GUEST OPINION: Why support repeal effort? Because SMART simply isn't

I voted for SMART. In fact, I still believe in the SMART concept, but I am against going full-steam ahead until the voters have a chance to reaffirm this drastically cut project.

The SMART concept we passed in 2008 and the SMART reality today are two very different truths. We are only getting one-half the train and one-third the bike path that we voted for in 2008.

SMART officials tell us they are now building in "phases," despite the fact that this is not what the voters approved, and they are spending all the money on "phase one." The train will not connect to the Larkspur Ferry. Cloverdale and Windsor have already built their stations, yet northern Sonoma County residents may not ever see the train reach their area.

We should vote on this initiative again before undertaking the largest capital works project in North Bay history. It is only fair that we vote on the current reality of SMART and not the 2008 concept. This is why I ask you to please sign our petition.

I formed Repeal SMART about a year ago, and we now have more than 1,200 members. There are about 250 volunteers currently circulating our petition for a ballot initiative to repeal Measure Q, the quarter-cent SMART sales tax.

In October, SMART tried to make us start over and throw out the signatures we had already collected. They wanted to write an "objective" summary for our petition. They wanted to shorten the time we could collect signatures from six months to three. They wanted to make their own general manager, Farhad Mansourian, the elections official, instead of the county registrar of voters.

Mansourian, who was recently hired as one of the highest-compensated public employees in the state despite having no rail experience, wanted the electoral authority to validate our signatures. Unbeknownst to us, the secretary of state thankfully intervened and told SMART that it had no legal authority to enact this ordinance. They could not pick and choose which election laws to follow. The SMART board then defiantly voted unanimously to pass its unlawful ordinance.

California voters passed Proposition 218 in 1996 and amended the Constitution, raising the voter threshold for all tax initiatives from the standard simple majority to two-thirds. This is why SMART needed 66.6 percent to pass. Proposition 218 also lowered the signature requirement for all tax-repeal initiatives. For the SMART district, this means 14,902 signatures rather than 39,651. The registrar of voters office has told us that they will certify either number of signatures, but SMART will decide which number is sufficient. We don't think this is fair as it puts the burden on us to prove in court the very same law that dictated SMART needed 66.6 percent support for a quarter-cent sales tax.

Our volunteers should hit the 15,000 signature mark, but, unfortunately, they will not get 40,000 by our Jan. 27 deadline. We wish we could, so the voters can decide without first going through SMART and the courts. We would rather spend our money giving temporary jobs to some of our unemployed neighbors, instead of fighting SMART in the courts.

Therefore, we are now making the following offer: We are offering a job to anyone of voting age in Marin or Sonoma counties to work as a petition-circulator. We will pay you $1 per valid signature. If you would like a job for the next few weeks, please go to our website - repealsmart.org - for more information.

John Parnell is founder of Repeal SMART. He lives in Novato.