SF Standard: Opinion | Stop this train. Scott Wiener’s public transit bailout should be halted in its tracks
So long as California is synonymous with poor governance by Democrats, the party will struggle to regain credibility — not to mention the White House. State Sen. Scott Wiener from San Francisco has an important opportunity to pioneer a new mode of competent Democratic governance with a bill he has introduced in Sacramento.
Senate Bill 63 proposes a new half-cent sales tax to bail out Bay Area transit systems. (The tax could be double that in San Francisco, Wiener proposes, “to provide additional support for MUNI.”) Advocates argue that the tax is needed to offset declines in revenue caused by lower ridership and cuts in federal funding. But in the case of BART, those are only two of the reasons for its $1 billion deficit. The third is excessive spending on employees.
In 2015, BART spent $409 million on employees; the same year, it hosted 135 million rides, an employee cost of $3 per ride. By 2024, BART was spending $734 million on employees while hosting only 55 million rides, an employee cost of $13 per ride. (Despite the plummeting ridership, BART’s workforce also rose 28%, from 3,354 to 4,292 employees, in that time.)
If BART had hosted the same number of boardings in 2024 as it did in 2015, the employee cost of each ride would have “only” been $2 more. So what’s to blame for the actual $10 increase? It’s not lower ridership. It’s a 79% increase in spending on employees.
Why would BART boost its headcount 28% despite a 59% decrease in boardings? Why would it spend an average of $171,000 per employee?
The clear answer: cronyism.
BART is governed by a board of directors who negotiate labor contracts with five government unions that make political contributions to candidates for the transit agency’s board. For example, the political action committee of one of those five unions provided 10 percent of the funding raised in 2024 by three candidates for BART’s board. Another union provided 15 percent of one candidate’s funding and 10 percent of another’s. Still another union provided the same allotments. This kind of political giving inevitably leads to conflicts of interest, with directors becoming more responsive to the demands of employees and their unions than to demands for financial efficiency from taxpayers.
Before taxpayers are asked to provide BART with more money, this dynamic needs to change. If not, voters should know in whose pockets the lion’s share of the new revenue will end up: the unions.
Wiener has proposed that BART take certain steps to improve efficiency, but his prescriptions are not enough. So long as BART’s board is in thrall to public employee unions, taxpayers will not be safe. BART’s governing structure must be changed.
One option would be to have board members appointed by the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and San Jose, a method that would provide a layer of accountability. Government unions can also contribute to those political officials, obviously, but mayors are much more visible to voters, who are already accustomed to holding them responsible for local transit systems.
In no event should taxpayers provide more revenue to BART while its board is more responsive to employees than taxpayers. With all due respect to Ezra Klein’s theory of abundance, it’s not enough for California to demonstrate that it can build infrastructure — it must also demonstrate that it can manage infrastructure for the benefit of taxpayers who fund it.
