San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo acknowledges the Bay Area has an outward migration problem.

He’s just sick of the tech industry being blamed for it.

As Mayor of California’s third largest city, Liccardo has long touted the success stories of home grown companies like PayPal Holdings (PYPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), and eBay (EBAY). But when Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), one of the city’s largest employers, announced it was moving its headquarters to Houston in December, and Oracle (ORCL) put its downtown San Jose tower up for sale last month, Liccardo found himself at the center of the “Silicon Valley exodus.”

“An awful lot of it is about taxes and regulation and a lot less about the talent. The talent is still very much here,” Liccardo said, on Yahoo Finance Live. “Obviously the cost of living is a giant challenge...if we really want to find solutions it's important for political leaders to stop blaming tech and start focusing on those solutions.”

Tech companies have largely been blamed for driving up the cost of living in the San Jose area. The median price of an existing, single-family home has gone up 15% over the last year, to $1.3 million, well above the U.S. average of $266,222, according to Zillow.

But, Liccardo says that only tells half the story. He recently penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle saying, “policy choices” by local lawmakers contributed to the parade of tech executives leaving the Bay Area.

Specifically, he has singled out the California Environmental Quality Act, and regulatory barriers that limit commercial construction, drive up per-unit land costs, and tack on “prohibitively high” impact fees and parking requirements. And, he adds, the California Legislature has shown “no stomach for reform” even as “the statewide system allocates tax revenue to reward cities that favor commercial development and discourage housing.”

High taxes have also been a key factor, driving out some notable tech names. While California’s corporate income tax rate remains among the highest in the country at 8.84%, other states like Florida have reduced their rate. That, combined with the allure of no individual income tax in the Sunshine State, no sales tax in Montana, and no corporate or individual taxes in Nevada, Liccardo says, it’s no surprise companies are heading for those states.

“I'm no tax purist here, I'm a Democrat. Like many of my other fellow Democrats, I've certainly advocated for revenues at different times, but we have to recognize when we are simply driving folks out,” Liccardo said. “Already in the state legislature there are new proposals for taxes. That is not what we need to do at a time of very high unemployment, we've got to recognize the environment for what it is. This is a time to be welcoming employers and not creating more barriers for them.”