The city’s largest labor union has dumped close to half a million dollars. The real estate industry is rallying. Accusations of “loopholes” and “misinformation” and “slumlords” are flying.
During a typically sleepy spring primary season, one Oakland ballot measure is stirring up a furious fight.
Measure E, championed by Mayor Barbara Lee, would impose new taxes on property owners to fund key city services like police, homeless shelters, and cleanups. The levy would be: $192 a year for single family homes, $131 per apartment for multi-unit dwellings, and steeper amounts for commercial properties. Some low-income and senior property owners would be exempt, along with schools and religious sites.
The goal is to raise roughly $34 million a year for nine years.
Depending on who’s asked, Measure E is either crucial to Oakland’s public safety and homelessness response, or a cash grab without accountability.
Unions and city leaders bet big on Measure E
An SEIU 1021 member rallies for Measure E on May 19. The union, representing about 1,500 city workers, is the largest single financial contributor to the Yes on E campaign. Credit: Richard H. Grant for The Oaklandside
Last spring, in the midst of a financial crisis, Oakland adopted a bare-bones two-year budget. City finance officials warned that the spending plan would leave a $40 million hole in the second year of the budget — one that might need to be patched by a parcel tax.
Several of the city’s labor unions took up the mantle, fundraising big to get the tax measure on the ballot for the June 2 primary.
This month, however, Lee unveiled a mid-cycle budget that is balanced — if austere — and does not rely on new tax revenue. She also released a Measure E spending plan, saying the revenue would allow important additions like 22 police officers and a police academy to train recruits, replacements for decrepit city vehicles like fire engines, new shelter beds, and the expansion of other services.
“If no Measure E, senior centers are open four days,” Lee said at a rally Tuesday outside City Hall. “If Measure E passes, five days a week.”
“We can’t tolerate just treading water, just barely making it.”
She was joined at the rally by Council President Kevin Jenkins, former councilmember and current city staffer Rebecca Kaplan, members of the city’s firefighter union, community organizers, and others.
“I think they’re older than me,” said Jenkins about some of the Oakland Fire Department vehicles.
Oakland’s municipal labor unions are among the biggest advocates for the measure. These city jobs — and the services they provide — could suffer in future budget cycles without a revenue infusion.
A campaign committee launched last year by labor interests, called Oaklanders for a Safe, Clean & Healthy City has raised, by our tally of its campaign finance filings, a whopping $1.12 million to support the measure. Initially, the committee was established to get a parcel tax on the ballot, and in March, after that happened, it was renamed to campaign for Measure E.
The committee has spent the money on organizing, mailers, digital ads, consultants, and more, filings show.
The five largest contributors to this committee are:
Service Employees International Union Local 1021: $425,000
International Association of Fire Fighters Local 55: $265,000
International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21: $120,500
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Northern California: $50,000
California Nurses Association: $50,000
SEIU Local 1021, IAFF Local 55, and IFPTE Local 21 are among Oakland’s largest public employee unions, representing city workers across numerous departments and positions, from street cleaners to museum guards to firefighters.
Real estate industry funding Measure E opposition
The developer of the Atlas apartments on 14th Street is one of the largest contributors to the No on E committee. Credit: Amir Aziz/The Oaklandside
Meanwhile the real estate industry, other business interests, and some civic groups in Oakland are campaigning hard against the measure. The No on E committee, by our tally of its campaign filings, has so far raised more than $279,000.
Their message: How can voters trust the city to spend the revenue on what it’s intended for? Beleaguered taxpayers, they argue, are tired of continuing to send money to the city without seeing results.
“We want to see some transparency in these measures before we approve them,” said Kiran Shenoy, government affairs director for the Berkeley-based Bridge Association of Realtors, which is leading the campaign. Realtors are sponsoring an anti-E committee called Neighbors for an Affordable Oakland.
Empower Oakland, a political advocacy group founded by Loren Taylor, has made a similar case against the measure. The group cites Measure NN, which voters passed in 2024 to raise millions for public safety. That ballot measure promised to boost the city’s ranks of police officers to 700. Yet, Oakland’s budget deficits have forced leaders to scale back, with the last budget authorizing 678 police officer positions. And because it’s become so difficult to recruit, hire, and retain officers, OPD’s actual number of officers sits at 610.
“Measure NN didn’t just fall short on hiring — the city declared a fiscal emergency and redirected the funds to whatever it wanted,” Empower Oakland says on its No on E website. “Nothing in Measure E prevents the same thing from happening again.”
Lee told The Oaklandside this messaging is “misinformation.” Revenue from past measures has not been spent on unintended uses, she said. Rather, the city hasn’t always been able to afford to contribute enough general fund dollars to fully carry out the measures’ goals.
The city attorney’s analysis of the measure, included in the county election booklet, says Oakland can only use Measure E revenue “to pay costs and expenses related to the objectives designated in the measure.” A public oversight commission would be established and the city auditor would regularly monitor the spending.
Asked why the real estate industry is heading up the opposition campaign, Shenoy said, “Realtors generally have a broad interest in ensuring the city of Oakland thrives and remains safe, functional, and fiscally competent.” Those circumstances “ensure people want to move to Oakland,” he said. When there’s low “consumer confidence,” the housing market “doesn’t keep up.”
Some of the biggest contributors to that campaign are the companies that would have to pay the highest taxes under the measure. Developers that own large or multiple buildings in Oakland, like Carmel Partners, which developed the Atlas, the city’s largest housing tower, could pay tens of thousands of dollars more each year under E, by The Oaklandside’s calculations. These property owners have faced economic pressures in recent years, and a number of prominent downtown buildings have gone through foreclosures and fire sales.
A group including Bishop Terrence Millican from the Oakland NAACP; Taylor, CEO of the Black Action Alliance and a former councilmember; Carl Chan, a Chinatown business advocate and co-lead of the 2024 campaign to recall Pamela Price; and others held a press conference on Thursday opposing Measure E.
The committee established to oppose Measure E has not raised close to the amount that the pro-E campaign has. Nevertheless, it’s received significant contributions from real estate interests.
The five largest contributors to this committee are:
National Association of Realtors: $100,000
California Association of Realtors: $75,000
Carmel Partners (Greg Pasquali): $48,150
The Martin Group of Companies (Justin Osler): $15,000
Empower Oakland: $11,020
The first four contributors are from the real estate industry.
While it’s by far the buzziest, Measure E is not the only city item on the ballot.
Measure C would give small and new businesses a temporary tax break. Measure D would make changes to the board of the city’s retirement fund for police officers and firefighters.
This story was updated after publication with more precise language from our interview with Kiran Shenoy.
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