MTI Report S-01-03

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons Learned: A Conference on Transit Referenda and Why They Succeed or Fail

June 29- July 31, 2001

San Jose, CA

 

 

 

 

a publication of the

Mineta Transportation Institute

College of Business

San José State University

San Jose, CA 95192-0219

Created by Congress in 1991

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FHWA/CA/IR-01/03

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AN OVERVIEW OF TRANSIT REFERENDUM CAMPAIGNS AND THE COMMUNITIES THAT HAVE CONDUCTED THEM

PETE CIPOLLA:

Earlier I thanked APTA's business members for their financial support for this conference. I'm especially pleased to call upon Alan Wulkan, who's the chair of APTA's business member Board of Governors, and serves with me on the APTA Executive Committee. Alan's a senior as many of you know. He is a Senior VP with Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas. He's had extensive experience and involvement with transit elections, some successful, some not so successful. Notably, the last election last year in Phoenix, Arizona, his home community. Alan's role today is to give us a general overview of transit referendum campaigns and the communities that have conducted them. Now this is his birthday weekend, and we dragged him back from Las Vegas. We probably saved his house, his ranch and everything else, but we dragged him back from Las Vegas to be here with us today, so please welcome Alan Wulkan.

[Applause]

ALAN WULKAN:

Hello. Good afternoon everybody and welcome.

Usually a lot of times at APTA meetings we go around and everybody introduces everyone. But it looks like we have almost 100 people. So we shouldn't do that maybe today. How many of you, however, have been involved with elections for transit that have lost, raise your hands. How many of you have been involved in transit elections that have won, raise your hands. How many are here for the first time because you want to win an election coming up soon? Great, thanks. You know, for all of you who raised your hands you know in the transit business you can become very pessimistic very quickly when you start thinking about the daunting task of passing a tax in your community for transit.

I have a little story I want to tell you. I want you to remember this as you go through the most difficult times of your campaigns, especially if you're about to become pessimistic to the point where you're not sure it's worth it. I want you to remember the guy who cuts my hair, Roger. Roger is the most pessimistic person I have ever met in my whole life. One summer I wanted to go to Italy on vacation. I went in to get my monthly haircut. Roger said, "Where are you going on vacation?" I said, "I'm going to Italy." Roger said, "Why would you go to Italy? They hate Americans over there." I said, "Roger I've been there before and I want to go again." He said, "When are you going?" I said, "I'm flying on Saturday." He said, "Saturday, the worst day of the week to travel. Everyone travels on Saturday. There's going to be long lines." And then he said, "Okay, what airline are you flying?" I said, "Al Italia." He said, "Al Italia? They're never on time. They lose your luggage. It's going to be a terrible trip. Where are you staying?" I said, "Well, last time I was there, I stayed at the Plaza de Navona." He said, "Plaza de Navona? My God, all the street people hang out there. You'll not get any sleep. They'll accost you every day. All right, what are you going to do when you're there?" I said, "Roger, last time I was there I didn't get a chance to go see the Pope or the Vatican. I really want to do that." And of course he says, "A million people a day try to go see the Pope. You have no chance at all."

Well, despite all that pessimism, I went anyway. I came back the next month to get my haircut. And I said, "Roger, you're not going to believe it. I went to Italy and the people were fantastic. They treated us like gold. We flew on Saturday, and it must have been a holiday weekend because there was nobody in the airport. And Al Italia was right on time. The baggage got there right when we arrived. Plaza de Navona, maybe because it was a holiday weekend, was empty. We had the whole place to ourselves. We went to the Vatican. And all of you have probably seen pictures of the Vatican, and there's double doors and there is this beautiful courtyard where lots of stairs that come down." And I said, "Roger, you're not going to believe what happened, but while we were milling"--and again, I guess a lot of people living in Italy and Europe are on vacation in August, so there's not a lot of people at the Vatican--"The doors open and the Pope starts walking out onto the courtyard in the Vatican. The tradition there is you line up so the Pope can welcome you to the Vatican, and we all line up. And he's coming straight down the line and he stops." I said, "Roger you're not going to believe it but he stops right by me." And Roger says, "You're kidding." I said, "No." And the Pope leans over and whispers in my ear, "That's the worst haircut I've ever seen in my life."

All right, so when you start thinking you're getting pessimistic, and times are tough, remember my friend Roger.

Over the last 28 or 29 years, I've been involved with over 25 transit elections throughout the country. When I was asked about the idea of having this seminar/conference, I thought it would be a great idea. They asked me would I share some observations about what's happened around the country, especially most recently. Then I added to that because any of you who know me, I like to talk about the things that I feel passionate about, and this I do. Those are some of the lessons learned and some of the principals that I've picked up over the last 28 or 29 years on the keys to being successful in transit elections.

You're going to hear, I hope, a lot of overlap over the next two days, because that means we probably are beginning to get it right in understanding some of the lessons together. I'm going to do a few things. I've got three case examples. For those of you in the audience who I know, if I offend anybody, I'm sorry. But they are my observations in elections that you have had. So, Danny, don't get upset with me from Dade County. Or others I know who are here from Phoenix. But I'm going to run fairly quickly through this overhead presentation. You have copies. We did not make those copies up to try to take them off of the PowerPoint, which frankly, with this projector, doesn't project very well. I brought a backup in the overhead. So I'm going to do those instead of the PowerPoint. I can get you the color copies or whatever after the seminar.

Obviously, in the last couple of years during a lot of elections, you have seen similar headlines. We took these from some of the headlines around the country on elections that have been held in many of your communities and others. Nationally, over the last three years, data that was available, it's kind of interesting. In 1998, when you look at how many elections failed versus passed, transit elections, as you can see, about 70 percent of the transit elections that were held in 1988 failed. In 1999, it became about 50/50. We lost a few more than we won. Then in the year 2000, you can see we won almost as many as we lost in 1998, almost 70 percent of the elections that were held. All of those people who are pessimistic say these things never pass, and that's not true. They're passing, and the more we do them, obviously the more we learn. In 1998, as you can see, we had about, just under 15 transit elections that we lost, 71 percent of them. In 1999, a few more, and as I said, we split. Then the year 2000, there were over 30 initiatives throughout the country. Of those, as you can see, we won almost 70 percent of them.

Now I wanted to take three case examples, and I hope you'll bear with me. There were so many that I just wanted to pick the ones that I thought contrasted well. Two of them are going to be from the same community, the first being Dade County. I'm from Dade County, it's my home. That's where I started my career. I'm very proud of what's happening in Dade County and what continues to happen. We've had a history in Dade County of elections and they have not been overly successful in the recent times. They were successful earlier. The last election in July of 1999, was a special election.

For those of you who don't know Dade County, they pay for almost the entire budget of a rail, bus, people mover, para-transit program out of the general fund in transit. It puts a lot of pressure on the voters, on the policy makers of the community every budget year. There's been a move for many, many years to try to get a dedicated revenue source. So the concept in Dade County was to go for 1 percent sales tax. This was somewhere where they wanted to make it palatable to an electorate that had been negative on new taxes before, and tolls used in Dade County to finance the maintenance and operation, and in some cases, the construction, but mostly the maintenance and operation, of many of the roadways. The mayor came up with a concept of trading tolls for the sales tax. There was an awful lot of discussion about replacing general funds support with the sales tax, eliminating tolls, expanding transit. And all their polling and surveys said tolls were a terrible burden on the community and they hated them. They decided this would be a concept that would work.

Unfortunately, the way it came out was--a very strong mayor, a very popular mayor, one who I believe that at the time the decisions were made most people would say could pass just about anything this mayor thought was a high priority--the mayor decided that he was going to closely control the campaign. Although there were a lot of people involved behind the scenes in raising money and doing strategy, the overall approach to this campaign was in the hands, and I hope that Danny would agree, of the mayor's office. The mayor's office was closely controlling the campaign; he had the strategy. The business community would raise the money, and they did. They raised almost $2 million. They would appeal to special interest. They don't want a real big turn out. They want those people who really care. They would play traffic and tolls against the transit issue. And a lot of the polling and surveying said that was a good idea. They had polling results that, to be very blunt, early on, showed that they might be ahead. But they weren't ever really far ahead. They always showed a relatively close election. I'm going to come back to that issue later on some of the lessons learned.

What were the results? Strong champion, the mayor. Special election, the strategy was--let's get a low turnout. Highly targeted, you'll hear this, the high propensity voter. By the way, in your communities, I know there will be some campaign people that will disagree with me. When you hear high propensity voter campaign in a transit election, watch out. Because what usually happens is you don't get only the high propensity turnout in transit elections. You get high turnouts. Dade County lost 2 to 1. The turnout was over 30 percent. What happened was they came out with not an anti-transit vote. Dade County has had its challenges in the past. It came out as an anti-government vote in many cases. Hispanic and Anglo vote where the mayor, particularly in an Hispanic community, was the single most popular elected official in the county, went big time against transit. There was an anti-tax mood as things had been changing in Dade County. It's much more conservative today. And frankly, the strategy of a low turnout, high propensity voter, highly controlled election, simply did not work. The election did not come up from the grass roots. It came up from the top down.

A second campaign that I wanted to highlight very quickly is a smaller community, one where I happened to have my office. At the time of the election I was Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. What happened here was in Arizona for the last ten years, there have been four unsuccessful regional votes in Maricopa County to get a transit tax. So we decided we were going to try to do something a little different. If I was to ask you what state has the highest number of dedicated taxes for transit in the United States, what would you guess? What state?

PARTICIPANT:

New York

ALAN WULKAN:

Anybody else?

PARTICIPANT:

California.

ALAN WULKAN:

California. Anybody else? Arizona? No. Believe it or not, it's Texas. It's not because Texas is some great champion of public transportation overall over the last 20 years. It's because they have a piece of legislation that allows local governments, city by city, to vote as they feel it's needed on transit. If the big city approves it, it doesn't make any difference what everybody does. The tax is approved and it's initiated. Then, all the other communities join in. What we decided is we would do the same thing in Arizona. We can't win regional transit taxes. We can't win regional taxes for education and health in an elderly community; it's a very conservative community. So we decided we'd go city by city. We went to the citizens of our local community and worked on a transit plan. We got very strong business support. In fact, it was the Chamber of Commerce that went to the city council and asked for the election. The council didn't want to do the election. In Arizona, elected officials, God bless them, they're wonderful people, but if you want to win a major tax election, a lot of times, they're not your closest friends. Because everybody thinks, again, this anti-tax mood, anti-government mood, "Why are they going to ask us for more money?" So we asked our elected officials to take a very low profile.

Tempe is a community of only about 140,000 people. So that's why I wanted to talk about it because you don't just have to be a big city to pass a transit tax. We went for a half-cent sales tax forever. No term limits on it. Expand a bus, dial a ride, rail planning, etc., and we won the very first transit tax in Arizona by 54 percent of the vote. And I'll go into some of the lessons on that later. But everyone thought, well, if we can pass it in Tempe, then Phoenix, the biggest community in the state, certainly with the most needs, we'd clearly be able to pass a transit tax going locally. In 1997 they tried right after the 1996 Tempe election, a high-targeted campaign. We're going to get those people who always vote. Once we win that part of the election, we're going to win. Strong vote by mail.

By the way, in my judgement, that is the future of elections, not just in transit. Vote by mail, at least for transit, is a great system. This is not absentee balloting. It's the next step. Anybody who wants to vote by mail has a right to get a ballot. These parties distribute these ballots. Now, people who are involved with issues distribute the ballots. The vote by mail ballot, coming in early, if you can think about it, usually is more targeted to the issue. Because it's later in the campaign that the anti-government and all the things that have nothing to do with your campaign, begin to rise to the top of the debate. So, in almost every election in Phoenix, especially this one, we won in 1997 over 60 percent of the vote by mail that came in a week before the election.

However, we had a governor who opposed it. Our governor Simington--I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute--as you remember, he was being impeached around this time, and finally was impeached. I'll tell you why that's an issue. Nobody wanted to talk about the rail vote in 1997. We had lost a vote in 1989 and everybody thought, "My God, if we talk about rail, we're going to lose again," even though rail was in the plan. Anti-government voter, we appealed to people that this was not coming from the city council. We had strong business community support. We were going for a half-cent sales tax. We had a committee of 600 that the mayor appointed to bless the plan. So we had strong business community support, and the mayor of Phoenix became the champion. We kind of converted them.

But what happened? All the polls showed we were way ahead. The mayor is Republican. The governor is Republican. About four weeks before the election, the mayor, while the governor was under investigation, asked the governor to resign. The governor didn't want to resign. Internal squabbling. One thing led to another. Three days before the election, the governor asked the head of the Department of Environment Equality, and the Department of Transportation, to hold a press conference, and announced that public transportation does nothing for air quality and congestion, simply to get back at the mayor of Phoenix. On his way to the press conference, the governor in his limousine got a phone call the jury was in on his case. To show you how these political feelings go, he picked up the phone, called his department directors, said, "I can't be there, do it anyway while I'm in court." Headlines the next day were, "Absolutely transit does nothing for air quality and congestion." Two days later, we lost the vote by 122 votes. Ironically--this is a true story--the very next day, we had an air quality alert. The headline in the paper was, "DOT says use public transit, air quality alert." One day too late.

So we lost our election. Out of 185,000 votes, we lost by 122 votes. If that press conference wasn't held, would we have probably won? Probably. But our polling said that we were way ahead, and it really shouldn't have swung that closely. So the mayor decided let's go back. And in 2000 we held a second election in Phoenix. Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to lose the first time. Hopefully you're wrong. When we won in Austin, when I was Executive Director there, we were lucky. We were one of three or four that won the first time. But the chances are you're going to lose the first time. That's not embarrassing, there's nothing wrong with that. It's part of the education process in your local communities. That's what we decided in Phoenix--"Let's go back again. Let's build on the things that we did well."

We knew that we were going to get a good mail campaign. We won 60 percent of the vote last time. So this time we targeted 70 percent of the vote to get that in before the election day. We had a very specific, defined plan. Instead of a committee of 600, we went with a committee of 2,000. We actually put, as I'll show you in a little bit, we put the maps of the ballot measure on the ballot. When someone walked in, they could see a map right in front of them and what they were getting for their vote. Most places don't allow you to do that legally. We can do that in Arizona. We addressed the opposition. We took them head on. This was not like we did in 1997, a stealth campaign. We decided when the opposition said something, we were going to counter it. If they were going to have 50 people at a rally, we were going to have 150 people at a rally if we can. We took the opposition on every single turn of the campaign. We polled our conservative voters. Our conservative voters love rail. I am sorry for my friends who are only doing bus initiatives. They are much more difficult to win than an initiative that has rail in it. Conservative voters are not going to use a bus. They don't think they are going to use a bus, and it doesn't make any difference what you think they are going to use. They want to use quality transit only, and in their view, quality transit, which Bill and I have talked about, and so has Paul, is defined in many cities as rail transit. So we elevated the rail issue, and we weren't worried about the anti-government voter because we realized we were going to lose them anyway.

Okay, what happened? We changed the ballot a little bit. The mayor decided he would not go back for the same exact campaign. So instead of a half-cent, we went for four-tenths of a cent--65 percent for bus, 35 percent for rail, a citizens based campaign. The chamber took a leadership role. The mayor of Phoenix, almost to the flip side of what he did in the first campaign, became a zealot. This was something that he was going to basically predicate his history of a mayor on and really became one of the best champions I've ever worked with in the last 20 or so years. I do want to say, because the first one gives it away how we did, the night of the election, we all went around the room. We had a little dinner for the people who were involved. A little dinner--it was about 60 people and the key people in the campaign. We were all asked to give our projections as to how we are going to do. I've been to many of these so I didn't want to tell the mayor I thought we were going to lose, because I didn't think we were going to lose. But I know these are always close and I said 52 to 48. I mean it scaled all the way, I think from everyone in the room, the highest someone got bold and said we might win 55 percent of the vote. The mayor said, "Nonsense. I think we are going to win close to 70 percent of the vote." We thought he was crazy. But I got to tell you, he put his machine to this thing. We won 2 to 1, almost 70 percent percent of the vote. This is one of the reasons why is we put together a citizen's commission which helped create this part of the referendum. Again, the ballot included exactly what was in it for me. That's a theme you're going to see in a little bit. If you can't answer the question--"What is in it for me?"--in your city, you are not going to get that person to vote for your initiative.

Okay. Those are three real quick case studies and you're going to hear a lot more. I didn't want to spend my whole time on that. This is what I think is more important to this presentation, and for what I think you're going to be doing in the future. I think first of all there are some principals that you've got to follow. Ladies and gentlemen, you can disagree, debate, or you can say your community is different. You all live in different communities. But you are not different. Every issue you are going to face in your communities has been faced before. Every reason that you are going to win or lose has been faced before. You can do things differently. Every city has its own little campaign group that has got to be different. But take my word for it. If you don't pay attention to the basics, you're going to lose.

First, focus on winning. The story I love to tell in Tempe is--I come from a transit background. I grew up in the transit industry. I know that bus pullouts from a transit operator standpoint is a nightmare. They hate them. We in transit think they are the worst thing in the world. We did a poll when we were putting our plan together for the election. We asked people, "Rank the things that you like or don't like about public transit." The number one thing in our community people hate about public transit was that damn bus sitting in traffic and they were sitting behind it. They thought that was a terrible thing. When we polled, what they hate about public transit, and what they would vote for, bus pullouts are the number one things the voters in Tempe said they vote for. Our transit manager went bonkers--"You can't give me bus pullouts. It's going to ruin the operation of the transportation system." I said, "Mary, listen to what I'm telling you. Do you want a bigger transit system and more money and win an election? Or do you want the best operated small transit system in America?" It's very simple. We had more bus pullouts in that plan that you've ever seen in your life. And we won. Focus on what the voters want you to give them; not what you think is the best thing for them.

Follow the keys to success, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. Survey early and often. As I said, most of these elections are not going to turn on whether people like public transit. Ladies and gentlemen, you can ask these questions all day long, up to the day you lose, and your voters are going to say, "We think public transportation is great." All in favor of public transportation raise your hand. The issues in most of these elections have nothing to do with public transit. Recognize that there are going to be a whole range of other issues you are going to be dealing with.

Early fund raising. You can't win these things without money. Certainly the size of the community makes a big deal. We only raised $250,000 in Tempe. In Phoenix, we raised $2.3 million. So, wide range, but you have to have money.

Keep it simple. I know that sounds like it's so easy to think about. I can't tell you how much ballot language has played in losing elections. Despite the fact that you live and die with these issues, a vast majority of people that are going to vote on your referendum's future won't focus on it until the day before they go into the ballot booth. No matter what you think how many headlines you have, how many TV, how many radio shows. They're not going to focus until the day before they go into the ballot booth. If they walk into the ballot booth and they don't understand what you're asking them to give them, they're going to vote "no." A confused voter is a no-vote. An uninformed voter is a no-vote. Make it simple so they understand it.

Transit elections are unique. It's a principal I keep preaching everywhere I go. The vast majority of the people that are going to vote on your future will never use what you are asking them to vote on. I don't care if you've got the greatest transit system in the world. The best split you're going to get is going to be 15 to 20 percent of the people in your community. So, again, why would the other 80 percent that are never going to step on your transit system vote for you? You've got to answer that question when you put together your initiative. They're unique elections. Spend a lot of time thinking about what's in it for me.

I think I'm doing okay with time. Keys to success. I won't go through all these in great detail. Timing. Simple things. We had an election once in Phoenix. We did it, I think, the week after income tax time. Everybody said April would be a great time to do it. A lot of people would be around. You have to be around because you have to file your taxes. Not the best time to hold an election.

If you're community is in a depression, laying off people, other issues, it may not be the best time. It's up to you and your campaign consultants to think about that. The other side of it is, I will tell you, in every election I've ever been involved with, there's never a good time to hold a tax election. Show it to me. What's the best time to go ask people to give you more taxes? It's never a great time. But in each individual election, I think this is where cities are different, you got to get a sense. I always lean toward going earlier, not later. But you still have to have enough time to do a campaign. Have a specific plan. Be able to answer what's in it for me. Economical development may be in it for the business community, and they'll never use transit. There may be a whole range of other issues. We polled in 2000 even though in 1997 the opposition really killed us in Phoenix on air quality. Transit is not going to do anything for air quality. Transit is not going to solve any community's air quality problem. We know that. It's one piece of a pie. One piece of a puzzle that you have to put together. We polled our voters in 2000 in Phoenix. They thought transit is going to help air quality. All of our ads showed the dark cloud and the air quality problems. Even though, technically, most people would say it's not going to solve it. It doesn't make any difference. Make sure you have enough in it for everyone to vote on.

Keep it simple, I talked about that. Champions, make sure you show the benefits. Public involvement. There are, to me, a four-legged stool, a three- legged stool, I added the fourth one for funding. You have got to have a grass roots campaign. You can't just go out and decide what the plan is going to be based on all your wealth of experience and think the voters are going to embrace it. You have got to have public involvement, grass roots plan. You got to have champions. We talked about that and it's up there. You got to have professional help. If you don't have those three things and then combine funding to tie them all together, you are going to lose. Some people think they can have two of those three, or one of those three because they are so strong. Take my word for it, you are going to lose.

Listen to your community. If they tell you they want something, stay ethical, don't do anything you can't do. Give it to them. Make sure you have a regional balance. That's something I don't want to talk about too much. Governance and accountability. A lot of people if you're creating a new agency, that's another issue. We can talk about that at another time. Be a little creative. Some communities really want to see the high tech solution, some people don't. Understand what your community is really attracted to. As I said, have adequate funding when you're doing the campaign. And don't think you can get by. So many campaigns I've talked to people, "Oh well, that's a problem but we can get around it." They lost.

Champions, you can not win a transit election without a champion. If you go in it and say, "Well, we've got a lot of people who like us, they are supporters, but they're not people that really are champions that will lead a campaign," you're not going to be successful. They should be a recognized household name. They should not have any inherent political interest. I was surprised that the mayor of Phoenix turned out to be a much better champion than I thought he was going to be. He knew his constituents and did a great job. Most of the time if it's the mayor, if it's someone that looks like they have a political interest, they're not the best champion. They've got to have the time to work on it. It's one of the reasons why elected officials are not the best champions. They have other jobs. They don't have time to work on the campaign. But we had a former mayor in Austin that helped us win. She was by far in 1984 the most recognized household name in our community. She was a three-term mayor, the only woman mayor in the history of Austin at the time. And really helped us tremendously. Chamber leaders, former city council people. We had a radio station in Dade County that helped us win our first election. Needless to say, we got great coverage on his radio show. Professional help. You're going to go through this debate every single time.

Local versus national. In my judgement, you need to stick as best as you can to local political consultants. The people that win elections in your communities are who you want to win election in your community. That's not to say that they're aren't some very good national consultants that can give you advice. But there are too many, in my judgment, that have a cookie-cutter approach to winning transit elections. Winning transit elections in San Jose or Los Angeles is not the same as winning in Salt Lake where we won the second time around. Basically with local election people, we had the best numbers eight years ago or whatever it was in Salt Lake, maybe more now. We had the best survey numbers I've ever seen six months before an election. National campaign came in. This is how we win, I'll leave him unnamed, this is how we win them in California. It's a stealth campaign. We don't take on the opposition. It's high-propensity voter, we've won nine out of 10 elections in California this way, we're gonna win. We got killed. Okay, it doesn't always work because it works in California.

The other thing I'll tell you about polling. If you are not 21/2 to 3 times ahead in your polls when you start thinking about the election, I don't care if that's six months ahead or a year ahead--don't go. Don't think because your're 55-45, it looks good. You need to be in rule of thumb, 21/2 to 3 times ahead, six months or longer outside of the election, or you're going to lose. Those numbers get tighter and tighter and tighter, and you need to have that kind of margin. Listen to your consultant. What would you expect from a consultant to tell you, okay? Listen to him. That's why you hired him. You know, you might be a great transit manager. You might be a good public relations person. You might be a great operations manager. You don't do transit elections. Listen to the consultants that you hire. If you don't like the advice, change the consultant maybe, but listen to the consultant, okay?

Issue campaigns, frankly, they're different. They're different than election campaigns for individual office. That's one of the reasons why a good local campaign manager or consultant, paired with some of these people you're going to hear about today, including myself, who could give them a little bit of a perspective on what happens nationally on the transit issues, make a very good time. Have a realistic budget. All of your money, 75 percent of your money, is going to come in late. It's going to come in the last 30 days of the campaign. So make sure you're realistic. When you're thinking about buying TV and radio and newspaper, make sure you understand it's in the cash flow, and that's where your consultants are going to be very helpful to you. Of course, the campaign strategy is critical, and that's why good professional consultants are going to give you great advice. Grass roots, the business community today is key in many, many communities. Make sure you have them on board. Neighborhood groups, community organizations, the Speakers Bureau, there's a whole lot of things we can do and talk about during the conference, but it's critical that you have that grass roots.

Before I run out of time, make sure you've got enough money. Community Chair is important. I always love picking or getting the banker, the leading bankers involved as my finance committee. They know how to raise money. No one says "No" to the banker because they don't know when they're going to need that bank to help them the next month in financing. Set realistic budgets, and I won't go through all of that.

Okay, some lessons learned, and then I'll shush. Election issues--you're gonna deal with these, we'll talk about them, I know others are going to deal with `em. What's in it for me? I've already talked about that. The One Percent Myth. Only one percent of the people in the community are ever going to use public transit. And, if you believe that, then it doesn't do anything for congestion, it doesn't do anything for air quality, it doesn't...the problem is, when you get into debates on these issues--listen to the question. One percent means nothing. The major freeway in your community carries less than three or four percent of the total trips in your community. Understand the question. If it means nothing, get rid of it. Talk about what's strength for you. Most people try to debate our opposition on their turf. Their questions. Most of them are getting very good. They're better than we are in most communities in understanding what plays with the general public. So, stop thinking like a transit person. Start thinking like someone who's focused on winning an election. Then you have a better chance of winning.

"All rail systems are over budget with little ridership." We know that's not true, but you're going to be dealing with that issue if it's rail in your plan. "Transit should pay for itself." We've heard about that, cheaper options are always an election issue that you've got to deal with. Why do transit? We have schools, we have other issues that we have to deal with and you're going to have to be prepared for that. There are other priorities, just like I just said, other issues. Government mistrust; you may have that, you have got to deal with that government mistrust in part of your planning. Empty buses--everyone is seeing empty buses, so why would anyone think they're going to use it if you give them more money? You're going to deal with that issue. "Transit does little for air quality." I touched on that. There are a lot of people that go around this community. If you think you've heard all of the debate on transit in your communities, wait. If you're doing a major election, you're going to be visited by a number of people that do this for a living--going around and trying to make sure that transit initiatives are not passed. We know these folks, we know where they're coming from and of course, the industry would be happy to help. Lessons learned, and I got five minutes so I can do it real quick.

Usually you're going to go, as I said, more than once. Hopefully, you're going to win, but most of the time you're going to do it more than once. The outcome is influenced by other issues. Understand that, deal with that the best you can within your community to try to clean the deck on whatever issues your community is faced with during this time. All local elections identified, most of them were all or nothing propositions. You can't pick and choose whether you vote for bus versus rail. That's a good thing. You want to put your plan together so there's a little bit of something for everyone. By the way, one thing you're going to go through, everyone does this, you're going to go through a debate--do we go for a quarter cent, a half cent, three quarters of a cent? I will tell you, most of the survey research I have done, of these elections, the people who are going to oppose you at a quarter cent are going to oppose you at a half a cent, they're going to oppose you at three quarters of a cent. If your plan is not big enough to answer the question of "What's In It For Me?", you're going to lose. I don't mean be grandiose, don't be bigger than you need to be. You want to be conservative in the way you approach the financing, but make sure you have enough money to do the job, because if the voters don't perceive you have enough money, they're going to not support you. You can succeed as a standalone or in combination with highways. We've seen that happen in both. So, it's not one or the other. The most successful campaigns, as I've said, have had grass roots and professional management, they're well-financed...Pete, how am I doing? I'm almost done on time? Couple more minutes? Okay.

A successful transit election is more likely to be linked with the funding request. Make sure there's a trust factor there. People want to know what they're paying for and what they're getting and the proposition should be focused on short-term and immediate time frames. In Miami, we used to say, "We don't go try to sell the people in Northeast Dade County on something that requires them to buy more than green bananas." These people don't buy green bananas. They don't, people are short-term focused. They want to see what I'm going to get today. You try to tell them it's going to ripen in the future, and 10 years from now you're going to get a great rail system, they think they're going to be dead by then, okay? They're not, it was funny, the opening of MetroRail after we won our election, I had some of the same people that said, "Why would I support you? I'm going to be dead by the time we open." Then sure enough, I reminded them that they're still here. That's fun, if you have a chance to do that, but they don't trust you up front. So be careful with that. Don't try to sell the long-term vision, unless again, in some communities, long-term vision is paired with the short-term benefits. That really does work well.

Most elections are close. They're, you know, thank God for San Jose's and the second election in Phoenix. I mean, you can surprise people. You can win by the, huge majorities. But I'm going to tell you. You're campaign is going to be, probably within three or four percentage points one way or the other, especially if you win. You lose more by wider margins and we win more by narrow margins. Um, interesting--every community that I've studied and been aware of--eventually, after they went the first time, they passed their tax. Now some communities have just gone for the first time. San Antonio and a few others for rail. Eventually, we win. That's what you saw on that first chart. We're beginning to win more often. We're beginning to educate voters better and frankly, you don't have to be pessimistic. You don't have to always think about my friend Roger. If you're here, and you listen to the wealth of knowledge that we have on the panel, and others coming up, you have a lot of reasons to be optimistic. This is a great time to be in public transit. This is a great time to be offering options and choices for people in this country. If you just pay attention to some of the basics, you're going to be successful too. Thank you for inviting me today. It was really a lot of fun.

PETE CIPOLLA:

Alan, thank you.

We're just gonna take, let's do a couple little housekeeping-type things. One, after each of the speakers, we'll allow a couple of minutes for some quick Q&A. Then, toward the end of the session today, we'll open it up to actually asking questions of anybody on the panels and on their other presentations.

The other thing is, we're gonna go straight through folks, so we're not gonna take a break this afternoon. So, if you need to stretch, there's some goodies out in the back there, so feel free. Speakers, don't be offended if people stand up or have to go to the restrooms or whatever, or if you have to stand up, you can stand up and stretch too. But, I think it's important that we do try to just kind of push forward and push through this, so that's going to be the routine today.

Does anybody have...yes, go ahead. Well, you're going to have to move faster than that, Art. Alan...I can repeat the question.

PARTICIPANT:

Could you talk a little more about selling the short and long-term vision?

ALAN WULKAN:

I think the biggest issue you have with most people is, the day after the election, and I swear this is true, the day after our election in Phoenix, our Transit Office got phone calls asking "How come I don't have service, since we just passed this thing?" I mean, the day after. I'm not kidding. So, people focus on the short term. Now, as good planners, as good policymakers in our communities, you need obviously a long-term vision. You need to know where you're trying to get to. If you hired good consultants, they'll help you get to that. But, if you're trying to win an election, don't try to sell the long-term vision as the cornerstone of the election. Certainly in San Jose, they had a 10 year plus, and you'll hear more about that, vision of where transit was going. I will also tell you it helps you a lot, if you're trying to sell the long-term vision, it helps a lot if you've got a real homerun on your hands locally. If you've got a great system, like here, and others like in San Diego, which first put their major system in place first, before they went for the long-term vision, then people begin to trust you a lot more, and you have a chance to sell that vision. But a lot of people want "What's In It For Me?" answered in their lifetime and, as they perceive it...

PETE CIPOLLA:

Alan, are we going to celebrate your next birthday? Well, one more, a couple more questions. I'd like to follow up just a little bit. You're going to hear a lot of different thoughts and a lot of different opinions and you're going to hear me saying this often, over the next day and a half, take it all with a grain of salt. Because you all have to, you have to take what you get here and package it for your own system and package it for your own situation. It's a lot different for us; it's a lot different going forward with the first sales tax or the first measure than like us, going forward with our fourth one. And, you know, we already have a lot of things going, so we could move forward with a measure that doesn't even start collecting tax until 2006. So, it's a different situation for everybody. So, take what you learn and kind of go through it and shake it up a little bit and sees what falls and..oh, we have somebody with a mike there. Go ahead...

PARTICIPANT:

Alan, you said, you said that, in general, the bus initiatives don't do well. Rail does. What about BRT--Bus Rapid Transit?

ALAN WULKAN:

First of all, I don't want to over-generalize there. Bus initiatives, in some communities where rail has absolutely no role, is a little bit more difficult to pass with conservative voters. That doesn't mean that bus initiatives alone won't pass, `cause they do. In Austin, when we passed ours in 1984, we were bus-only, with just rail planning involved. There wasn't, rail was not a major issue. But they are more difficult, particularly today, when people are looking as what we, and you'll see the Weyrich reports that are back there, and I think Paul and Bill have done a great job, of defining quality transit. BRT plays into that very well. If you can convince your conservative suburban voters, or people that don't see themselves, whether we like it or not, they're not on there today because of a reason. They don't see themselves sitting in a bus, stopping often, and what they perceive is not a quality ride, today. But, we have seen rails, commuter rail and Bus Rapid Transit, be successful in attracting people that won't normally use transit. So if you're looking at a BRT as the future express bus component of your plan, test it in your community. If it makes sense, use it. But if it doesn't, then you might have to look...... sales tax or first measure than like us, going forth with our fourth one. We already have a lot of things going. So we could move forward with a measure that doesn't even start collecting tax until 2006. So, it's a different situation for everybody. So take what you learn and kind of go through it and shake it up a little bit. And see what falls.

Oh, we have somebody with a mike there. Go ahead.

PARTICIPANT:

Alan, you said that in general, the bus initiatives don't do well, rail does. What about BRT, Bus Rapid Transit?

ALAN WULKAN:

First of all, I don't want to over generalize there. Bus initiatives in some communities where rail has absolutely no role, is a little bit more difficult to pass with conservative voters. That doesn't mean that bus initiatives alone won't pass, because they do. In Austin, when we passed ours in 1984, we were bus only with just rail planning involved. Rail was not a major issue. But they are more difficult, particularly today, when people are looking... and you'll see the Weyrich reports that are back there. I think Paul and Bill have done a great job of defining transit.

BRT plays into that very well. If you can convince your conservative, suburban voters, or people who don't see themselves using it, whether we like it or not, they're not on there today because of a reason. They don't see themselves sitting on a bus, stopping often, and on what they perceive is a quality ride today. But we have seen rails, commuter rails and BRT, be successful in attracting people who won't normally use transit. So if you are looking at a BRT as the future express bus component of your plan, test it in your community. If it makes sense, use it. But if it doesn't, then you might have to look for some other [Inaudible].

PETER CIPOLLA:

Sharon?

PARTICIPANT:

Alan, I was wondering if you could just comment on sunset versus imperpituity? And that ties in very much with the issue of short term/long term.

ALAN WULKAN:

Yeah, we have dealt a lot with this and in Phoenix, and it was a real problem with us. There are those who really believe--and you'll go through this debate--you'll get more voters who will support you if you have a 20-year term, or a 30-year term on your tax, as opposed to imperpituity.

The research that I've been involved in the past does not support that. It might be intuitive--people might think that's the case. But the research says the priorities of why people support or oppose something is the length of the tax. Yet, our mayor in Phoenix would not let us put the initiative back on the ballot if it didn't have a 20 year sunset. So now we're faced with financing a multi-billion dollar program, and we can't bond long term against it, we have other problems with it. Yet, again as Pete said, every community has got its unique circumstances. If the mayor won't let you get on the ballot unless you've got sun setting in there, it's probably got to be something that has a sunset provision.

PETER CIPOLLA:

Okay, we're going to take two more questions here, then the gentleman over there, and then we're going to move on. You'll have opportunities to ask more questions later on.

QUESTION:

Is there a significant difference in how you would approach a campaign in a small urbanized area with mixed rural setting than in a major metropolitan area?

ALAN WULKAN:

Well, I think the first thing in either one is understand your voters. Understand what their priorities are. I mean, clearly a campaign in Tempe is different in Phoenix. In a rural community it is going to be different than in other places. So, again, it's the survey research part. It's understand the voters. It's understand how they vote. There are clear voting trends in rural communities that are different than in the major metropolitan areas. Bringing in the professional people that have won in your rural communities on major initiatives if there are any, I think are key. And listen to them. Have them tell you what's going to get that rural farmer to support you. Or that rural resident to support you. That might not be the same issue in a major metropolitan area.

PETER CIPOLLA:

Okay, sir?

QUESTION:

[Inaudible]

ALAN WULKAN:

A lot of our opposition on the industry will say to you--of the total trips made in your community, less than 1 percent ever use public transportation. Even if you were to win--and I have heard this over and over again... let's say you go from no dedicated revenue service to one penny, and it gives you this tremendous amount of money, the best you'll ever do of all trips is go from maybe .5 percent to 1 percent.

Well, first of all, they are talking about all trips. Every time you walk, every time you bicycle. Most of the trips in your community that don't even have transit in your neighborhood, they count all the trips in that area. So if you listen real closely, they're giving you something that is probably true. Less than 1 percent of the total trips in any community will ever use public transit. Just like less than 3 percent of the total trips ever use any given freeway link. Because there are so many trips. We're not trying to get all trips. We're looking at work trips. We're looking at medical trips. We're looking at those trips that we can compete for. In the areas where we provide quality transit, we compete very well for those trips. But don't fall into the trap. The trap is--1 percent of all trips, therefore why make the investment. You wouldn't invest in freeways.

Again, when they come into a community, as they did in Austin, they'll talk about the whole community, where there is no transit. There's only transit in a very small part of the service area, where Capitol Metro provides service. So when they come in there and they say, "Well, look at these numbers, they're terrible." Well, they're terrible because there is no transit in those parts of the community. We never are going to compete well if we can't provide transit. So there are traps. And as you get closer to the election we can...

PETER CIPOLLA:

I think you are going to see a lot of this in the discussion as we follow through to that. Okay?

Alan, thank you, but we really do need to move along.

[Applause]

During dinner tonight or the bus ride to or from, corner these folks and do the brain drain on them too.

 

PASSING LOCAL TRANSPORTATION TAX MEASURES: A FOLLOW-UP STUDY

PETER CIPOLLA:

I am now pleased to introduce two fine gentlemen from the Mineta Transportation Institute--Dr. Peter Hass and Dr. Richard Werbel. They have co-authored two studies on transit referendum, which they are going to discuss with us.

Peter Haas is professor of the department of Political Science at San José State University. He has numerous scholarly and professional articles on the subject matter, which also includes the 1998 report entitled, "Capital Versus Operating Variance For Transit. Economic Impacts For California."

Richard Werbel is the professor of marketing at San José State University and is an expert on research methodology. He has published numerous reports on that.

Please welcome Dr. Hass and Dr. Werbel.

RICHARD WERBEL:

Hi, I am Richard Werbel. Peter is my colleague. We have a little bit of a power play presentation, so we'll be alternating here.

We're allotted 45 minutes. We are going to each try to go about 10 minutes and then leave a lot of time for questions. We have a lot of research here. We can only touch upon that. We do recommend that you do read our reports. The first one you can get currently; it was published last year. The second one, as Rod said, is in a pre-review stage. But that should be ready in hopefully a few weeks.

The title of the study which was on the last slide, is "Passing Local Transportation Tax Measures: A Follow-up Study." I like to use the word ballot measures rather than referendum or referenda, even though I took four years of Latin in high school and I know plural with Latin, it's easy to get screwed up with that. With ballot measures, it's much easier.

To go into more detail, let's start with the last factor. We are focusing on what we refer to as actionable factors. Those refer to primarily the nature of a transportation package and the process used to determine it. For example, we have looked at the expiration date of an x-ray machine. Peter will have more to say about that. Peter is going to go over the findings. We're going to refer to them as findings rather than recommendations because this is a research study. I'm going to go over some of the methodology. Anyway, the actionable factors deal with the nature of the transportation package, the process used to determine it, proponents campaigns, opponents' campaigns, nature of coalition. We also have looked at background factors, because they certainly come into play. Just as an interesting background factor that is fairly unusual. In Salt Lake, which is an unusual case by the way we generally found as Ellen found that if you aren't starting with a two to one margin, you're in trouble. In Salt Lake, a month before the election, they did polling and they were, I think, about 10 percent points behind, which was very ominous. In addition, their campaign raised only $200,000. So, those were a couple of factors, combined, that were rather ominous. They won, by about 53 percent I think. The transit agency actually did a lot of communications and there was a lawsuit involved, which was eventually decided in their favor, after the election of course.

But the interesting thing, and a typical thing about that, is roads. They were doing construction on a major interstate and people were really angry at roads. Actually some of the funding was required to go to roads, and some people almost opposed it because it was going to roads. Clearly the sentiment against roads did help here. So there are some unusual features. [Inaudible] actionable features. We found that the best way to study this is through a case approach. That involves interviewing and written documentation that I will describe in a little bit more detail.

In the second phase of the study, we've looked at about 10 ballot measures in communities. Actually in some of those communities, and you'll see a slide of that shortly, not yet, we'll list the communities studied. Phoenix is one of the communities we studied. Each of the ballot measures we're looking at and this is a fairly narrow focus--does have a substantial rail component. That, of course, means that it tends to be done in larger communities. These are the communities that we focused on in this most recent one. In a few of these communities--and I am going to refer to this again later--they actually had two measures. In Alameda County, they had a measure that failed in 1998, two years before the measure that succeeded. As Alan said, Phoenix had a failed attempt by 123 votes in 1997 and won by about a two thirds to one-third margin in 2000. Denver failed in 1997, came back in 1999, and won again by about a two thirds percentage. Sonoma County had another measure in 1998 that failed. The 2000 measure also failed. Although in California, there's a higher threshold for failure. They actually got 60 percent and failed because the super majority requirement is needed.

In our first study, we included Denver in 1997; Sonoma County; Santa Clara measure in 1996; and Seattle had two measures in 1995 and 1996. So in both studies, I think they've looked at 17 different measures in 12 different communities.

What is different about our case approach, and we need to thank the Mineta Transportation Institute for that, is we've been able to do an intensive study, which usually you can only do a few cases, with 17 different cases again. Again, we needed substantial funding for that and we got it through the Mineta Transportation Institute.

So, let me tell you a little bit about the information that we collected. Because again, we are focusing on these actionable features. We mostly did onsite interviews. For four communities, we did telephone interviewing. And is there anybody here from Salt Lake? I'm not sure if I talked with any of you on the phone, but hopefully I have talked with a few of you.

Since we were interested in the package and the campaigns, we always talked with somebody from the transit agency. We typically talked with somebody from elected officials and/or the representatives aides. We talked to political consultants. We always talked to an opposition. We generally talked to people from the business community. Sometimes we talked to people from the environmental community. In some instances, particularly in California, if you have the environmental community opposed to you, that can be a problem. It was a problem in Alameda in 1998, and a problem in Sonoma County in 1998 and 2000.

We also found it helpful generally to talk to people in the press, particularly newspapers. We would usually try to talk to them at the end, and have them from an objective perspective, maybe clarify some conflicting information we might have received.

We also looked at a lot of written information. We tried to get a lot of the written information before we did the interviews, so that those would frame some issues for us. We looked at some major investment studies. We looked at a lot of survey results. I certainly agree with Alan and found that a lot of research, not just during the campaign, but in putting the package together, makes a lot of sense. People were open with us about the research that was done. We saw [Inaudible], budgets... We did a lot of content analysis of newspapers. So we have a lot of information on these ballot measures.

One of the interesting things that I mentioned before, we were able to do two measures in a very short time in some communities. If we include our first study, we have Seattle in 1995 and 1996; Sonoma in 1998 and 2000; Phoenix in 1997 and 2000; Denver in 1997 and 1999; and Santa Clara, actually, in 1996 and 2000.

One of the interesting things that we found then supports what Alan said. That is there could be substantial changes within a community in a relatively short time. I think the biggest increase was in Alameda where they went from 58 percent to 81 percent in a two-year period. Some of the others were generally changes in the voting percentage in the 15 percent to 23 percent range. Seattle had the smallest increase, but that was about 9 percentage points. In all those instances, there was an increase, which again suggested optimism. But it also suggests that this is--as Alan said--these transit initiatives may be unusual in a sense that it isn't a philosophical issue. Voters may have some ambivalence. There are things they like. Will the money be worth it? Although sensitivity has been on the upward side, I don't know if that's necessarily grounds for optimism.

What we found in looking at some of these studies is that there could be significant changes in voting primarily on the campaign. In Phoenix, the measure in 2000 was fairly similar to the measure in 1997. Rail did play a more prominent and explicit role in 2000. The tax was reduced. There was a sunset date. The tax was reduced, our understanding is, primarily at the insistence of the mayor so that he could say it wasn't a tax increase. I guess there was a [Inaudible] sales tax for some other purpose that was being phased out. As a Republican, he felt much more comfortable saying that it technically was not a tax increase. So we found big campaign differences. Phoenix is an interesting campaign. I may talk about it a little bit later, particularly in terms of how they dealt with the opposition. Alan talked about that a little bit.

Seattle on the other hand--and Alameda County--there really wasn't that much difference in the campaign. There was more difference in the two different transportation packages. So we certainly found that the nature of the package and the nature of the campaign both can have a substantial effect on results. Peter is going to go into some more details on what our findings were, dealing with the package and the campaign.

PETER HAAS:

Hi. Welcome to sunny San Jose. I'm really glad to see you all here. I rode my bike over here. Yet another trip that won't be one of that 1 percent, but a luxury for me I guess.

The social scientist in me wants to warn you a little bit about the validity for the findings. That is given that we have such a small... even though, as Richard pointed out, we had the luxury of lots of case studies--still, they don't really comprise a scientific type of sample. So the findings that we make are not definitive in a scientific way. Yet we find them to be pretty compelling in many ways.

I would also add that our findings, to the extent that I was able to pick up on what Alan was saying, are pretty much congruent with what Alan had to say. So, I think we are going to find a lot of dovetailing here, and that's a good thing. You'll find that we use slightly different terminology sometimes, and our findings are nuanced in different ways. But I think you're going to find a fair amount of congruence.

What we did was essentially try to isolate factors that we thought would be critical to the outcome of elections. The problem is of course that these factors tend to, using social science lingo, co-vary. They tend to correlate. So you'll find that a community, for example, that has a lot of support from the business community, will also have a lot of funding from that business community. Those that have a business community participated in the planning of the process. All those things tend to roll together. So it's very hard to say from this list of factors which is particularly the most important. But let me just roll right into the findings.

One of the most important things we found, or one of the things that would kind of be most important I should say, is unfortunately something that is probably the least actionable of all the things that we found. That is the perception of a transportation crisis. The communities that were successful in passing these measures tended to have a measurable, palpable sense of transportation, congestion, pollution--all those things bundled together--crisis. The way you can measure that is through survey results, through interviews, and things like that. So communities that did not have this kind of sense of crisis really struggled to convince voters that they needed to pass this particular package.

The second factor that seemed to be a positive in terms of promoting success was, as I mentioned, sponsorship from the business community. Again in the communities that passed, the measures--and that was in this case six out of ten--virtually every one of them had substantial sponsorship from the business community. Locally, for example, the business community here, the high tech community, was clearly instrumental in helping to pass the Measure A/BART measure here.

However, it's not all the business community as the third factor suggests. It's really important, and I think this goes largely with what Alan said, to have a visible... In our case, in these larger communities, they were all elected officials. But somebody with a lot of credibility and a lot of name recognition had to take the lead and be associated with the head of the campaign. Virtually each of the six measures that passed in our recent study, have this key recognizable elected official up front. I won't take the wind out of the sails of the local community, but in Charlotte for example, the Republican mayor of Charlotte was very active and out front and lead their measure successfully. Whereas in the communities that failed, they simply lacked that one recognizable person who could be the symbolic leader of the campaign.

Fundraising is the next factor. Now bear in mind that all of our communities are big communities, so I don't want to take the wind out of the smaller communities. But in these large communities, there is almost an acid test. If you had a $1 million or more, you passed. If you didn't have $1 million, you failed. There was one case in Austin which did have more than $1 million and they managed to fail. But every other case in our study, that rule was consistent.

Again, these are findings...not recommendations. And so it may be possible to do it in other communities with less money. But I think if you are in a big community, you ought to think about at least getting close to that $1 million figure.

Finally, what we found was that multi-modal projects, and by that we are being very narrow in our description in what we mean by multi-modal. Essentially, we mean a mixture of us and reality. Because remember, all of our studies involve a rail component. But the ones that also threw in some money for bus service tended to be more successful than the ones that were rail only. Now there was at least rail only measure that did pass. But, most of the failed measures were rail only. Again, it doesn't mean you can't pass a rail only measure. It just seems from our results that having a mix modal approach may appeal to more voters. I think you can see why.

Let's move on to the second list. These are a few more factors that are positively associated with successful campaigns. Now, consultants, and I think Alan will concur with this, will disagree about exactly which medium is best for passing a local transportation measure of this kind. But what we found is that in each of the successful communities, a pretty strong combination approach of both television, some radio, but usually a lot of television mixed with a very targeted, extensive direct mail campaign was successful. Whereas, communities who tried to do it, basically only with television were a little less successful. But, for the most part, if you had that mixture, we found success.

Again, you will find consultants who are sold on one or the other. All I can say is the cities that we looked, the cities that were successful did use a mixture. Some of the cities that were not successful did not use a mixture. That's the basis for that finding.

We, of course, dovetailed with Alan on the importance of an experienced consultant. By that, we mean pretty much the same thing he meant. We mean a consultant who is experienced with local measures, particularly local transportation measures if that's possible. The cities that were less successful tended to use either inexperienced consultants--academics who were working in their spare time; and/or, consultants who were out of their element working on a transit election.

Another thing we found is voters in these cities tended to be much more supportive of rail systems when they were an extension of an existing rail service. That, of course, dovetailed again with Alan. When you have a system in place--and this is my interpretation--it gives voters something to have experience with, they know that it is good, and they feel comfortable expanding it. But trying to present a brand, new comprehensive system, particularly, is going to be a lot of trouble. In Seattle for example, back in 1995, they came out with a proposal for this very grandiose rail system. Ultimately, they were successful the second time around with a scaled back initial rail system.

We also found a few things that were particularly associated with failure, or lack of success. First of all, there were some agencies that seemed to be tainted, for whatever reason. We weren't there to judge the transit systems by any means. But, certainly, there were communities that had a problem image with their transit system. If you believe that you are in that boat, you need to probably think about doing things to try to remedy that. Because none of the systems that had this kind of image were ultimately successful. Whereas the successful elections were all associated with pretty good, well regarded transit systems. This could be things like public arguments about routing; public partisan bickering about where a route is going to go. In St. Louis for example, there was big to do. The funding was already there for these routes. But that disagreement, that public pain spilled over into the election and helped them defeat that particular ballot.

Organized opposition. Believe it or not, none of the successful measures really faced what we would call "an organized, well-funded opposition." Whereas a couple of measures that lost did face such an opposition. So if you have reason to believe that you are going to face an organized funded opposition, you need to take particular care and be prepared to deal with that opposition in some ways that we may have time to get into later, or we may have to wait to other parts of the conference to get into.

Special elections. This is a fairly subtle one. But what I can say about special elections is... and by special election I mean--do you put the ballot on during a Presidential or Congressional election, or do you have an off year, special dedicated election?

What we found in our study is that every failed vote, that is the four that failed, occurred during a special election. Now that doesn't mean that special elections doom you. Because three of our winning campaigns also occurred in special elections. So it's just something to bear in mind. I'm not as confident in this particular finding as in the others. Nevertheless, it does bear repeating that all the failed elections occurred on a special elections date.

Then, finally, and again this is something that dovetails with Alan, we found that in the losing campaigns, there was a distinct lack of what we call public or stakeholder input. That these were essentially top down. They tended to be initiated more by the transit agency acting more or less alone and sort of as an expert. They failed to get other members of the community involved in the planning and the creation of the transportation package and this seemed to be associated with failure.

Okay, we found a couple of things that really could not be described as factors, per se, but we found them to be important enough that they bear discussion. These were the issues of, "How do you manage the message of your campaign?" And, "How do you lessen the potential for opposition arguments?" Richard was just going to chime in with a couple of quick comments on that.

RICHARD WERBEL:

These two things are related and let's deal with the opposition issue.

This is a tough issue. I don't think this is an area where we can generalize. We found successful ones going from ones that pretty much ignore the opposition and just stay on their message and focus primarily, if not strictly, on advertising. Because the opposition rarely has much by way of funding. But on the other hand, Phoenix was very aggressive in engaging the opposition. That was important.

Let me just tell you some of the things that Phoenix did that were, I think, quite aggressive.

Firstly, they came up with a very interesting acronym that was also used in Salt Lake for the opposition. The acronym was "CAVE." Anybody want to guess what that stood for? Yeah, "Citizens Against Virtually Everything." In other words, trying to put the onus on them for a solution. Maybe that's one of the things you can try to do to really get the focus and attacking on them to some extent. Although. I think the opposition may adjust. I'm going to talk a little bit more about opposition research. I think, particularly after the 2000 elections, which generally went positive, I would not be surprised if the opposition makes some adjustments. I'm not sure what those adjustments are going to be, but I think that is something that should be anticipated. I mean, it just makes sense once you start losing more, that you're going to make some adjustments.

They also attacked the credibility of some of the lead opponents, which in this case, were fairly easy to attack. I mean, one of the lead opponents actually worked for the state Department of Transportation, but seemed to be in favor of private enterprise solutions. He was being paid by taxpayers money. So there was a little bit of a conflict there. One of the other lead opponents was also fairly easy to criticize. They actually criticized both in ballot arguments, ballot arguments in states that have voter information pamphlets. My understanding is that Texas doesn't, for example, and maybe other states don't even have these pamphlets. But, it`s a place where you can make a lot of good arguments.

They also did an interesting thing. Normally, I would probably argue that getting into debates with opposition is something to avoid doing. I mean, it puts them on sort of the same platform of credibility as you. It gives them a chance to get their message out because debates tend to be publicized. They have a lot of statistics that at a minimum, can confuse the voters. But, in fact, a couple of the places that lost, they got involved in debates and I think the proponents tended to lose control over the message then.

In Phoenix, they did something very interesting. In 1997, they thought one of the things that contributed to the failure--although the Governor's last second opposition was probably the deciding factor given the small margin of the vote--was the talk radio stations really killed them. So, they decided to go to the top radio stations, saying they would be willing to debate the opponents if the talk radio stations stayed neutral, in other words a quid pro quo. That worked. They were able to air a series of debates and the radio stations did honor their word. I'm not recommending that this be used in all communities. This is again where I think you need some consultants with understanding of the local community. A lot depends on the nature of opposition, maybe what some additional polling shows, whether you're ahead, how far you're ahead, in terms of how you engage the opposition. I think some of the opposition is where you need some contingency planning. Surprises can happen and if you have plans ahead of time, that's good. If you're going to do contingency planning, it's very important to do research on what the opposition arguments are likely to be.

PETER CIPOLLA:

We only have a few more minutes so we do want to move on to our final conclusion.

Obviously this issue of managing the message and dealing with opponents is very subtle, and it's different in different communities. That's why we didn't place it with the other conclusion. It's a lot more nuanced and we don't really have time to get into every nuance there.

So moving on to our final conclusions, first of all bear in mind that combining the two studies together, only 8 of the 17 passed. We had 6 of 10 in the last study, but overall, 8 of 17 have passed. So, there's nothing certainly guaranteed about passing these measures.

Secondly, we found that essentially, it's hard to quantify, it's hard to even qualify. But we found that the passing measures featured well researched proposals and well planned campaigns. If you don't have those elements in place, the odds are probably going to be against you.

Then, finally and this is a message that I hope we're getting between the three of us by now, if you don't succeed, definitely try again. Because we have plenty of examples in instances where communities have gone back, they've learned from their mistakes, they've learned their marketplace, they've come back, and they've done very well.

We'd like to take a few questions now. Thanks a lot.

QUESTION:

You said multi-modal, and then you said by that you meant rail and bus. I'm wondering if you looked at any measures that also included road improvements? And whether you could comment on whether that was helpful or not because it might be an indicator of a more broadly based supported campaign versus actual support from a margin?

The second one is clarifying on special election. Do you mean a special election that was called at a time, like a municipal election where it might nor normally occur? Do you just mean even year versus odd year elections?

PETER HAAS:

First of all, we did look into the issue of highway funding. Because we thought originally that would be something good, that would help measures pass. But in fact, in this particular study, we did not find very good support for that idea. What we found was that the highway-bus combination worked fine, but adding in highways in this particular go around was not particularly helpful. You have to almost read the report to get the nuances there. But, we're giving you a shortened version here.

PETER CIPOLLA:

You meant rail-bus version, Peter?

PETER HAAS:

Oh did I say highway? I'm sorry. Rail and bus we found seemed to be the most successful combination, whereas the results on throwing in highway were at best inconclusive. Again, that doesn't mean that you can't win with a highway component. Because back in 1996, Santa Clara had both. These are trends, not definitive conclusions in most cases.

Second of all, with respect to the elections, we are basically talking about any odd year election. But most of these special elections were just dedicated to that particular issue. Actually, you could come up with maybe four of five classes of elections, but with only ten cases then you don't really have any. So what we basically did was divide it between Congressional and Presidential elections versus everything else. Everything else clearly fared worse than a more general either Presidential or Congressional election.

That would be the conventional wisdom but our data doesn't really support studying that.

PETER CIPOLLA:

Let me add a few things about the highway issue. It's a complex issue and I think it's hard to generalize. I think in Austin the fact that there was no highway component and that there had been very little highway work done, yeah, I think that was an important indicator on the debate. The opponents acronym was "ROAD"--"Return Our Allocated Dollars." I think that was an important argument there. Austin was also a case where the prior transit agency actually had gotten into some problems. I think they were an issue also.

I think in Alameda County, they got over 80 percent. I think they needed a road component. I don't think they would have gotten the support of the business community there, without that support.

PETER CIPOLLA:

Richard, Alan wants to throw his two cents in.

ALAN WULKAN:

When I grew up in the East Coast, I thought big turnouts were great for issue elections. Then I moved to Arizona. Big turnouts for conservative voters on tax issues usually don't work too well. So, be very careful drawing conclusions on whether big turnouts on general elections are in your best interest.

PETER CIPOLLA:

I think it goes to the question or the statement--"Poll early and often," and give your voters what they want, whether it's roads, transit, bus transit, transit only, or whatever.

PARTICIPANT:

I would add that the election issue is a finding but it's one of our less strongly supported findings. So you need to be very careful. I agree with Alan about that one.

PETER CIPOLLA:

You had a question?

TOM SHROUD:

Tom Shroud from St. Louis. I would just comment on our 1997 election which was a special which we lost on the suburbs. The opposition didn't need any money, because it dominated the news. So, the opposition didn't have to raise money, They got on all the talk shows, etcetera. We went into the election showing 55 percent, 60 percent in favor. The week after the election that we lost, we showed 55 percent or 60 percent in favor. So, I think...

ALAN WULKAN:

Sorry, but yours is one of the cases that I am basing that observation on to be honest. So, yes, it is something worth looking at and it's not just turnout. It also has to do with this issue of managing the message.

PARTICIPANT:

Speaking of the news, we did find that there tended to be rather substantial local news coverage, certainly in special election years because what else is there? But that's true even in election years. In Austin, where you have got in a sense a local son running for president, it got a lot of coverage. But of course, that was the first measure. But what we did find and maybe this is one of the reasons why later measures combined are more likely to pass that tends to be an old issue for the press and they may give it less coverage--the opponents in Phoenix were upset that it didn't get more coverage in 2000. And the newspaper reporter said, "Why repeat the same arguments we made in 1997?" So the press is an issue. You have got to deal with that.

PETER CIPOLLA:

Let's get two more questions. Go ahead.

KAREN RAY:

Karen Ray from Austin.

My question is--there has been a lot of debate around the country about the amount of money you spend educating the public with public sector dollars from the authority versus the money invested by the campaign which is purely the political. Salt Lake took a very aggressive stance. We didn't have as good luck with some of the things we dealt with in Texas.

I'm just curious what that meant, because I felt that we made a conscious choice and I'm not going to second guess that. But did you look at that at all? About the dollars invested by the agency, public sector dollars which are constrained? Versus the information on a campaign and how that affected the outcome?

PARTICIPANT:

That's a very tough issue because there can be legal problems and as you say, Salt Lake took a very aggressive approach. I mean, they did what I call "television advertising" during the campaign. They started behind and they didn't have much of a budget to work with. They were sued and there position was supported.

In San Antonio, I think the agency was much less aggressive and they were sued and the lawsuit, I believe, was against the agency.

So, I'm not a lawyer, but...

PARTICIPANT:

I think it's highly doubtful hat you're going to win with a public agency's money. I think you're going to need private funding out there to do it.

PETER CIPOLLA:

One more question.

PARTICIPANT:

Actually, that was my question.

Regarding using public education...

PARTICIPANT:

I'd like to chime in and say that we did look at that, not systematically in terms of amount of dollars spent, but I would say in a good percentage--I don't have the number on the top of my head--a good percentage of the successful campaigns did include an extensive public education effort by the transit agency. I'm thinking Charlotte, Phoenix, Seattle and their second go around. So that's' certainly something that can help you, but there are legal and other considerations.

PARTICIPANT:

One final question, if I may. I did have one part B to this. Just any chance on defining public education? Just in terms of Salt Lake's case. I mean, what did they say in terms of how they defined that? Because we're struggling with that and I can see that question coming up.

PETER CIPOLLA:

I think tomorrow's session is going to be more suited to get into that type of debate.

We've got one more question back here and that's it, because we really need to move on. Sorry to be the monarch up here but that's my role today folks.

RICHARD BRANNAMAN:

Richard Brannaman from Portland. I think everything we do in Portland defies convention. Because we won our first couple and then we lost a couple. We had a million dollars but we lost. We were doing an extension but we lost. We learned a lot, and we know pretty much why we lost. But, one of the things that happened in our last campaign was the media was relentless. They took every argument that the opposition made, which were a handful of people, and repeat them in the paper as if the were truth. It was day after day that it was going to be "$4 million a trip on this light rail line," the "1 percent," and all that kind of stuff.

So I am wondering if you dealt with campaigns where the media itself was biased in their news stories. Because the editorials were all with us, the editorial board was totally positive, yet the stories on the front page day after day were very negative.

PARTICIPANT:

I don't know about extreme bias, but we found examples like yours. What we found is that in successful communities, they were prepared for that opposition. Maybe not the city where you were. But a hallmark of a successful campaign was one that was already prepared to deal with those kinds of contingencies and had experts ready to come in and testify in some cases. Or essentially, they were prepared for all those.

Now there are other nuances to this in terms of whether you want to go to a so-called "stealth campaign" and try to avoid any confrontation or not. I think we are going to get into that in specific sessions.

PARTICIPANT:

You can also use the editorial to some extent to maybe counter that. If they're going to support you in Phoenix for example, there was one whole editorial written on the 1 percent solution. It totally debunked that. So I think if you have got them on your side, that's one thing you can possibly do. Again, there is a lot of coverage. At best, it going to be balanced.

peter cipolla:

Okay, Richard and Peter, thank you very much.

[Applause]

We're going to move on now. Their reports are in the back of the room. They're going to be with us tomorrow, so you're going to have ample opportunity to keep them fit.

Again, there's no magic potion. Just a lot of good ideas.

 

TWELVE ANTI-TRANSIT MYTHS: A CONSER