Denise Cross / flickr

A tenfold increase in the initiative filing fee was supposed to reduce the number of long-shot proposals in circulation.

“The updated filing fee set by this bill will deter frivolous submissions,” Assemblyman Evan Low, author the new initiative fee increase, said in a September press release. “We live in California, the cradle of direct democracy, but we also need a threshold for reasonableness. And this bill will do just that.”

It’s had the opposite effect, as dozens of proponents of unconventional ideas rush to file their initiatives before the end of the year.

Among this year’s unconventional proposals: a 1,000 percent tax on political advertisements, a 5-cent tax on bottled water, a statewide ban on shellfish and a plan for California to declare independence from the United States.

“For the privilege of influencing public elections and political issues, a sales tax of 1,000% (one thousand percent) is hereby imposed upon Political Advertisements,” a statewide ballot measure, proposed  by Terrance Lynn of Portola Valley, states. “The proceeds of which shall solely benefit California public education.”

And if the courts try to strike down the measure, Lynn’s prepared for that, too. “If a Federal District Court or Supreme Court of the United States find this tax to be too high, then this law shall immediately ratchet down to the highest acceptable level and remain in place,” the measure states.

10x Filing Fee Hike

On January 1, the cost of proposing a statewide ballot measure for circulation will increase from $200 to $2,000. The new law, authored by Democratic Assemblymen Evan Low of Campbell and Richard Bloom of Santa Monica, was intended to reduce the number of proposals given a ballot title and summary.

“This significant fee increase could greatly reduce the number of initiative proposals submitted for title and summary, and thus reduce the AG’s workload in this area, in addition to that of the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Department of Finance, which jointly prepare a fiscal estimate of proposed initiatives,” states the state Assembly’s legislative analysis of AB1100 published in July.

Yet, the fee hike itself has likely spurred more frivolous measures. Often times, the text, title and summary are enough to generate free publicity for an idea, including outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional measures.

Subhendu Das of West Hills wants to see California lawmakers adopt a secret ballot for legislative business. Joe Decker believes the state should make “the sale or consumption of shellfish a serious felony punishable by a $666,000 fine per occurrence and/or prison sentence of up to six years, six months, and six days.”

Citing Aristotle’s philosophy of human association, Louis Marinelli of San Diego wants California to declare its independence from the United States.

“Do you agree that California should acquire the exclusive power to make its laws, levy its taxes and establish its own relations abroad — in other words, sovereignty — and at the same time to maintain with United States an economic, political, and military partnership?” he proposes in the “California Nationhood” initiative.

If that idea fails to gain support, he’s also asking California residents to impose a 5-cent tax on bottled water

Fee Hike to Deter Frivolous Submissions

Since 1943, any Californian with $200 has been able to obtain the necessary paperwork to begin collecting signatures to put their proposal on the ballot. The reasonable filing fee has allowed average citizens and grassroots organizations to shape the political debate.

From 2009 to 2013, the state Attorney General’s Office has drafted titles and summaries for 315 measures. Just 27 ultimately qualified for the ballot.

Low’s office noted that, as of August 2015, 58 proposals had been submitted for the 2016 November ballot. By December 14, that figure had doubled. The California State Attorney General’s Office has received 118 requests for a ballot title and summary — double the average number of initiatives from the previous decade.

State legislative analysts say that the number of initiative petitions have been gradually increasing. Over the last half century, proponents filed the following number of initiatives:

• 47 from 1960 to 1969
• 180 from 1970 to 1979
• 282 from 1980 to 1989
• 391 from 1990 to 1999
• 647 from 2000 to 2009
• 240 from 2010 to April 21, 2015

Proponents of the new higher filing fee say that it will help offset the cost to taxpayers. The AG’s office estimates that it takes 56 hours of staff time to prepare each ballot measure, at a cost of $8,000. Under the new state law, proponents get their money back only if the measure qualifies for the ballot.

Some state political observers say the filing fee hike undermines citizen engagement in the process.

“The initiative game in California is entirely for the rich and powerful,” argues columnist Joe Mathews, who also serves as a board member of Democracy International. “What we need are alternative ways to get measures on the ballot that are based on the quality of the idea and on public support.”

Photo credit: 401kcalculator.org

There has been some movement on the tax initiative front.

In August, I offered the following list of the top five measures most likely to make the ballot: 1) Prop. 30 Extension, 2) Cigarette Tax, 3) Split Roll Property Tax, 4) Service Tax, 5) Oil Severance Tax.

Circumstances have changed.

One move that few saw coming is that not one – but two – Proposition 30 extension measures have been filed. The teachers union has offered up an extension of Prop. 30 that was originally passed in 2012 based on the argument that money was needed for schools. The unions want to argue that this income tax on the wealthy, originally labeled temporary, would remain so for 12 additional years. The provision on the sales tax increase in Prop. 30 would be dropped.

Then came a second Proposition 30 extension proposal offered by, among others, the California Hospitals Association and related health care unions. I’m not sure if use of the term “extension” applies to this proposal since the idea it not to extend the temporary status but to make the tax on upper-income taxpayers permanent. Again the sales tax piece is dropped but additional income tax rates have been added.

Another major development occurred when the coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups that had been pumping for the split-roll property tax to hit commercial property announced in an email to supporters that they would not pursue a ballot measure for 2016. While it is still possible that others could file a split-roll initiative, the wind is out of the sails on this proposal.

However, a different kind of property tax increase proposal has been filed and could advance. This one would tax all property, commercial and residential, valued at over $3-million, and dedicate money for the purpose of relieving those in poverty. This measure is moving forward.

Finally, there was the announcement by NextGen founder and billionaire, Tom Steyer, that he would spend to support a cigarette tax. Steyer was the leading advocate for an oil severance tax. Certainly, he has the wherewithal to fund a tax on oil while contributing to a cigarette tax effort, but his announcement seems to pump up the cigarette tax while lessen the likelihood that we’ll see an oil severance tax measure in 2016 — especially if something comes out of the Special Session dealing with transportation that adds a new revenue source to fix roads and highways.

So, looking into the cracked and sometimes foggy crystal ball, here’s what I see in late October, about one year prior to the election, as the 5 most likely tax measures to appear on the 2016 ballot.

CIGARETTE TAX: Proponents have the means and the determination and now have a billionaire’s money.

PROP. 30 EXTENSION: You could really make this idea a co-number one with the Cigarette Tax. However, because of the two proposals, the exact tax measure probably has not been decided yet. Undoubtedly, the proponents of the two measures are trying to find common ground to back a single proposal. Whatever happens, however, most assuredly there will be some form of a Prop. 30 extension on the ballot.

PROPERTY TAX: Not the split-roll, but the poverty proposal. It is unclear how much support there is for this measure but proponents have established a committee and are starting to gather signatures.

MARIJUANA TAX: Does this even deserve to be on the list? I had not considered it before since the chief goal of a successful marijuana initiative is to legalize marijuana rather than create a new revenue stream. However, there will be a tax component to a marijuana proposal and the tax will be part of the debate over the measure.

ROAD FIX TAX: Unlikely that a road fix tax proposal would come via the initiative process although a powerful coalition of business and labor supports such a thing. Out of frustration they could move a proposal forward. There is also a chance a compromise transportation/infrastructure bill could come out of the Special Session which includes taxes. Neither the governor nor supporters of a road fix tax want to see it on the ballot, but that could be part of a final deal.

Finally, since I mentioned it last time but do not include it in the top five, Senator Bob Hertzberg has a plan to tie the tax system more closely to the current state economy by taxing services. Hertzberg also has a strategy that if many different taxes are headed for the ballot, that could present an opening for him. He could argue that his answer to California’s tax system flaws is a better overall fix than the myriad of other proposals. Remember, he also has potential financial support from another billionaire, Nicolas Berggreun’s Think Long Committee.

Filing multiple initiatives on the same subject offers proponents the opportunity to refine their proposals by getting feedback from the Legislative Analyst’s Office and Department of Finance, which must review, summarize and affix a cost estimate to any initiative. The Attorney General then attaches a title and summary to the different proposals. Proponents can see what reaction is offered to varying proposals from these government agencies, test the different versions through polling, and see which edition attracts the best donor support before deciding the version to pursue.

About 100 initiatives have been filed this year to begin the process. Each came with the $200 price tag — money that will be refunded if a measure qualifies for the ballot. A number of the measures are multiple versions on the same theme.

Most strikingly, in the last week eight versions of “The Water Supply Reliability and Drought Protection Act of 2016” were filed and five versions of  “The Marijuana Control, Legalization and Revenue Act of 2016” also came in.

Former Natural Resources Agency official Jerry Meral is behind the water measures, an effort to seek more bond revenue to deal with the drought. Meanwhile the push for legalization of marijuana in California continues to heat up with different groups considering the best way to proceed.

The eight water bond proposals cost Meral $1,600 to file. Next year the price would be $16,000. When you consider ballot measure qualifying efforts cost in the millions, not to mention the expense of a campaign if an initiative makes the ballot, the increased cost of filing may seem like the proverbial gold dust that falls between the cracks of the barroom floor.

Those individuals and groups with large bank accounts will not blink at the change. Under new initiative process rules, a measure gets a legislative hearing after 25 percent of the signatures are gathered. It is possible that proponents with the wherewithal to do so could move a couple of initiatives forward so as to review the results of the feedback in the formal legislative hearings before deciding which measure to pursue.

Still, the filing fee increase is bound to change some individual and group strategies dealing with multiple filings. Those who don’t have vast resources will feel the greatest effect.

Photo credit: 401kcalculator.org

Two polls were issued last week, and while quite different in the territory they covered, both contained one question that examined the same issue – a split-roll property tax. In one way the results on that one question were quite different. In another way they reflected a probable similar outcome — altering the property tax system will be a difficult task.

In the Public Policy Institute of California poll, which was quite extensive and touched on many issues, the split-roll question (taxing commercial property differently than residential property) came within a series of questions dealing with state revenue and other potential tax increase proposals.

PPIC asked the question this way:

Under Proposition 13, residential and commercial property taxes are both strictly limited. What do you think about having commercial properties taxed according to their current market value? Do you favor or oppose this proposal?

The response: 50 percent of likely voters favored the proposal while 44 percent opposed.

The California Business Roundtable revealed results of a poll conducted for the organization by M4 Strategies. The M4 Strategies survey using mobile phones and online polling was much shorter and asked respondents to read the following pro/con arguments and register their support:

We should change our property tax policy and tax commercial property based on the current market value of the land because it will ensure businesses pay their fair share and generate $6 to $10 billion in new revenue for state and local government, including schools.

We first should focus on closing loopholes in out property tax law before raising property taxes on every small business in California. Closing just the loopholes will generate $70 million in new revenue for the state and California schools, but won’t drag down the state’s rebounding economy and won’t hurt small businesses and the thousands of jobs they create.

The response: 21.4 percent favored the first answer in supporting a split roll; 63 percent agreed with the second answer opposing a split roll.

The PPIC poll question suggested a close contest on the measure; the M4 explanations produced a one-sided result.

There is not much context to the PPIC question. It doesn’t suggest how much money a change in the property tax system would bring in; nor did it raise any issues about effects on the economy and jobs.

The M4 statement focuses on small businesses exclusively in the con argument, no mention of big business or even using the term “commercial property” in painting a negative picture.

While a campaign for and against a split roll would flesh out arguments for the voters, there is something to be taken from these two polls that seem to show different results. While the Roundtable/M4 poll indicates that a split-roll initiative will face daunting odds, the PPIC poll also indicates it would be difficult to pass a split roll measure.

Most experts agree that an initiative that doesn’t have 60 percent support well before a campaign gets started would face long odds. Put into the equation the massive campaign that would be unleashed against a split roll initiative and that would only increase those long odds.

PPIC notes that the 50 percent mark on the side of reassessing commercial property is the lowest a PPIC poll has seen on this issue. In fact, the number dropped from 54 percent support just last January.

In summing up the results on all the tax issues tested in his poll, Mark Baldassare, pollster and PPIC president said, “Most efforts to make changes to our state’s tax system face difficult hurdles even in the favorable climate of an improving economy.”

While the numbers in both polls are many percentage points apart they both indicate the same thing – a hard road for a split roll.

The PPIC poll can be found here. http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_515MBS.pdf

The Business Roundtable/M4 Strategies poll is here. http://www.cbrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CaliforniaStatewideProp13.Topline.pdf

Among other provisions, the Pack initiative would require random drug and alcohol testing for doctors. It also would require doctors who witness medical negligence or substance abuse by fellow doctors to report it.

Physicians that test positive for alcohol or drugs (while on duty), or who refuse to submit to testing, would be suspended from practicing medicine. And hospitals would be required to report any verified positive results of drug and alcohol testing to the California Medical Board.

Now, for voters who didn’t know any better, they might assume that the hit-and-run driver who killed tender-aged Troy and Alana was a substance-abusing doctor. But nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the culprit was a 46-year-old nanny, Jimena Barreto, who was behind the wheel of her gold 1979 Mercedes when she careened across two lanes of a Danville street onto a sidewalk where she struck defenseless Troy and Alana.

Had the proposed ballot measure that bears their names been in place 11 years ago, it would have made no difference. It would not have prevented Barreto — convicted of second-degree murder and currently serving consecutive sentences of 15 years to life — from killing the Pack children.

Lawyers

So why is Bob Pack promoting a ballot measure in his dead children’s names that has absolutely nothing to do with them? Because he’s carrying water for the state’s trial lawyers.

Indeed, a provision of the so-called Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act would revise the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, the 1975 state law that limits jury awards to$250,000 for “pain and suffering” in cases of physician negligence.

The state’s trial lawyers regard a quarter-million dollars as a mere pittance. Especially when lawyers in other states are earning contingency fees on ginormous Powerball-sized jury awards.

Like the whopping $55 million that a Baltimore jury awarded a Waverly, Md., couple after delivery of their mentally and physically disabled child at Johns Hopkins hospital. The mother tried to have her baby at home with the help of a midwife but, after hours of labor, finally decided to have an emergency Caesarean section at the hospital.

Then there was the $78.5 million a Philadelphia jury awarded a Pottstown, Pa., mom whose newborn child sustained brain damage, her lawyers claimed, because the attending physician “performed an ultrasound examination with outdated, insensitive, and poorly maintained equipment.”

That’s why the state’s trial lawyers have invested $2 million — so far — in Bob Pack’s proposed initiative. It’s not about Troy and Alana, God rest their souls. It’s about raking in multi-million dollar contingency fees.

by JOHN SEILER

“All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy,” said Al Smith, the New York governor and presidential candidate in 1928 (pictured at right). He was the last small-government Democratic presidential candidate  in the Thomas Jefferson-Grover Cleveland tradition.

Unfortunately, Smith lost to big-government, protectionist Republican Herbert Hoover, who plunged America, and the world, into the Great Depression. The next president was big-government, big-spend, big-tax Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat who prlonged the Great Depression for another decade and imposed the socialist programs and mentality that now have bankrupted America.

Fast-forward to 2011: Gov. Jerry Brown wants a vote of the people on his $12 billion tax-increase proposal. He has accused Republicans who oppose such a vote of being anti-democratic, on Monday in his State-of-the-State address even comparing them to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Yet Brown now is rejecting Republican calls to put a tax cut on the ballot next to his tax increase.  “You’ve got to get real here. Don’t say I’m going to solve this problem by creating a bunch of new problems that we’ll have even more trouble handling,” Brown huffed.

But what about democracy? Denying the people of California the right to vote on tax cuts,  make Brown like dictator Mubarak – hypocritical.

This Mubarakian anti-democratic posture is reason enough to recall Brown, just as we did his ex-chief of staff, Gov. Gray Davis, back in 2003. And with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ineligible to run because of term limits, maybe as new governor we’d get somebody better than Herr Shriver-Kennedy.

And let’s not limit the vote just to Brown’s immense tax-increase idea and the Republicans’ tax-cut idea. Give voters a smorgasbord of choices. Let’s have these votes, too:

* Bring back the Gann Limit, which limited increases in state spending to the increases in population and inflation. It would have prevented the demented spending increases of the Davis-Schwarzenegger decade. Voters, tricked into thinking they were promoting the building of roads, voted effectively to repeal the Gann Limit  in 1990 with Prop. 111. Give voters another chance to restore this essential budget control.

* Give voters a choice in what departments are cut. For example, Prop. X might read, “Cut education spending 5 percent.” Prop. Y might read, “Cut education spending 10 percent.” Prop. Z might read, “Cut government-worker pensions by 5 percent.” And so on.

* Put on the ballot a measure amending the California Constitution to get rid of the guaranteed payment of pension funds to retirees. According to a Stanford University study, California’s residents — even little children just born — are on the hook for $500 billion in liabilities to the retirees. If the pension fund investments don’t perform well, then the money comes from the general fund. Why should a manual laborer in Jose’s Muffler Shop be forced to pay for the $200,000 retirement of a government worker? That’s just not fair. Let voters decide whether they want to make it fair.

* End public employee retirees’ health benefits when they turn 65 and qualify for Social Security; sooner if they qualify for some other health-care benefit, such as that of military retirees. A U.S. General Accounting Office study found that these costs could be even more than pension costs.

* Go back to a part-time Legislature, which we had until the late 1960s, and begin a two-year budget cycle. Texas enjoys that and the state is thriving as California stagnates. Would such a change be anti-democratic? Just the opposite. Under the current system, legislators spend far too much time in the hothouse of the state capitol, where they are corrupted by the special-interest lobbyists. If, instead, they meet for only three months every two years, they’ll have to spend the rest of their time with real people back in their districts, finding out what’s going on — and even get real jobs to pay their family bills. Democracy demands citizen-legislators, who take a couple of months off every two years from their businesses, jobs or farms to conduct the people’s business — not full-time hacks beholden to those who stuff money in their pockets.

That’s just a start. Give the people a choice, Jerry — a real democratic choice.