Leveraging Taxes: Santa Rosa Councilman's 'Nonprofit' Paid to Collect Signatures for Santa Rosa Metro Chamber CEO's Proposed Childcare Tax
Councilman Chris Rogers supports increased tourism taxes to raise funds for Santa Rosa Metro Chamber - Chamber CEO Hired SCCA as 'Our Kids Our Future' campaign consultant
Our Kids Our Future, also known as Measure I, or the Sonoma Child Care and Children’s Health Initiative, is a Santa Rosa-based campaign that formed in July 2021. They are leading a push to put a quarter-cent, countywide sales tax on the ballot in the November 5, 2024 General Election.
The initial corporate filing submitted to the California Secretary of State was submitted on September 13, 2021 features Ms. Ananda Sweet, Interim CEO (VP of Public Policy & Workforce Development through Aug. ‘24) of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber as Chief Executive Officer.
An addendum included additional incorporators as follows:
Ms. Kellie Noe, Program Development Manager for Sonoma County Upstream Investments (spouse of Mr. Dennis Rosatti, Principal of Rosatti Consulting, Executive Director of Sonoma County Conservation Action Fund for Education )
Ms. Maleese Warner, Director Early Childhood Education at Santa Rosa Junior College
Ms. Veronica Vences, Director of Entrepreneurship Fund, Latino Community Foundation
Ms. Jenni Klose, Executive Director at Generation Housing
The corporate filing submitted on February 22, 2022 referenced the same individuals, but added Mr. Rosatti as the Agent for Service of Process.
The charitable, 501(c)(4) organization’s IRS Form 990 listed Ms. Sweet, Warner, Klose and Noe as Directors, Trustees or Officers.
On August 5, 2022, The Press Democrat published the following article:
Sonoma County child care tax proposal on hold after discovery of suspicious signatures
Our Kids Our Future, the group behind the tax measure campaign, is now planning to bring the tax measure to the ballot in 2024 during the next general election.
Organizers of a Sonoma County tax measure to support care for children have suspended their campaign until the next general election after the discovery of thousands of suspicious voter signatures sunk their efforts to make the November ballot.
Our Kids Our Future, the group behind the quarter-cent sales tax proposal, is now planning to bring the tax measure to the ballot in 2024, confirmed Dennis Rosatti, a campaign consultant.
The campaign’s efforts to qualify for the November ballot by voter signature was scuttled last week when the county’s registrar of voters flagged more than 2,500 potentially fraudulent signatures. The campaign has said those signatures were mostly collected by a contractor, Total Signers LLC, that uses paid workers.
The discovery came too late to rectify by getting additional voter signatures, organizers said.
Campaign leaders had considered asking the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to place the initiative on the ballot, but decided against that route.
“While we appreciate the full support of the Board of Supervisors and our Sonoma County endorsers and supporters, we are choosing not to ask the board to place the initiative on the ballot this fall,” Ananda Sweet, Our Kids Our Future’s board president, said in a statement. “This is obviously a setback but we remain committed to finding a pathway forward for this initiative.”
A measure added to the ballot by the board would need a two-thirds approval to pass, under state law. A tax measure that qualifies by signature collection requires only a simple majority to pass.
“A two-thirds measure would be a big lift,” Rosatti said.
Our Kids Our Future had projected the tax measure, if approved, would bring in $22 million annually. About 60% of the revenue would support pay for child care employees, workforce growth and expansion of the child care network. The remaining 40% would fund perinatal and early childhood mental health, pediatric screening and treatment, and assisting children facing issues such as homelessness, according to the campaign.
The pandemic has exacerbated the nationwide strain on child care, as operators closed their doors and reduced their client load amid struggles to recruit and retain workers.
Sonoma County has 531 child care facilities, down 15% from before the pandemic. It has lost 44% of available child care slots since March 2020, according to the Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County (4Cs), a nonprofit that offers early childhood services for families and tracks local industry data.
In recent months, the tax campaign had built momentum, bringing in endorsements from numerous county leaders and raising $348,886 in contributions between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2022, according to the latest campaign finance filings.
Top donors included the Heising-Simons Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Los Altos and San Francisco; Jackson Family Enterprises; Marc and Jeanie Kahn, who are active in the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Sonoma County, a nonprofit that provides health care grants, scholarships and other programs; and Anthony Crabb, co-owner of Puma Springs Vineyards in Healdsburg and the campaign’s treasurer.
Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Rogers, Vice Mayor Eddie Alvarez and Healdsburg Vice Mayor Ariel Kelley have endorsed the measure, along with U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, according to the campaign website.
“I think we would have had a warm reception,” Rosatti said of the tax measure’s chances this November.
The campaign turned in 29,686 signatures to the county’s registrar of voters for certification in June. It needed at least 21,038 valid signatures from county voters — 10% of the total votes cast by local voters in the last election for governor — to qualify for the ballot.
It is common for campaigns to have 1% to 2% of signatures that aren’t valid, but the number of problematic signatures turned in by Our Kids Our Future was 9.6%, said Registrar of Voters Deva Proto.
The majority of the problematic signatures did not match those on file in the voter registration rolls. Other errors included voters who misspelled their own names and a packet of signatures where Rohnert Park was misspelled throughout.
The signatures were collected via volunteers and two entities paid as contractors, Total Signers and Sonoma County Conservation Action, a local environmental group.
Signature collectors must sign the back of the petition packets they use to collect signatures and include their address. Proto said last week her office could not confirm whether the flawed packets came from collectors hired by Total Signers, but said the packets with a high number of invalid signatures were collected by people who listed addresses outside of Sonoma County and California.
Signature collectors do not have to be local residents.
Upon learning of the faulty signatures, Our Kids Our Future conducted its own internal audit and found the bulk of the faulty signatures were on packets collected by Total Signers, Rosatti said.
The campaign paid Total Signers $67,209 for petition circulating, according to recently filed campaign finance disclosures.
“We are very disappointed in this setback due to the signature fraud,” Sweet said. “We are working to recover losses from Total Signers LLC, but given the possibility of litigation we cannot say more.”
Total Signers did not respond to requests for comment sent by email and social media. Repeated calls were made to a phone number on the business’ Facebook page, its only apparent online presence, last updated in April.
Total Signers LLC was registered to a Fresno address and a North Miami, Florida, address in 2020, according to registered business databases in the two states. Both listings are still active and share Mychael Bluntson as the listed agent.
The registrar of voters is due to compile information regarding the invalid signatures and send it to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office and the California Secretary of State’s Office for review.
There is no deadline for turning in the information and the process could take months, Proto said.
According to court records, Our Kids Our Future filed a lawsuit against Total Signers LLC on October 10, 2022. They retained Ms. Klose as their legal representative.
While Santa Rosa City Councilmember Chris Rogers is currently running for the CA D2 Assembly seat, he has simultaneously served as Executive Director of Sonoma County Conservation Action from 2020-present.
According to the Chamber’s website:
The Santa Rosa Chamber Business and Community Political Action Committee (Chamber PAC) is a voluntary non-partisan political action committee that works to protect business-friendly interests by identifying and campaigning for pro-job candidates running for local and regional elective office.
The Chamber PAC also helps to support and/or oppose ballot initiatives that would negatively impact member businesses.
Officially established in 2006, the Chamber PAC seeks to evaluate each election as to its impact on our Chamber membership and our business community.
Membership is by Board appointment. For more information, contact Ananda Sweet at (707) 636-3662.
The government advocacy page of the Chamber website states the following:
Early Care & Education
We know that high-quality, affordable, and accessible child care has a significant impact on the economic growth and competitiveness of our companies and economy, and yet child care is difficult to find and afford for most families. Labor force participation of working parents has faced a steep decline since the start of the pandemic. Our child care crisis is damaging the productivity and strength of our workforce. In terms of our future workforce, studies show that investments in early education set the foundation for learning, ensure school readiness, and narrow the persistent achievement gap for the region’s most vulnerable children. This is the best investment we can make locally to improve outcomes that increase cost savings in education, health, economic productivity, and crime reduction.
We support policies that encourage an investment in quality early education and care, including the expansion of high-quality preschool. We support efforts that strengthen California’s birth-through-third-grade mixed delivery infrastructure, particularly critical as Transitional Kindergarten is implemented. Failure to invest meaningfully in child care will irreparably damage California’s already fragile child care system, immediately hindering our current workforce and creating long-term negative effects for our future workforce, while stifling California’s economic recovery.
The Chamber has officially endorsed Measure I per their website.
On August 6, 2024, staff gave a presentation to Santa Rosa City Council regarding a proposed Transient Occupancy Tax Ballot Measure (Measure FF). The language was presented as follows:
REPORT - TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX BALLOT MEASURE (THIS ITEM WAS CONTINUED FROM THE JULY 23, 2024, REGULAR MEETING.)
BACKGROUND: Santa Rosa City Code 3-28.020 imposes a tax on anyone who lodges within the City for 30 days or less. The current TOT rate is 9% of the room rate charged by a lodging operator. The tax is collected by the operator, along with the payment for renting the room, and remitted to the City. The 9% TOT was last updated in 1993. This is a general tax, that currently generates an estimated $6 million to the General Fund budget annually.
RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended by the Finance Department that the Council (1) introduce an ordinance to amend Chapter 3-28 of the Santa Rosa City Code to increase the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), paid by guests at hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments by two percent (2%), and (2) approve a resolution ordering the submission of a ballot measure to seek voter approval of this ordinance at the November 5, 2024, General Municipal Election, directing related actions, and designating an individual to submit, on behalf of the City Council, an argument in favor of the measure and a rebuttal argument.
The slides indicated:
City formed Santa Rosa Tourism Business Improvement Area (SRTBIA) in 2010
3% assessment to lodging operators (hotels, motels, STRs)
Shared 30% to City Economic Development Fund, 70% to Metro Chamber
FY 2022-23, approximately $2.2 million collected from SRTBIA
While actively serving as Mayor in 2022, Chris Rogers failed to abstain from discussions and votes regarding SRTBIA and SCTBIA assessments. Simultaneously, Sonoma County Conservation Action was contracted with Santa Rosa Metro Chamber CEO Ananda Sweet to collect signatures for the Our Kids Our Future child tax credit campaign.
On August 23, 2022, Mr. Rogers voted in favor of the following:
RESOLUTION - SANTA ROSA TOURISM BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT AREA FISCAL YEAR 2021-2022 ANNUAL REPORT & FISCAL YEAR 2022-2023 WORK PLAN RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department that the Council, by resolution, accept the Santa Rosa Tourism Business Improvement Area Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Annual Report, approve the continuation of the annual assessment on Santa Rosa lodging businesses, and adopt the Fiscal Year 2022-2023 Budget and Work Plan.
Additionally he voted in favor of a mirrored resolution on August 3, 2021.
RESOLUTION - SANTA ROSA TOURISM BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT AREA FISCAL YEAR 2020-2021 ANNUAL REPORT AND FISCAL YEAR 2021-2022 WORK PLAN RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department that the Council, by resolution, approve the Santa Rosa Tourism Business Improvement Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2020-2021, approve the continuation of the annual assessment on Santa Rosa lodging businesses, and adopt the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Budget and Work Plan.
Are the folks at the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber and Santa Rosa Councilman Chris Rogers utilizing Rogers’ role as an elected official to push through taxes which benefit both parties? As the Chamber relies on the City of Santa Rosa’s tourism taxes to fund their operations, and Rogers accordingly obtains consulting roles for his ‘nonprofit’, is a conflict of interest present? Are taxpayers bankrolling our own demise?
As Rogers stated himself, ‘I’m the gift that keeps on giving…’
“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”
-Timothy 6:10
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