What the measure creates
Measure S establishes an eleven-member Citizens Oversight Committee. All eleven members are selected by the Fresno COG policy board. Fresno COG is also the agency that would receive the tax and allocate it every year.
Under the measure, the committee reviews financial and performance audits, recommends actions and expenditures, and holds public meetings at least quarterly. A comprehensive review of the whole program is required at least every ten years. The program's administration, including audits and the committee, is funded from the 1% administration share.
- 11 of 11
- members appointed by Fresno COG
- Quarterly
- minimum public meetings
- 10 years
- between comprehensive reviews
- 1%
- of revenue for administration and audits
What it cannot do
The committee's powers are to review and to recommend. Nothing in the measure requires Fresno COG to adopt a recommendation, respond to one, or pause a project the committee objects to. The allocation percentages are fixed in the ordinance for thirty years, so even a unanimous committee could not move money from one category to another.
The first mandatory comprehensive review would come ten years in, after roughly a third of the tax has already been collected and spent.
Why appointment matters
Oversight works when the people doing the checking do not owe their seats to the people being checked. A committee appointed entirely by the agency it reviews can still do useful work, but it is advice, not oversight. That is the distinction behind the line on our home page: advice isn't oversight.
Measure S also dissolves the Fresno County Transportation Authority, the separate body that has administered Measure C since 1986, and moves its responsibilities to Fresno COG. Fewer institutions with a say in the money is the opposite direction from stronger checks.
What the Yes campaign says
The Yes on S FAQ answers the question of how voters will know the money is not misused by pointing to an "independent Citizens Oversight Committee," annual outside audits and a public database. Audits and a database are good. Neither changes who appoints the committee or what it is empowered to do.
What stronger oversight would look like
- Members appointed by several bodies, including the cities and the county, not by the agency that spends the money alone.
- Authority to hold a project or a payment until the board responds in public.
- A comprehensive review well before year ten of a thirty-year tax.
- Some flexibility to move money between categories when performance data says a program is not working.
None of that is in Measure S. Voting No keeps Measure C on its scheduled course to June 30, 2027 and leaves room for a measure that gets the structure right.