A citizens’ committee created to monitor how Stockton spends its hundreds of millions of dollars in Measure A sales tax money has given city staff 90 days to answer a list of questions about the city’s oversight of the funds.
At City Hall on Thursday, the six-person Measure A Citizens’ Advisory Committee voted 5-1 to have Stockton finance officials return in January with answers to a list of 21 questions, including about how much of the tax money the city has put toward hiring new Stockton Police Department officers.
Committee members Duwayne Chavez, Julie Dunning, Susan Lenz, Daniel Offield and Destiny Rivas voted “yes.” Committee leader Ned Leiba voted “no.” The committee has one vacant seat.
“Is this something that staff is going to embrace?” Leiba — a certified accountant and the committee’s leader — asked Interim CFO and Deputy City Manager Chad Reed of the list of questions.
“Correct,” Reed said. “Whether they can produce the answer is a different story.”
That question has been central to years of frustration on the part of some Stocktonians including Leiba over the city’s failure to explain to critics’ satisfaction how it spent the money it collected through Measure A.
Voters passed the three-quarter-cent sales tax in 2013 alongside another, nonbinding measure asking Stockton leaders to put the majority of the money toward crime prevention. When it was passed, the city expected the tax to bring in $28 million each year.
But the 120 new police officers Measure A was supposed to pay for never materialized. As for crime prevention, there’s limited evidence Stockton homicides may have decreased more than in similar cities during a four-year period of Operation Ceasefire, a violence-reduction strategy Measure A was supposed to fund, The Record reported.
Two years ago, the City Council voted to extend Measure A tax collection through 2034, and reduced the new officer target to 60. Officials refocused on retaining police, establishing a $15,000 hiring bonus for new officers, in addition to other incentives, according to an agreement with the police union last year.
Currently, overall pay and benefits for Stockton police officers and sergeants are up in the air. As October comes to a close, rank-and-file officers are wrapping up their fourth month without a new employment contract as city and union leaders negotiate.
As Thursday’s Measure A committee meeting kicked off, how the discussion would proceed also seemed up in the air.
Leiba started the meeting by proposing to follow an agenda the accountant said he and another committee member had created, and that followed a different order than the agenda the city had provided committee members and the public.
“It’s a mixed bag, it’s incomplete, it’s fragmented,” Leiba said of the city’s agenda. His agenda followed a more logical order, Leiba said.
After opposition from his committee colleagues — including former City Council member Lenz, Tree Stockton President Dunning and educator Rivas — the group voted that Leiba could follow his agenda if he clearly stated where he was in the original agenda to avoid public confusion.
Throughout the meeting, committee members sometimes expressed puzzlement about the direction of discussion.
“I’m sorry, my bio rhythms must be off here, because I’m 90% lost,” Dunning said at one point.
Ultimately, the discussion touched on a range of topics including the city’s months-late yearly financial report, data Leiba compiled on the yearly number of Stockton police officers since Measure A began and a lawsuit whose precedent could suggest that Measure A would be safe from tax critics’ legal attacks even if its proceeds are investigated.
When discussion turned to the list of questions about Measure A, debate revved up on the dais once again.
Drafted by Leiba, Dunning and committee Vice Chair Offield, according to Leiba, the list included questions about whether the outside investigators who compiled Stockton’s yearly financial report weighed previous findings by the Measure A committee, and why money collected through the tax wasn’t audited, among other queries.
The full list of questions can be found on page 22 of Thursday’s City Council memo.
While Leiba pushed to send the questions straight to investigators, Rivas and Lenz argued for letting city finance officials attempt to answer first — in part out of concern outside investigators’ work on the questions could run up a big bill for the city.
The single member of the public who showed up to offer comment at the meeting agreed with Lenz and Rivas. “What are we going to uncover, … who are we going to fire?” said Dan Richardson, noting the high-level vacancies that have plagued the city’s finance division in recent months.
“Ned, what you’re trying to accomplish is admirable … but it’s not going to move us forward,” Richardson told Leiba. “Those monies are gone, people. They’re not coming back.”
In an email to Stocktonia Friday, Leiba said, “Unlike staff, the work of outside auditors and accountants must meet professional attest standards. They must observe ethical rules. They have technical knowledge.”
Leiba believes the cost of a full audit of Measure A money would be minimal compared to the amount the tax brought in, he added.
The Measure A committee next convenes in January, Leiba said at Thursday’s meeting.
If committee members are unsatisfied with the city’s answers to their questions when the time comes, their best option may be to raise the issue with the councilmembers who appointed them, according to Stockton City Clerk Katherine Roland.
The committee doesn’t have the authority to hire its own investigators with city money, Roland said.
For his part, Leiba was appointed by District 2 Councilmember Mariela Ponce — known for her under-the-radar City Council campaign and for largely staying silent during debates on the dais.
“I’ve never met the person in my life!” the longtime Measure A skeptic said when asked why he believes Ponce appointed him.
Ponce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.