Overview
- Connect Bay Area reported submitting roughly 305,000 signatures on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, well above the about 186,000 needed to qualify the sales-tax measure for the five-county November ballot.
- County elections offices will now verify the signatures and the campaign expects that process to take up to a month before the measure is certified for the ballot.
- If voters approve the measure it would create a multi-county sales tax expected to direct about $310 million to BART and raise money for other agencies to help avert major service cuts and fill a roughly $376 million shortfall at BART.
- State law SB 63 requires the principal recipients — BART, SFMTA, Caltrain and AC Transit — to complete two-stage independent fiscal-efficiency reviews, and the first-phase report by Nelson
- ygaard found over $1 billion in savings since 2019 while recommending further reforms that agencies must begin adopting by July 1, 2026.
- The campaign combined paid teams and more than 1,000 volunteers who collected about 77,000 signatures, has raised about $5.5 million from labor and corporate backers, and now shifts to fundraising and outreach for the November vote where a simple majority across the five counties is required.