Disclosure: Guest opinion. The views are the author's own. SFBAYHCC took no position on Measure RTM.
My first reaction to Measure RTM was to vote no. With everything costing more, who wants another tax? Sales taxes usually hit working families like ours the hardest.
But this one is different.
On November 3, voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties approved Measure RTM with about 62% of the vote in unofficial returns. Starting in April 2027, it adds a half-cent sales tax (one cent in San Francisco) for 14 years. That will raise close to $1 billion a year to keep BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, VTA and other systems running. Without it, BART warned it could close up to 15 stations, cut service hours and stop running trains at 9 p.m.
Here’s why that matters to us. Latinos are roughly a quarter of the Bay Area’s population, yet we earn far less than the region’s top earners and are less likely to own a car. Rider surveys consistently show that transit riders are disproportionately Latino: in the region’s latest survey, 28% of riders were Latino. When the bus or train stops running, our cooks, cleaners, construction crews and caregivers are the ones left stranded, often on early-morning and late-night shifts. Or they’re forced into a car they can’t afford.
The cost, meanwhile, is modest. A half-cent tax adds 50 cents to a $100 purchase (a dollar in San Francisco), and California doesn’t charge sales tax on most groceries or on rent. One tank of gas costs far more than most families will pay in this tax in a month.
Even if you drive, you benefit. Every worker who stays on the train is one less car on 101, 880 and 680, roads that already crawl at rush hour.
Normally a new sales tax takes the most from those who have the least. This time it protects something we depend on more than almost anyone. That’s a tax worth paying.
James Duran is a former chair of the CHCC Foundation and a former Northern Region director of the CHCC.
Editor’s note: Measure RTM rests on SB 63 (Chapter 740, Statutes of 2025), by State Senators Scott Wiener and Jesse Arreguín, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed on October 13, 2025. Our News Desk explains what the tax pays for, what it costs and when it starts.
