The doors have slammed shut and the public pushed out of the Fresno County transportation sales tax renewal effort’s inner sanctum. The great unwashed are being told to pray for the best and wait for the white smoke to appear above the building where the Measure C Steering Committee is holding its private meetings.
Inside the cloister, a group of newly ordained cardinals of transportation planning sits in an unholy hollow square. A packed schedule of two-hour meetings filled with PowerPoints and data downloads is under way. The largely inexperienced devotees are expected to listen in silence during the rote sermons then contemplate a limited litany of spending options set before them prior to recommending a spending plan for voter approval.
While the committee members have been granted a great responsibility, they have little real power. The much older cardinals of residential sprawl and industrial development have already determined their top priorities for future Measure C spending.
The final word on any ballot measure belongs to a trinity of public agencies dominated by the urban interests of the Fresno-Clovis metropolitan area where growth at all costs is the chief doctrine. The needs of rural and inner-city residents are again being shunted aside.
A separate series of meaningless public outreach meetings has been announced by the Fresno County Council of Governments, the agency setting policy since passage of the first Measure C in 1986 and renewed for another 20 years in 2006. Meaningless because they’re happening far too late in the process to have any impact. The meetings serve more as a campaign tool than a policy development one.
And the people behind the scenes have a campaign in mind for as early as June 2026.
Fortunately for all Fresno County residents, there are the faithful among us who practice a secular liberation theology, one of inclusion and engagement focused on addressing the harsh realities faced by the least privileged among us and on addressing our rapidly deteriorating environment.
Gathering in open meetings as the Transportation for All (T4A) coalition, they are “residents and groups working to ensure that taxpayers guide the future transportation decisions in the county, not politicians and special interests.”
Member organizations include Fresno Building Healthy Communities, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, the Central California Environmental Justice Network, the League of Women Voters–Fresno, the Woven Coalition for Justice and more.
The first such meeting was held in early May in the western Fresno County community of San Joaquin, population 3,700 souls. A crowd of more than 250 people attended the transportation visioning session, and more meetings are planned throughout the region.
The working-class attendees bore witness to the T4A coalition’s conviction that “Fresno County has spent millions on highways, freeways and roads that have failed to connect neighborhoods and people to where they need to be. Over the years, politicians and their donors have backed too many projects that create sprawl, increase truck traffic and pollution, and hurt neighborhoods.”
And they’re at it again. From the conflicted Fresnoland reporter repeating a city council member’s ad hominem attacks on a prominent coalition leader, to a former politician turned industrial lobbyist spewing venom at public meetings, to a smug consultant from out of town breezily patronizing local advocates, the cardinals of status quo thinking are pulling out all the stops to undermine dissenters’ reputations and character.
What they’re also doing again is underestimating the most powerful bloc of social justice advocates in Fresno County history. These are the individuals and organizations that, in various alignments,
- Stepped up to fight Covid-19 when the County government was failing to do the work, securing millions of dollars for public outreach and personal protective equipment;
- Fought to ensure $70 million in Transformative Climate Community funds reached all of West Fresno, not just around high-speed rail;
- Forced the City of Fresno to comply with state law and evaluate public health impacts from unchecked industrial development;
- Organized the successful youth-driven Measure P citywide tax for parks;
- Are suing the Assemi-controlled Community Health System for redirecting as much as $1 billion from the downtown hospital to a new one in Clovis; and
- Fought in court to set the precedent that lowered from two-thirds to simple majority voter approval of new sales taxes if placed on the ballot by citizens’ petition.
That final victory, just a “quirk” in state law, according to one scornful reporter (who should conflict out of reporting further on this issue), is the truest sign of their strength, integrity and vision. The fateful court decision came at the end of the Measure P campaign and has profoundly changed the nature of local sales tax ballot initiatives throughout California. It’s no quirk; it’s the result of true community engagement and empowerment.
Ironically, it’s also what the cardinals are scheming to use against them and are already ignoring state law by strategizing a $400,000 signature-gathering campaign at publicly funded renewal committee meetings, hoping to capitalize on the lower approval threshold. A smaller version of the gambit worked last year in Madera County to renew Measure T, with the same consultant operating in conjunction with disgraced political operative Alex Tavlian.
It’s a sham process with potentially dire results for all county residents, but most of all the people described by the late Pope Francis when he said, “Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that create huge inequalities.”
And that’s Fresno County in a nutshell: economic structures creating huge inequalities. It’s also the legacy of 40 years of Measure C spending. Simply put, it’s time to put that to an end. It’s time for a religious conversion.
