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Billionaires pour money into effort to defeat billionaire tax
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison (worth $17.5 billion) chipped in $15 million; venture investor Vinod Khosla (worth $11.5 billion), $12.6 million; former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (worth $37.8 billion), $12.1 million; and Ripple Executive …Chairman Chris Larsen (worth $8.4 billion), $10 million.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/billionaire-tax-fight-has-become-200m-battle/article_31b8898d-bb5a-4ff5-97a0-5921537adea6.html
By Troy Wolverton | Examiner staff writer 9 hrs ago
The Building a Better California PAC formed by Alphabet co-founder and centibillionaire Sergey Brin (seen in March 2025 ) has raised $110.7 million since the end of June.
Evan Agostini, Invision/Associated Press
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If campaign funding is any indication, the state’s billionaires are really opposed to paying a tax on their wealth.
Thanks to a flood of money from the ultrarich in recent weeks, the fight over the billionaire tax being proposed via Proposition 40 is on track to be the second-most expensive ballot battle in state history.
And with Election Day still more than a month away, the brawl could get even pricier.
“The billionaires have the money to spend, so it makes sense that they’re spending it,” said Sarah Hill, a political-science professor at California State University, Fullerton.
Pushed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West to make up for federal cuts to health-care funding — the bulk of which will start taking effect next year — Prop. 40 would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on the nonproperty wealth of the state’s billionaires.
Propositions 41 and 42 — placed on the ballot by opponents of the tax measure — would nullify Prop. 40 if either passes with more votes.
Through Thursday, the combined contributions to the campaigns for and against those propositions had hit $243.7 million, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office.
That tops the $226 million that was raised for and against Proposition 22, a 2020 measure set working conditions for ride-hail and delivery drivers. That contest previously ranked as the state’s second-priciest ballot-measure battle.
The only ballot fight more expensive was the one over propositions 26 and 27 — a pair of competing sports-gambling measures in 2022 — according to Ballotopedia. The campaigns for and against those measures together raised $571.6 million, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
While the billionaire-tax battle might not reach that level, it’s been gaining ground quickly. Just since the end of June, $103.5 million has been sunk into the tax fight. Of that amount, only about $432,000 went to the pro-tax effort.
Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff at SEIU-UHW, said she wasn’t surprised by how much money was flooding into the effort to defeat the billionaire tax. Billionaires seem willing to spend whatever it takes to shoot it down, no matter the consequences, she said.
“I think it just speaks to how really screwed up or how kind of skewed priorities are in this state where billionaires are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars … instead of just paying a very minimal tax to make sure we have a functioning health-care system,” Jimenez said.
Nearly all of the $103 million raised since June 30 by the individual campaigns fighting the billionaire tax or promoting the rival measures came from Building a Better California. That political-action committee, which was formed by Alphabet co-founder and centibillionaire Sergey Brin, itself has raised $110.7 million since the end of June, according to campaign-finance records from the California secretary of state.
The tally of recent contributors to Building a Better California reads like a list of Silicon Valley’s rich and famous — many of them billionaires, according to Forbes magazine.
Since July 1, Brin — the world’s fifth-wealthiest person, with $225.4 billion in assets — and John Doerr, the chairman of venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins, who is worth $22.7 billion, each contributed $20 million.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison (worth $17.5 billion) chipped in $15 million; venture investor Vinod Khosla (worth $11.5 billion), $12.6 million; former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (worth $37.8 billion), $12.1 million; and Ripple Executive Chairman Chris Larsen (worth $8.4 billion), $10 million.
State campaign-finance records show Stripe CEO Patrick Collison (seen in November), who is worth $17.5 billion, has contributed $15 million to the Building a Better California PAC.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Other tech and venture billionaires contributing to the campaign over the last three months include Rippling CEO Parker Conrad; Affirm CEO Max Levchin; former Zynga CEO Mark Pincus; venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale; and Jed McCaleb, Ripple’s former chief technology officer.
The remaining 17 contributors in recent months include Stewart Resnick, the CEO of agricultural giant The Wonderful Company, who is worth $5.4 billion; Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, whose stock in the company is worth hundreds of millions of dollars; and a collection of investment professionals, including Alfred Lin and Shaun Maguire from blue-chip Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital.
Since it was formed in January, Building a Better California has raised $228.8 million, $200.5 million of which it has already contributed to the anti-Prop. 40 and and pro-Prop. 41 and 42 campaigns.
By comparison, the yes on 22 committee, which was mostly funded by Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and PostMates, raised $205 million through the entire course of its campaign to promote Prop. 22.
Just by himself, Brin has contributed a total of $102 million to Building a Better California, easily making him its biggest donor.
In an email, Building a Better California spokesperson Abby Lunardini quibbled with the comparison to other ballot battles. The Prop. 22 fight involved one ballot measure instead of three, she noted. Building a Better California’s spending reflects the signature gathering and other efforts to get propositions 41 and 42 on the ballot, she said.
Lunardini declined to comment about the billionaires’ contributions to the campaign against the tax.
SEIU-UHW has provided 99% of the $31.8 million raised to date by the yes on 40 campaign, but only about $172,000 since June 30.
Other than that, the biggest contributions to the pro-tax campaign have come from Hillary Perkins of San Rafael, who donated $100,000; Ross Boucher of San Francisco, who gave $50,000. John O’Farrell of Atherton, Alan Davis of San Francisco and the Oakland-based council of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees union gave $25,000 each.
Billionaire-tax proponents have no illusions about being able to keep up with their opponents’ campaign funding and spending, Jimenez said.
“We don’t have those types of resources,” she said.
Hill said the outcome of a ballot proposition isn’t necessarily determined by how much money is spent for or against it, but it’s better to have more money than less.
By default, voters typically vote against propositions — and campaign spending against a particular measure can help submarine it, Hill said.
“It’s much easier to convince voters to vote no than yes, because if they’re confused or in doubt, they keep the status quo,” she said. “They just say no.”
The spending against the proposition might be starting to make a difference. While polls earlier this year showed strong support for the billionaire tax, more recent ones indicate a much closer contest.
A poll earlier this week from Politico and the UC Berkeley Citrin Center found the race to be a dead heat among likely voters.
It’s unclear just how much of the money raised by the ballot-measure campaign committees — as opposed to Building a Better California — has been spent. The campaigns update their expenditures quarterly, and their next reports likely won’t come out until after the election.
But through the end of June — the most recent period for which they’d disclosed their spending — the campaigns for and against propositions 40, 41 and 42 had collectively spent $138.6 million of the $140.2 million they’d raised.
That’s almost certainly going to go up. In recent weeks, the no on 40 and yes on 42 campaigns, in particular, have been signing advertising contracts with cable and satellite systems and local broadcasters, according to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission.
In San Diego, those campaigns have already started airing ads on cable channels.
Instead of focusing on a TV-ad blitz, the yes on 40 campaign plans to lean on volunteers and allied organizations such as Indivisible and the Democratic Socialists of America to get the word out about the measure via phone calls, text messages and door-to-door canvassing, Jimenez said.
And she thinks the ad campaign by opponents could backfire. Voters are likely to question just why there are so many antitax ads on the air and wonder who’s behind them, she said.
“As people just do a little bit of digging, they see it’s billionaires saying, ‘Hey, don’t tax me.’” she said. “And I think voters are going to see through that.”
Written in part by a pair of UC Berkeley professors, Prop. 40 was designed as a response to last year’s federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Also known as House Resolution 1, that measure — which cut health-care spending nationwide — is expected to cost California about $100 billion over the next five years.
Proponents of Prop. 40 project it will raise a similar amount of money, 90% of which would go toward funding health care in the state. The other 10% would be set aside for education and food-assistance programs.
The measure has the backing not only of SEIU-UHW, but the California Federation of Labor Unions, the state’s Democratic Party and the California Nurses Association.
Opponents of the measure include many of the state’s top-ranking public officials and those running for its top offices, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Treasurer Fiona Ma, and gubernatorial candidates Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton.
It’s also opposed by the California Teachers Association, the California Medical Association, Planned Parenthood, the state Republican Party and an array of business and antitax groups.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom.png
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While the state Democratic Party supports Prop. 40, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other top Democratic officials in California have come out against the wealth-tax measure.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Such figures and groups have warned that the measure could end up decreasing state revenues in the long run by encouraging billionaires to flee the state.
Brin, for example, reportedly moved to Nevada recently, although it’s unclear whether that will get him out of paying the tax because he would have had to establish full-time residency there by the beginning of this year.
Sponsored by Building a Better California, propositions 41 and 42 were designed as poison pills for the billionaire tax — if Prop. 40 passes, it won’t take effect if either Prop. 41 or Prop. 42 draw more votes.
Prop. 41 would require that any money raised by taxes passed after Jan. 1 of this year would be subject to the so-called Gann spending limit put in place by Proposition 4 in 1979.
Prop. 42 would essentially bar all nonproperty wealth taxes and prohibit the state from applying any such taxes retroactively.
CA billionaires pour money into anti-tax effort.
www.sfexaminer.com…https://www.abridged.org/news/sacramento-schools-funding-dispute/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=6abfc70e7f9f6700018ed1bb&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawUuQbpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMXlRYkRYSUt4TW9YaUp6WjJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEekvKkTwy5M-08cMhfBa1-XO6XQup6wIv1TdDdjc0PyPfJ4-fmFNTaj50jY38_aem_5rTiBYEYy67txAjl7DpE7Q
The Sacramento City Unified School District has sparred with its financial overseers from the Sacramento County Office of Education.
www.abridged.orgUCSF behavioral-health workers call for safety improvements beyond Ward 86
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/public-health/ucsf-social-workers-call-for-better-safety-at-all-clinics/article_c88ca98d-874c-43db-be86-d543c4da6fbf.html
By Natalia Gurevich | Examiner staff writer 4 hrs ago
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UCSF social worker Juliette Suarez, who works at the school’s Division of Trauma Recovery Services, speaks during a Sept. 23 vigil for Alberto Rangel, who was stabbed and killed at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86 in December.
Courtesy Ryan Sin/UPTE
Months after one of their own was stabbed and killed on the job at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86, social workers are calling for more support beyond increased security measures there.
On Sept. 23, dozens of people gathered together outside the hospital to hold a vigil for UCSF social worker Alberto Rangel, who was stabbed and killed last December by a patient who has since been charged with the murder.
Workers said they still feel that the majority of their demands for increased safety and staffing levels have not been met. They said they held the vigil to call attention to those demands, which they recently outlined in a letter sent to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood.
In the months since the stabbing, UCSF and the San Francisco Department of Public Health have made security changes at the site, such as adding a weapons-detection system at entrances and exits and adding more security staff.
But social workers at other hospital sites, who are represented by the University Professional and Technical Employees union, say that what has been done so far falls short of their demands.
They say the safety issues at Ward 86 are systemic throughout UCSF sites that handle agitated patients who are suffering from behavioral-health or substance-use issues, or others.
“We’re not receiving the same safety upgrades,” said Juliette Suarez, a UCSF social worker who works at UCSF’s Division of Trauma Recovery Services.
Suarez, who represents workers in UPTE’s behavioral-health unit, said that because Ward 86 is in a DPH-run facility, it has received these upgrades due to the department’s proactive actions.
She said UCSF workers at other sites haven’t seen the same level of changes and still grapple with regular safety issues.
“That is pretty commonplace, where staff will be threatened — situations in which clients have had weapons on them when visiting various sites,” she said, describing what she said was the widespread nature of the safety issues. “We’ve also been in situations where there have been weapons used in areas where we have our workers.”
Those weapons can include blades or firearms, she said
Suarez said that since December, workers have been threatened or assaulted at sites other than Ward 86. She said the university’s responses to such reports can vary.
“Our safety decisions are basically being decided by higher-ed management folks, or folks that just don’t have that same perspective or voice as the people doing the work every single day,” she said.
In a statement shared with The Examiner on Friday, the university said it “is taking steps to strengthen safety at UCSF community-based program sites.”
The statement said UCSF has been making security assessments and conducting safety trainings at those sites over the past eight months, which will lead to the implementation of new safety measures.
“We value the contributions of our frontline staff and remain committed to providing a safe environment for them and the clients they serve,” the statement said.
In the letter presented to Hawgood last week — which was signed by all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors, state Sen. Scott Wiener, and Assemblymembers Catherine Stefani and Matt Haney — workers called for more funding for safe-staffing levels in “high-risk behavioral health, outpatient and community settings.”
The letter also called for Hawgood to “address the recruitment and retention crisis among UCSF social workers, including establishing parity for compensation, classification and advancement disparities that cause vacancies and turnover.”
Suarez said the workers haven’t yet received an official response from Hawgood or UCSF leadership, although other communications have been ongoing over the past several months.
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After California Division of Occupational Safety and Health officials conducted an investigation, UCSF and its hospital were fined some $273,000 in June for numerous “serious” safety violations.
A statement UCSF spokesperson Kristen Bole shared with The Examiner earlier this week said the school administration has been working with Cal/OSHA in response to the violations raised during the investigation and will continue until those “concerns” have been resolved.
“UCSF has strengthened workplace safety at Ward 86 by establishing rapid escalation and daily safety huddles, expanding emergency and security training, and redesigning workflows,” the statement said.
Other changes include implementing new reporting and response protocols based on safety concerns raised by employees during meetings and listening sessions over the past several months, it said.
But in the meantime, Suarez said that the university hasn’t been meeting workers’ demands for additional support at other sites.
“The rest of us — the UCSF behavioral-health staff and clinical social workers, who are doing a lot of the same work with the same population, mostly community-based — have our offices off-site from the general,” she said.
Suarez said her own office is in a privately rented building.
“Anything happening in those places hasn’t been equal or equivalent to what people at the general have got,” she said.
In response to Rangel’s death, DPH released a report in April that detailed gaps in safety and security at the clinic.
Among other things, it pointed out the location of the sheriff’s deputy on site at the time of the incident, who was far enough away from the scene of the attack that Ward 86 staff members had to attempt to pull the attacker off of Rangel before the deputy was able to intervene.
According to the report, it took seven minutes after the attack for a code blue — the emergency signal used in hospitals — to be issued.
“Extensive additional security measures have been made to strengthen workplace safety, including enhanced physical security measures, expanded security staffing, increased crisis prevention and response training, and a fundamental change in security structure governance to better connect leadership to frontline staff and their concerns,” the department said in a statement shared with The Examiner.
“We remain fully committed to the safety of our staff, patients, and community,” the statement said.
The department has also been allotted a one-time $7.5 million infusion of city funds and $15 million annually in the city budget to go toward supporting safety and infrastructure improvements at the hospital. Other funding will be dedicated to workplace safety training and de-escalation training for staff as well.
Suarez said safety concerns had long been an issue within the union before last December, but what happened to Rangel has pushed members to begin thinking about tracking when and under what circumstances these incidents occur.
“Usually the safety concerns are handled through the employer,” she said. “We’re just trying to get a better pulse on what’s going on with each other.”
She said that she and her colleagues at other clinics hope that such ongoing conversations will encourage UCSF to advocate more for them as the university’s employees, despite the fact that their sites might be funded separately, through medical grants or other sources.
“Even though we’re UCSF workers, we haven’t seen UCSF step forward with taking on that responsibility to us,” she said.
UCSF workers at other sites concerned about safety as well.
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