Is your city using taxpayer dollars to campaign for higher taxes?

For two years beginning in 2014, Stanton, California, residents were pounded by half a million dollars in advertising calling for a hike in the city’s sales tax. They surrendered to the wall-to-wall messaging, voting once for the tax hike and then against a repeal effort.

In a painful irony, the tsunami of advertising was paid for by city taxpayers themselves.

Translation: city officials used taxpayer money to persuade taxpayers to give city officials more money.