Tune in and give comment via Zoom here: https://actransit.zoom.us/j/98487175063

The AC Transit board on Wednesday will receive a report that recommends drastic anti-democratic changes that will suppress the voice of the public and board members.

Keeping the AC Transit board open to rider feedback is essential to making our transit system better, and more profoundly, no elected body should seek to isolate itself from the public like this.

Defend public transit and defend democracy tomorrow. Call in or show up in person at the board meeting to speak out. Register here to get call in information.  

You can read the full report and recommendation here, and some highlights of what changes the report recommends include:

Restrict what the board can review and discuss. The report calls on routing a huge range of topic to staff memos to the board– which the board is not supposed to discuss. This will decrease the agency’s responsiveness to voters by removing important items from being discussed by the board. [p.9]

Prevent board members from encouraging people to attend board meetings and speaking out on matters that affect their community [p.7]

Hide the quarterly Customer Service reports from the public [p. 43].

Force relationships between members of the public and their elected representative on the AC Transit board to be monitored by AC Transit staff by requiring all communications between members of the public and a board member to be forwarded to staff for “response management.” [p.7]

Put the General Manager above the Board. The report says the Board Chair must “explicitly support the General Manager (GM) and staff at board meetings.” [pg. 6]. The General Manager is not always right and requiring the Board chair to always support the General Manager, is a recipe for trouble. The Board reports to the people – not the General Manager. The report also calls for “obedience” of Board members [p. 5]

In the event where an AC Transit board majority votes to pursue allowing ICE to board and operate on buses in exchange for federal funding, the report recommends muzzling opposition from speaking out [p. 5].

The report and its recommendations treat the public, board members, and the democratic process as inconveniences to eliminate. It could not be more wrong. The diversity of opinions and voices, and robust engagement from the public and the board is essential to a healthy transit system and democracy.