When groups that normally can't agree on the color of the sky are unified in opposition to a ballot measure, that should tell you something. It's the political equivalent of your vegan friend and your carnivore uncle both refusing to eat at the same restaurant. Pay attention.

Measure B, like so many San Francisco ballot initiatives before it, promises to fix a problem while quietly creating three new ones. The broad opposition suggests that whatever this measure is selling, the fine print isn't worth the trade-off.

This is a city that loves governance by ballot measure — a practice that sounds democratic in theory but in reality produces a bloated, contradictory web of mandates that make the city nearly ungovernable. Every election cycle, we're handed a phone book of propositions, each one promising reform while mostly just adding another layer of bureaucratic concrete to an already calcified system.

The coalition opposing Measure B appears to understand what too many San Francisco voters forget: not every problem requires a new law, and not every law solves the problem it claims to address. Sometimes the best thing you can do at the ballot box is say no — especially when the people who disagree about everything else are all saying it together.

Voters should be deeply skeptical of any measure that can't survive scrutiny from any corner of the political landscape. If fiscal conservatives, progressives, and moderates are all waving red flags, the smart money says those flags are worth heeding.

Do your homework. Read the measure. And when a coalition this broad tells you to vote no, at least ask yourself why before you fill in that bubble.