There is a recurring debate in California about the effectiveness of regional governments when compared to the existing local government structure. While the traditional political subdivisions of the state consisting of cities and counties are easily identifiable and have defined boundaries, not so with “regions” per se. Depending on the purpose, there may be as few as four but as many as fifty designated “regions” in California.

Some progressives have opined that cities and counties should be abolished altogether. Joe Matthews proposed just that a few years ago in a column entitled, “Save Local Government By Eliminating Local Governments.” While recognizing that local governments are “the most democratic, participatory, and effective level of government,” Mathews believes that “local governments are too weak and small to be effective,” which is why he pines “for an ‘extinction event’ that would kill off thousands of California local governments.”

Generally, conservatives hold the opposite view: that government services should be delivered at the level closest to the people in order to enhance both transparency and political accountability. (Does anyone in Southern California really know who represents them on the South Coast Air Quality Management Agency? AQMD is famous for its draconian regulations including ill-fated efforts to ban fire pits on the beach).

Moreover, the notion that regional governments are more efficient than cities or counties is belied by recent examples of epic incompetence. For example, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) was created by state statute in 2019 to run housing programs and projects in the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area. Last June, BAHFA proposed the Regional Measure 4 (RM4) ballot measure seeking approval of a $20 billion property tax measure set to be placed on the November 2024 election ballot.

After years of spending taxpayer dollars in preparation of the campaign, including extensive meetings with regional stakeholders and hiring teams of political consultants, they approved placing the final product on the ballot. Too bad they couldn’t do math.

An energized taxpayer organization called “20BillionReasons,” made up of an ad hoc collection of grassroots activists, accused MTC/BAHFA of issuing misleading statements and false claims in the ballot measure’s language as well as some really dumb, 5th grade-level math errors. BAHFA had time to correct the errors and misrepresentation but, by then, the damage to public perception was done and BAHFA withdrew the measure from the ballot entirely.

Readers may be wondering what the history set forth above has anything to do with the “bridge tax” referenced in the title of this column. Well, it turns out that the agency that actually controls (albeit indirectly) BAHFA, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA), is now embroiled in another controversy.

Daniel Borenstein, opinion editor of the Bay Area News Group, has dug into what appears to be a diversion of funds from a $3 toll increase approved in 2018 for public transit and freeway improvements that “is effectively being used as a slush fund for bridge maintenance.” Whether it makes more sense to use toll revenues for bridge maintenance isn’t the point. Borenstein’s contention is that these diversions run contrary to the promises made to voters and that argument appears to be well-founded.

But the broader issue here with MTC is that, as with most regional authorities, there is a lack of transparency. Borenstein notes that the “magnitude of the diversion is still impossible to determine because the agency comingles — and fails to separately account for — the different portions of the toll on state-owned bridges in the Bay Area.”

This is an ongoing story and taxpayers and commuters should be paying close attention, especially since the Bay Area Toll Authority just approved another round of toll hikes up to $10.50 by 2030. And, in case you were wondering, members of the Toll Authority are members of MTC.

Is this tangled web of overlapping regional entities really doing the people’s business?

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.