The latest news on the Better Roads Safe Streets front is that its Ashley Swearengin-led backers have hired a heavyweight Sacramento lobbying firm to grease the transportation tax through to the November ballot.

The firm is Olson Remcho, which worked with Gov. Gavin Newsom on his successful Proposition 50 campaign to redraw the state’s congressional districts.

The firm’s representatives are now working the phones and Sacramento hallways to ensure that Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria’s gut-and-amend of Assembly Bill 1923 secures passage.

That bill, originally written to support distressed hospitals, calls for Better Roads Safe Streets to advance to the Nov. 3 election even though a majority of Fresno County supervisors want to see a study of its potential impacts before giving it a thumbs-up.

Why Is Swearengin All in on the Road Tax?

These developments beg this question of Swearengin, the longtime head of the Central Valley Community Foundation: Why is she raising and spending millions of dollars to force her version of a half-cent transportation tax onto the November ballot?

Her surrogates labeled the supervisors’ political gambit as “subverting democracy.” That isn’t true. The measure will appear on the March 2028 ballot unless Sacramento intervenes. Indeed, the supervisors’ 3-2 decision to seek a study reflects what we all know about democracy. It’s messy, it’s complicated, and it’s the best form of government on Earth.

The answer to the urgency question is that Swearengin wants Better Roads Safe Streets on the ballot so that she can leverage funding for its door-to-door passage effort with the campaign ambitions of her preferred progressive Fresno City Council candidates, such as Ariana Martinez Lott and Naindeep Singh. This two-for-one scenario is also envisioned for Fresno County supervisor candidate Maria Pacheco.

We’ve seen the playbook before, as it was used during Swearengin’s hammer-and-tong effort to pass the city’s Measure P parks tax (which I voted for).

By the way, Olson Remcho also wrote Measure P. Then the lobbying firm’s attorney wing turned around and sued the city of Fresno — meaning us taxpayers — for following the law they wrote themselves requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. The parks tax received 52% support but was enacted after the Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled that citizen-led signature initiatives required a simple majority for adoptions.

In that case, CVCF-affiliated Building Healthy Communities sought $600,000 in attorneys’ fees from taxpayers but the figure was knocked down to $290,000 by Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen.

Those who don’t pay close attention to local politics should know this: Swearengin no longer is the center-right Republican who served two terms as Fresno mayor. She is now unofficially known as the governor of Central California and matriarch of progressive politics in the region.

Swearengin Talks Grassroots, but Is Funded by Out-of-Town Billionaires

On a recent KMJ radio appearance, she portrayed CVCF as a nonprofit intent on bettering Fresno and surrounding communities through good old-fashioned local organizing.

“We can’t look to Sacramento to solve our problems,” she said, adding that it was up to local residents and local elected officials to strengthen the Fresno economy. One of the best ways to do that is rebuilding our local neighborhoods and directing investment to the city’s core, she said. I agree with that.

However, Swearengin is very much looking to Sacramento and Newsom, with whom she and the CVCF are friendly, to solve her Better Roads Safe Streets problem.

Voters also need to understand that while CVCF boasts about being local and grassroots, it’s heavily dependent on out-of-town billionaire and millionaire donors who funnel money to Swearengin’s group through various left-leaning foundations and grantmaking organizations.

Swiss Billionaire’s Group Backs Better Roads Safe Streets

In fact, one of the backers of Better Roads Safe Streets is Fund for a Better Future, an anti-Republican advocacy group. Fund for a Better Future’s biggest donor is Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.

Reports influencewatch.org: “Wyss, who runs the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund, funneled $20.3 million through the Berger Action Fund to the Fund for a Better Future between April 2021 and March 2022.”

In 2023, Wyss’s Berger Action Fund sent another $7 million to the Fund for a Better Future. And on June 23, Sacramento-based Fund for a Better Future contributed $150,000 to Better Roads Safe Streets. For the record: Wyss isn’t an American citizen.

Los Angeles-based Accelerator for American Action, which advocates for infrastructure spending, gave $40,000 on June 16, to the tax effort. Meanwhile the CVCF chipped in with $250,000, bringing its total for the year to $810,000.

A Brawl That Could’ve Been Avoided

This political brawl between those who want a Measure C transportation tax extension that doesn’t pour billions into empty buses and bike lanes and Swearengin’s get-people-out-of-their-cars vision could have been avoided.

But there’s no negotiating with Swearengin, nor her six-figure-salaried surrogates. It’s their way or the highway. And right now, she’s taking the highway to her friends in Sacramento.

It remains to be seen whether Newsom realizes he’d be pulling a Donald Trump (overruling local elected officials) should he sign Soria’s gut-and-amend sleight of hand.