Vote for Muni? Transit Backers Say Struggling SFMTA Needs 2026 Election Win -

The elections of 2026 could be the end of BART and SFMTA as we know them. Both are hundreds of millions in deficit. Bailouts from the city, county, State or Feds are not coming. Newsom CUT $1.5 billion from the State budget for transportation. The 2026 ballot will have a large number of school bonds, parcel taxes, city, county and State bonds—from water, parks, environment, transportation and more. Folks will finally realize giving money to government is like flushing it down the toilet.

“San Francisco’s transit agency is facing a $320 million deficit a year from now. That’s more than 20 percent of its current budget, and it’s set off a frenzied effort to both cut costs and find new revenue.

The federal government sent emergency funding during the pandemic, but it’s running out. Prospects of help from the Trump White House are slim to none. The rest of the city’s budget is also hemorrhaging red ink, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s biggest revenue source: the general fund.

SFMTA has begun making moves, including service cuts, layoffs, and stepped-up fare enforcement on Muni buses and trains. But by most accounts — including a task force that has looked at a variety of options — these are plays around the margins, especially if downtown commuters don’t return in healthy numbers.

It should be noted that the tourist traffic is down in the Bay Area. Also, from Silicon Valley to San Fran, the population is declining. Folks do not want to use the unreliable, dirty, crime and disease ridden government transportation systems.

Vote for Muni? Transit Backers Say Struggling SFMTA Needs 2026 Election Win

To close a massive deficit, service cuts, parking fees, and fare crackdowns only go so far. Campaign veterans warn it’s time to get voters on board.

by Kristi Coale, Frisc, 5/22/25 https://thefrisc.com/vote-for-muni-transit-backers-say-struggling-sfmta-needs-2026-election-win/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fc496e4687-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_05_23_10_06&utm_source=The+Frisc&utm_term=0_-fc496e4687-458324243

San Francisco’s transit agency is facing a $320 million deficit a year from now. That’s more than 20 percent of its current budget, and it’s set off a frenzied effort to both cut costs and find new revenue.

What Muni really needs to stabilize itself for years to come, officials say, is a giant vote of confidence at the 2026 polls that leads to hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents SF in Sacramento, and Mayor Daniel Lurie are working on measures. Yet getting them to the ballot, then convincing voters in SF and the Bay Area to say yes, is another thing entirely. Voters want the money to be spent wisely; past mismanagement of funds and financial impropriety have undercut public trust in transit agencies.

The first ballot opportunity, in March 2026, is less than a year away. In a critical moment for public transit, The Frisc asked successful campaigners for previous public finance measures how SF should proceed.

Big ballot dollars

SFMTA has been chipping away at its deficit to meet a short-term savings goal of $50 million by July 1. It made a round of Muni service cuts earlier this year, then another that will kick in June 21 and decrease the number of routes that travel up and down Market Street. Last month, the agency said layoffs of 12 managers got it to its short-term fiscal goal.

More fare inspectors and parking enforcement have brought in more revenue. The agency reported in April a year-over-year 6 percent increase in revenue per rider (Feb. 2024 to Feb. 2025), and it estimates that more paying riders will bring in up to $5 million per year.

But some of those gains are offset by new salaries totaling $3 million to $3.5 million a year, according to the city’s own position listing.

Activating parking meters on evenings and Sundays would be more lucrative – $30 million annually according to a 2023 estimate – but the previous Board of Supervisors throttled the plan. While parking remains a political hot potato, the board approved last month a 25-cents-an-hour bump for meters across the city.

But these figures do little to address the looming deficit. Massive cuts risk what’s known in public transit as a ‘death spiral’ — less service leads to less ridership, which means less revenue, and so forth. SFMTA and its Bay Area peers must tap into a much deeper well of public funding, say officials and advocates.

There are two efforts aiming for next year: one just for San Francisco, another to address regional transit. California voters have primary elections in March and a hot-button national midterm in November.

So far, the most concrete of these measures comes from Sen. Wiener. It would bump sales tax in Alameda and Contra Costa counties by a half-cent, and in SF by a full cent, with proceeds going to transit operations.

The state legislature must pass a bill to get the regional measure on one of next year’s ballots. A Wiener staff member told The Frisc that the bill should reach the full Senate in coming days, and the final size of the tax and other details won’t be settled until later in the legislative process this summer.

(Wiener and Sen. Jesse Arreguín of Berkeley are also trying to squeeze an extra $2 billion for transit funding into the next state budget. But Gov. Gavin Newsom, facing a $12 billion deficit, didn’t add it to this month’s draft budget. More wrangling, then a final vote on June 15, is coming. “We’re still pursuing this proposal,” Arreguín’s chief of staff Stefan Elgstrand told The Frisc via email.)

Keep it simple: for a transit campaign, use a direct argument such as, ‘Less transit means more traffic.’

phil halperin, chair of last year’s successful $790M sf public school bond campaign

There’s movement at City Hall as well. As Politico first reported in March, Mayor Lurie has launched a committee to fundraise for a “potential 2026 measure,” which Lurie said would not just be a “blank check” for Muni. Details remain scant, but documents filed Mar. 14 with the SF Ethics Commission list Lurie as the committee’s treasurer and principal officer. No other committee members are listed, and no funds were reported as of May 6.

The mayor’s initiative will need to go to the Board of Supervisors for approval before it can get on the ballot. (Lurie could also do what the general public does to qualify a measure for the ballot — gather signatures.)

To date, no other groups have proposed a funding initiative for Muni in 2026. As recent history shows, getting measures to the ballot, let alone approved, is no slam dunk.

In June 2022, a $400 million bond to fund transit and street safety received a majority of SF voter approval but didn’t hit the two-thirds threshold. Last fall, Prop L aimed to tax ride-hailing companies to bring in a potential $25 million a year for Muni. It won 57 percent of the vote but was nullified because another tax measure, Prop M, passed with a higher vote tally. Prop L’s grassroots backers say the “poison pill” caught them off guard.

Regional efforts, like the one Wiener is pushing, have even more hurdles. A $20 billion affordable housing bond was pulled by supporters months before last fall’s election. Wiener also tried in 2023 to raise Bay Area bridge tolls for transit funding. It didn’t go over well with counties that use BART, Muni, and AC Transit less frequently, and Wiener had to pull the measure.

Getting voters on board

SF and Bay Area votes for big funding initiatives are unpredictable. What’s a campaigner to do? The Frisc asked several who’ve had success. One piece of advice is to know what potential supporters care about and craft a narrative around it.

In June 2016, Save the Bay executive director David Lewis did just that with Measure AA, a $12 per year parcel tax to fund projects for flood prevention, habitat restoration, and shoreline access. He and others spent more than a decade polling voters to understand what they could raise and how to message the measure.

Whether or not people lived near the bay or had a view of it, he learned that they saw it as “having value for them and the region,” Lewis told The Frisc.

Regional transit can be more complicated. “If you’re in Marin, you care less for BART or VTA (Valley Transit Authority in Santa Clara County) because these don’t directly serve you,” Lewis said.

The successful Measure RR, in 2016, raised $3.6 billion for BART and kept its focus specific on Contra Costa, Alameda, and San Francisco voters. Sen. Wiener seems to be using the same strategy with the regional sales tax to fund Caltrain, BART, AC Transit, and Muni.

But to have a fighting chance, that campaign needs to start now, says Livable City senior policy manager Tom Radulovich. Radulovich was a BART board member in 2016, and he says they worked for two years to educate voters about Measure RR. “We had a good story to tell about the ways in which BART benefits the region — whether you take it or not,” he said.

Another piece of advice: Keep it simple. Phil Halperin has chaired several SF school district bond measures, including last fall’s $790 million bond whose fate seemed uncertain. (It passed with 75 percent of the vote.) Focus on the factor that will draw the most support, said Halperin.

In education, it’s what helps students. Slogans like “every child deserves a good teacher” generally win, he said. “Once we tell people it’s for kids, we get most of the votes we need.”

For transit, Halperin advises a direct argument, such as ‘less transit means more traffic’ or other dire effects. If buses don’t run as often, workers don’t get to their jobs, and there’s a negative impact on payroll and sales taxes.

Before transit backers can test these big, simple messages at the ballot box, they’ve been sending another one: small cuts, more efficient operations, and increased fees and fines for riders and drivers alike are not enough. In the next few months, people who ride Muni and drive around San Francisco will have something to say about those changes as well, and that could affect what happens in 2026.