Muni just passed a two-year budget, and before the ink was dry, agency leaders were already teeing up the next ask: support regional tax measures, or watch your bus routes disappear.

Let's be clear about what's happening here. This isn't just fiscal planning — it's political leverage. SFMTA is essentially telling riders that the service they already pay handsomely for through fares, local taxes, and state funding is contingent on voters approving even more regional revenue. The message is less "we've got a plan" and more "nice commute you've got there — shame if something happened to it."

The agency isn't wrong that transit funding is complicated. But the perpetual framing of every budget cycle as a crisis that only new taxes can solve should make any taxpayer suspicious. San Francisco already has some of the highest taxes in the country. At what point do we ask Muni to do more with what it has instead of reflexively reaching into riders' pockets?

And the regional angle introduces its own mess. As one Bay Area resident put it, "Very few people want to be the one that ended up having their county cut transit but pay the same taxes." That's the core tension — regional tax measures sound great in theory, but the politics of distributing that money across nine counties and dozens of agencies is a nightmare. Who gets what? Who decides? The MTC already exists to coordinate across agencies, but coordination and actual efficient spending are two very different things.

Here's what we'd love to see from Muni leadership: a credible efficiency plan before the tax ask. Show us you've trimmed the fat. Show us overtime costs are under control. Show us capital projects are coming in on budget. Then — and only then — come to voters with a revenue proposal.

Instead, we get the same playbook every cycle: pass a budget, warn of doom, demand more money. San Franciscans deserve better than governance by ultimatum.