"Before we embark on a piecemeal approach for one city, we should try to fashion a broader revenue solution to our state's fiscal crisis," Gov. Brown wrote in his veto message. 

State Senator Mark Leno, who sponsored the bill, replied in an interview: "What does he think that we've been doing unsuccessfully for the past eight years? Arnold Schwarzenegger destroyed this state by eliminating a revenue source worth $6 billion annually to California -- that was the vehicle license fee." Gov. Schwarzenegger cut the state's vehicle license fee from 2 percent of the market value of a vehicle to .65 percent.

In 2009, the state Legislature approved a .5 percent increase in the fee, which expired on June 30 of this year. Gov. Brown could not convince Republican legislators to extend that increase or to allow voters to decide whether to extend it.

Senator Leno's bill, SB 223 would have allowed San Francisco to raise the fee by as much as 1.35 percent to fund local services, like fire protection and public works -- but only if two-thirds of the Board of Supervisors and a majority of voters approved the increase. 

Leno said the governor's veto "makes no sense," adding that the bill was co-sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the San Francisco Labor Council, as well as supported by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor. 

"That's universal support for a local bill to let voters decide, and the Governor vetoed it," he said. "It could have meant $75 million in new general fund dollars annually to San Francisco, when cities have so few options to replace revenue no longer provided by the state."