Oakland’s Iffy Landscape Tax Axed, City Broke in All Kinds of New Ways

You can’t say it any better than the San Francisco Chronicle, so let’s go to the tape: “Oakland’s fiscal problems got $12 million worse Tuesday, when the City Council rejected a landscaping and lighting tax increase approved by property owners two months ago but challenged for improperly weighting votes.” The iffy legality of the tax was first documented in a column in the Express, which called into question the methodology initially used to conclude that the tax had passed.