Proposition J

One of the ballot propositions voters were likely to pass Tuesday, Proposition J, may give students who ride MUNI a lift.

The fate of Prop. J, which would allocate $125,000 for a management audit of MUNI operations, won't be certain until problems with the absentee ballot counts are resolved. The measure was supported by 47 percent of those who voted at the polls, and opposed by 40 percent.

The audit would be conducted by Budget Analyst of the Board of Supervisors Harvey Rose, who has previously audited the workers' compensation system, the Water Department and other agencies.

With the passage of Proposition J, public hearings would be held, and the Transportation Commission would be instructed to prepare a "MUNI Action Plan" for the mayor's approval. Proposition J would also bar the city from raising the fares on MUNI until the action plan is approved.

The city's two major daily newspapers differed in their opinions of the proposition.

An Oct. 18 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle poetically supported the proposition, "Rose would bring a gimlet eye and an encyclopedic knowledge of City Hall to bear upon MUNI."

The San Francisco Examiner, however, didn't see eye-to-eye with its sister paper. A Nov. 1 editorial stated, "This is a major separation from reality. Figuring out why buses run in clumps will cost more than $125,000 in mathematicians alone."

SF State freshman Sarah Pemberton supported Proposition J. "I know, as a MUNI rider, that the service needs to be better. The buses are always late, they're dirty, they smell. There are a lot of things that need to be improved."

Randy Toor, a graduate student studying Japanese, believed the audit was a good idea. "Before I came here this semester, I had never ridden public transportation before. A lot of times the buses don't run on time, so I ask the driver 'what's up?' and they'll say a driver is sick. I guess they don't have replacements for when one is sick."

Although thousands voted against the audit, there were no paid arguments against Proposition J in the sample ballot.

[ Golden Gater Online November 9, 1995 ]

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