Play by rules even if we don’t like them, Oakland City...

Oakland needs more education funding.

That’s why Rosemary Heil voted in November for Measure AA, the city tax to raise money for early education and college readiness programs.

“I think we all pay for it if we don’t educate the youth, and I think that’s a much higher price to pay,” Heil, an Oakland resident for more than 40 years, told me. “I do think it’s our civic duty.”

Like Heil, I was one of the 96,452 people who voted to approve the measure. I supported it because it was pitched as a financial fix for the racial inequities in Oakland’s schools. An annual parcel tax for 30 years, Measure AA would tax single-family homes at a rate of $198 a year and multiunit residences at $135 for each occupied unit. It was expected to generate $30 million in annual revenue. The city estimates that 20,000 children would benefit.

The tax didn’t reach the required two-thirds threshold at the polls. It failed.

Then the Oakland City Council decided to change the rules of the voting process as if it were a game: The council decided the measure needed only a majority vote to win — not the two-thirds majority vote that City Attorney Barbara Parker had previously declared it needed.

In December, the council certified the measure in a 6-1 vote even though only 62 percent of voters approved it.

That left some voters like Heil feeling cheated. And on Feb. 1, a coalition of property owners sued Oakland over the certification.

“It just doesn’t feel like the rule of law,” said Heil, who is not involved in the lawsuit.

Defying the rules sounds like something that, say, a petulant political neophyte might do if elected president.

“It is like Trump,” Heil said, referring to our president, the braggart-in-chief who’s boasted about bending tax law to his advantage before. “He doesn’t care about the rules, and our City Council doesn’t seem to care about the rules, either. They saw the election handbook.”

Maybe you didn’t cram for voting by reading the city’s measure guide cover to cover, but there’s no room for ambiguity in the summary of Measure AA by Parker.

“Passage of this measure requires approval by two-thirds of voters who cast ballots,” the city attorney stated in the election guide.

Certifying the measure is wrong. The rules are the rules. If that’s not the case, why should we vote?

Parker couldn’t be reached for comment.

Councilman Dan Kalb told me that in a closed session before Tuesday night’s City Council meeting there was a brief discussion regarding the lawsuit. He said Parker urged council members not to talk about the lawsuit publicly.

“It’s standard procedure to not discuss pending litigation,” he said.

Certifying the measure, which creates a new city staff position, allows the city to collect the taxes, even if it does not spend the money pending a legal ruling. According to my colleague Kimberly Veklerov, the council is following the example set by San Francisco, which certified three tax measures that received a simple majority of voter support but did not reach the two-thirds threshold.

Greg McConnell, the CEO of Jobs and Housing Coalition, a group that lobbies City Hall on behalf of businesses and developers, is leading the coalition of homeowners and landlords that sued the city. He believes Oakland’s certification of Measure AA is an abuse of election law.

“It’s about the process being circumvented,” McConnell said. “That’s an abuse of the electoral process, and it just makes people think that the rules of the game are being changed after the game’s played.”

Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney was the only council member to vote against certification.

“I understand how painful a loss this is to the proponents, but the time it would take to litigate this is more time and more costly than just running another measure,” McElhaney told me earlier this week.

What about the time it will take to restore public trust?

“Oakland has just been sued and sued and sued,” Heil said. “The money that we do have, I just hate to see it frittered away on lawsuits, particularly something that you could see coming.”

She said she hopes that the City Council reconsiders. The certification was passed before the three new council members — Nikki Fortunato-Bas, Sheng Thao and Loren Taylor — were sworn into office. Maybe they’ll steer the council toward reason.

Oakland needs more education funding, not another headache that could’ve been avoided.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr