures combined, for an average home assessed at $500,000, would jump to roughly $500 annually early in the next decade

The repayment structure for Measure U could avoid a net tax increase for property owners. But not for the reason Thao claims.

Rather, in 2026, a tax to help pay off police and firefighter pension liabilities that date back more than half a century is supposed to end. The pension tax is the single largest supplemental levy on Oakland property tax bills. Once that’s paid off, Oakland property owners should get a long-overdue tax reduction.

But, if Measure U passes, Oakland officials would ramp up those new taxes in 2027 — carving away at taxpayers’ savings from the pension tax elimination. That’s the convoluted rationale Measure U backers use to claim that it would not be a tax increase.

There are good reasons to oppose Measure U, but not because it’s regressive. Clearly, Thao didn’t understand the measure when she voted to place it on the ballot. And she still didn’t understand it when she was interviewed last week.

Now she wants voters to reward that incompetence by electing her mayor.

Not PG&E. Since the summer of 2020, the company has unilaterally stopped sending 1.2 million bills through the postal service and left customers to find their statements online.

Rather than suggest customers opt-in to paperless billing, the utility forced those who were unhappy with the switch to opt-out. Responding to questions, the company claims that “customers will appreciate the convenience, security and ease of paperless billing.”

I didn’t. And neither did 420,000 other customers.

That’s right. According to PG&E, 35% of the customers who were switched to paperless billing called, emailed or went to the company website to get their paper statements back.

“This is a tremendous number of people opting out,” says Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy organization. “It’s an indication of PG&E being overzealous in switching people without their knowledge and without their consent.”

It’s also a tremendous number of people who had to jump through hoops. Navigating PG&E’s phone-tree-from-hell is no easy feat. It took me over an hour to reach a live person, find out why I hadn’t received a bill in four months and get my paper billing restored.

If PG&E weren’t a monopoly, if it had to treat its customers like, well, customers, this would have never happened. Because no business that cares about keeping our business would treat us like that.

PG&E claims that there has been no drop-off in timely payments with the paperless billing switch. That wasn’t my experience: As I was discovering what had happened, the company was sending me a debt-relief-plan offer because I had fallen behind on payments. Similarly, 20 customers who filed complaints with the California Public Utilities Commission about the consentless switch found themselves saddled with past-due bills of over $700, $892, over $1,000, $1,234, $1,675 and $2,000.

PG&E customers who want to resume receiving their bills through the postal service should email the utility at PaperlessNotification@pge.com. Include the name on the account, as well as the service address and/or account number. Those with time and patience can call 1-800-743-5000.

To be sure, there are good cost and environmental reasons for switching willing customers to paperless billing. But PG&E forces it upon customers, many of whom still use those paper bills as reminders to pay on time.

PG&E says it used promotional campaigns to entice about 2.3 million of its 6 million residential and commercial customers to switch to paperless billing. That’s fine. Those people agreed to the change.

But the utility company started two years ago automatically switching 1.2 million more customers. The program swept up anyone who had previously provided the utility an email address and had paid their bill through the utility’s website or just through their bank bill-pay system. It’s from that group that 420,000 customers balked.

To alert customers that they would no longer receive bills through the mail, the company says, it sent two emails, placed two automated phone calls and included notification on the final paper bill.

I, like some of those complaining to the PUC, never saw the email notifications. The phone number PG&E had for me was long out of date. As for the notification on the final paper bill, it’s in small type at the bottom of the page. I missed it. By the way, looking back, the notice thanked me for “selecting” paperless billing, which I hadn’t done, and provided no instructions to opt-out.

The PUC approved the PG&E automatic-switching program in 2017 after allowing Southern California Edison to do the same in 2015. The PUC staff analysis swallowed the PG&E propaganda that the change would “align with customer preferences.” Clearly, for 420,000 customers, it does not.

The program was supposed to be slowly phased in by increasing the electronic billing by about 2% a year. Instead, PG&E tried to boost participation by about 50% in the past two years. That’s when the complaints to the PUC started rolling in.

PG&E claims customers are happy with the change. Apparently, management hasn’t looked at its own numbers. After I first asked PG&E about the involuntary billing switch, the company said it would start sending separate notifications through the postal service.

“Customer choice should be respected,” says Toney, the consumer advocate. “It would be smarter for PG&E to get consent from each customer prior to switching.”

It would be smarter to start treating them like customers.

The board in November selected David Brown to complete the term of his boss, Wilma Chan, less than two weeks after she was fatally struck by a car while walking her dog. The rushed and politically orchestrated appointment of Chan’s chief of staff provided no opportunity for others to be considered.

The decision was backed by Chan family members and labor leaders. But it ran roughshod over the county Democratic Party and Asian American political organizations, which had called for a transparent process and selection of an Asian American woman to replace Chan on an otherwise all-male board — a board that lacks a member of Asian descent in a county where Asians are the largest racial group.

Most appalling was the legal hair-splitting that enabled Brown’s selection even though he had only lived in the county for four days. That’s right: Four days.

County Counsel Donna Ziegler determined that the county’s one-year residency requirement for elected supervisor candidates did not apply to someone appointed to the same post. Thus, while Brown could not run in the 2022 election, he could fill the remainder of Chan’s term.

It’s that decision that is the subject of a legal challenge currently being fought by the county at taxpayer expense and currently stalled by the office of Attorney General Rob Bonta, who had backed Brown’s appointment.

The foot-dragging has allowed Brown to already serve half the 14 months that remained on Chan’s term when she died. This case should be promptly put before a judge to determine the legitimacy of Brown’s appointment and, for future appointments, whether prior residency legally matters.

‘Permanent home for now’

When Chan died, Brown was living in Walnut Creek, in a house he and his wife had owned since 2010, and where they were raising their two daughters. Nine days later, he rented a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland. In a legal filing, he oxymoronically says he intends to make Alameda County’s Third Supervisorial District “my permanent home for now.”

He spends approximately six nights a week there and one night a week in Walnut Creek, where his wife and children live permanently, he said. Conveniently, his Oakland apartment lease expires Jan. 9, 2023, seven days after his Board of Supervisors term ends.

There’s no dispute that Brown’s short residency history made him ineligible to run this year for a full four-year term. That race will go to a November runoff between Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan and former Alameda City Councilwoman Lena Tam.

Meanwhile, the challenge, led by the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association, to the legitimacy of Brown’s appointment has been stymied because it can’t be brought directly to court. In California, disputing someone’s right to hold public office requires first seeking the blessing of the state attorney general. It’s a legal process called quo warranto.

In this case, Bonta recused himself from review of the quo warranto application. Despite his statewide post, Bonta, who lives in Alameda, continues meddling in East Bay politics and had signed a letter to the Board of Supervisors supporting Brown’s appointment — and opining that it was legally permissible.

But booting the review, as Bonta has, to his chief deputy, Venus Johnson, hardly ensures impartial evaluation. Johnson, who has been sitting on the case for at least two months, should have turned it over to an independent outside attorney. At this point, she should let it go forward so a judge can quickly and fairly assess it.

History repeats itself

The case highlights residency-requirement ambiguities for appointed county supervisors.

Most counties operate under state law that calls for the governor to fill a vacancy. But 14 of California’s 58 counties operate under their own charters, allowing them to set their own rules. Alameda County’s charter gives the board 60 days to fill a vacancy before the task falls to the governor.

The county’s charter and underlying administrative code are silent on whether an appointed supervisor needs to have lived in the county beforehand. However, the state Supreme Court has suggested that rules for elected officials should also apply to appointed officeholders.

While the Brown case languishes, he continues serving, running out the clock on his appointment. He has been at the center of a residency controversy before. While serving on the West Contra Costa school board from 2004-2008, he maintained a home in El Sobrante while his wife lived outside the district in Walnut Creek. Once his term was over, he moved to Walnut Creek.

He might do it again. “I do not know what awaits me after my term as Third District Supervisor ends,” he wrote in a legal filing, “but I am certain I will continue living in Oakland at least until then.”

With shipping imports rapidly rising, why should the Port of Oakland give up 50 acres of land at Howard Terminal, and why should taxpayers provide hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies so a billionaire baseball team owner can further fatten his pocketbook?

If the goal is to provide needed housing and keep the team in the Bay Area, there’s an excellent alternative site just six miles away with a BART station and freeway access that could be developed — and greatly benefit a neighborhood that needs an economic boost.

Of course, we’re talking about the existing Oakland Coliseum site, of which, thanks to a sweetheart deal at taxpayer expense from Alameda County supervisors, the team already owns half. In other words, A’s owner John Fisher already has veto power over the Coliseum and now wants to control Howard Terminal.

The greed is astounding. The willingness of state legislators, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Mayor Libby Schaaf, the Oakland City Council and Alameda County supervisors to enable this taxpayer abuse is unconscionable.

Yet the Howard Terminal development plan continues marching forward even though the city and the A’s have yet to agree on the financial terms and the ultimate cost to taxpayers and despite new warnings that the port could need the land to meet future shipping demand.

There was a hiccup this week — perhaps better characterized as a refreshing dose of reality — as the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission prepares to review the proposal.

The first question for BCDC will be whether to approve the A’s request for abandonment of the seaport land-use designation for Howard Terminal. BCDC has legal responsibility to ensure the Bay Area has enough port land to meet future demand.

As part of the review process, the commission’s Seaport Planning Advisory Committee weighed in Wednesday, voting narrowly to recommend denial of the A’s request. The final decision will be up to the commission at a scheduled June 2 vote.

The committee’s recommendation won’t necessarily carry the day. The advisory committee includes representatives of the Bay Area’s five ports and the executive director of the Save the Bay environmental group. The commission is much more political, with most of its 27 members appointed by the governor, the Legislature, the boards of supervisors of the nine Bay Area counties or the Association of Bay Area Governments.

That said, the advisory committee’s vote and the BCDC staff report that preceded it provide solid reason for questioning the A’s plan.

Projections of future shipping volume at Bay Area seaports are key. BCDC’s cargo forecast came up with slow, moderate and strong growth scenarios. Under the moderate and strong growth scenarios, Howard Terminal would be needed to meet future demand.

The Port of Oakland, run by a commission nominated by Schaaf and appointed by the City Council, supports the A’s ballpark plan and disputes the BCDC forecast. Executive Director Danny Wan called the projections “aggressive” and said his port has seen about a 2% annual growth over the past 20 years, and only about 1% a year over the last decade.

But the port on Friday put out a press release touting that its import cargo volume increased 6.3% in February compared to the same month last year. Indeed, historical port numbers show that import volume went up 4%-6% annually in four of the last six years.

To be sure, exports, which used to match imports, have lagged. Port spokesman Robert Bernardo says the goal is to boost exports to balance volume in and out.

Meanwhile, if the push toward online shopping continues, Oakland, like other West Coast ports, will likely face continued growing imports. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles similarly just announced February was their busiest month ever.

“There is so much volatility in the shipping industry,” Bernardo says. “No one really knows what the future holds.”

Which is why it’s silly for the port to not protect its future just to accommodate a billionaire baseball team owner.

Port of Oakland officials are downplaying pollution concerns as they chase up to $60 million of profits from a planned new terminal for sand and aggregate shipments that would foul the air of nearby residents.

The adjacent West Oakland neighborhood is already disproportionately impacted by poor environmental and socioeconomic conditions. Residents have higher exposure to diesel particulate matter than 98% of Californians, proportionately more asthma that 97% of the state and proportionately more low-birth-weight babies than 83% of the state.

While port officials have significantly reduced pollution at their 1,300-acre operation, they are backsliding with the latest plan, dismissing the concerns of residents, two regional agencies and the state Attorney General’s Office. If this plan can’t be altered to negate the negative effects on the nearby neighborhood, it should be dropped.

For decades, the Oakland port has focused exclusively on container shipments arriving and departing in 20-foot-long, enclosed metal shipping containers. About 85% of those ships now shut off engines and hook up to electrical power when docked — a key step for reducing air emissions.

But, to fill some vacant berths, port officials now plan to lease 18 acres about a half-mile from the Bay Bridge toll plaza to Eagle Rock Aggregates for an open-air bulk sand and aggregate marine terminal. It would replace the company’s smaller facility at the Port of Richmond.

The 48 ships arriving with 2.5 million tons of material annually from Canada would not be equipped to hook up to on-shore electrical power supplies. And the loose cargo, which would be unloaded from ship hulls on conveyer belts, would be stacked in three uncovered round piles, each about four stories tall with diameters greater than the length of a football field.

The lease would last for 12 years — netting the port after expenses between $43 million and $60 million — with two possible extensions that could add 15 more years to the deal. The port board is scheduled to vote on the deal on Feb. 24.

Port officials seem hellbent on pushing ahead despite concerns about dust from the piles and dangerous nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions from the ships, tug boats that would guide them and trucks that would haul the material from the dock to Bay Area plants to use in making concrete.

The environmental review of the project, commissioned by the port, has drawn an unusual chorus of sharp criticism from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the state Attorney General’s Office.

Meanwhile, a prominent law firm representing West Oakland’s resident-led environmental-justice organization has submitted a scathing critique of the project and environmental review — a critique that seems a likely precursor to litigation.

If this lands in court, with the port defending the project’s environmental impact on West Oakland, it would be an embarrassment to the port commissioners — and certainly to Mayor Libby Schaaf, who nominated them, and the City Council members, who appointed them. The notion that Oakland city officials are the defenders of environmental justice they claim to be would crumble.

Even the port’s environmental review concludes that nitrogen oxide emissions for the project would exceed the air district’s thresholds. The solution, port officials say, is to purchase emission-reduction credits that would go toward lowering pollution elsewhere.

Of course, that would do nothing to mitigate the impact on the already environmentally overburdened West Oakland community. The air district has told port officials that such offsets should only be used if other options for reducing the pollution were not available.

But there are other options. Enclosing the massive piles so dust won’t blow off them. Requiring shore power or equivalent emission capturing equipment for the ships. Requiring electric or zero-emission trucks to haul the aggregate.

The port is planning to implement some of those options, but only on a limited basis or more slowly than other public agencies are asking. It won’t be enough to eliminate the negative environmental impacts on West Oakland.

But if the deal can’t be environmentally friendly to West Oakland and cost-effective for the port, then it should be rejected. Nearby residents shouldn’t have to endure additional pollution.

The complex proposals are often well-intentioned and good policy. The problem is that local officials are so vested in the outcome that they are frequently incapable of providing voters the impartial descriptions they deserve.

Most significantly, local officials skew the 75-word ballot summaries to mislead voters into supporting the measures. In a 2020 editorial, we detailed some of the deceitful tactics.

The Alameda County Civil Grand Jury took it a step further, conducting a detailed analysis of ballot wording for five measures from prior elections. The takeaway for voters: Don’t trust the summaries to fairly tell you what the measures do. The wording, often the only thing many read, is supposed to be impartial. It isn’t.

That’s because it suffers from what the Grand Jury aptly calls “proponent bias.” It’s usually written by the same people who craft the measures, often with assistance from consultants hired at taxpayer expense to help ensure success at the polls.

As a result, “Ballot questions too often fall short of what voters have a right to expect in terms of transparency and impartiality, even when satisfying minimum legal standards,” the 2020-21 Grand Jury concluded.

The problem is not unique to Alameda County. Rather, misleading ballot wording is common for local government measures throughout the Bay Area and California.

The Grand Jury did not consider the merits of the measures it reviewed. The only issue was whether the ballot summary was accurate and impartial.

What the jurors found matches our experience: Local officials complain that the state’s 75-word limit is too restrictive for them to fairly portray the measures, yet they use precious space for politically slanted appeals rather than providing useful information.

For example, the ballot wording for general tax measures, for which the money can be spent on any legal purpose, often deceptively implies that funds will go to specific programs perceived to be more popular with voters.

The money will go to provide “essential services,” homeless housing, quality education, mental health programs, job training, pothole repairs, 911 emergency response, youth violence prevention programs … the list goes on. Yet, in the cases examined by the Grand Jury, the ballot measures contained no requirements that the money would be spent for those purposes.

One common deceit identified by the Grand Jury is the ballot-wording claim that a tax measure will remain in effect “until repealed by voters.” What nonsense. That suggests that there is some sort of repeal mechanism in the measure. There isn’t. Those taxes are permanent. (And, by the way, “permanent” is only one word.)

Local tax-measure ballot wording usually emphasizes that the money cannot be “taken by the state.” Of course it can’t. It’s a local measure. Meanwhile, the measures, which usually identify the amount of the proposed tax increases, often fail to state the current levels so voters know the total they would pay.

The Grand Jury found that glaring omission in a sales tax measure and in a real estate transfer tax they examined. And they found similar deception in a measure raising council salaries by what turned out to be 75% — a number conveniently missing from the ballot wording.

So how is this abuse possible when state law requires the ballot wording to be “true and impartial”?

First, as the Grand Jury noted, the city attorney or county counsel reviewing a measure is also “duty bound to represent the government entities proposing the measures involved. Hence, they also act, by necessity, as advocates for the proponents of a measure.”

Second, when ballot language is challenged in court, legal precedent gives officials who drafted the wording “considerable latitude,” and changes can only be ordered “upon clear and convincing proof that the material in question is false, misleading or inconsistent with (legal) requirements.”

When we review ballot measures this election season, transparency will be a key criterion. But voters will be the final backstop. Don’t be fooled by this charade.