By Wayne Lusvardi

How could all of the following so-called impartial ballot guides miss a key controversial component of Proposition 31 that would have ended the original republican form of local government in California?

* The California Legislative Analysts Office;

* The Official State Voter Guide, Arguments FOR and AGAINST;

* The League of Women Voters of California;

* Voter’s Edge California;

* The California Voter Foundation.

Prop. 31 was titled the “Government Performance and Accountability Act.” It promised good government reforms, such as:

* A two-year budget cycle;

* Granting veto power to the governor in case of a fiscal emergency;

* Three-day advance notice of all bills in the state legislature;

* Requiring performance budgeting in all state and local government agencies;

* Requiring all new funding bills in legislature to find new money or cut other programs.

Hardly anyone but this writer pointed out that all of the above reforms were already on the books in one form or another.

On top of that, Prop. 31 had a provision to allow the relaxation of existing laws and regulations under newly formed local government “Strategic Action Committees” if new procedures were “functionally equivalent” to existing laws.  Prop. 31 promised to allow local governments to use gasoline and property taxes routed through the state with few purse strings. This must have seemed like a dream come true for those who have been seeking the deregulation of environmental laws, affordable housing quotas and labor laws.

Who in his right mind could have been against Prop. 31 with all of the above promises?  Why did it go down at the ballot box by a margin of 1,864,603 votes if it would have resulted in all of the above reforms?  Was it because Prop. 31 would have ended, for the most part, California’s republican form of local government?  Noooo!  That wasn’t the reason cited by most news sources!

Republicanism Upheld Only by Accident

The reason attributed to Prop. 31 losing by most sources was not that it would have replaced a republican form of government with unelected regional councils controlled by the Legislature.  The only opposition George Skelton and the Los Angeles Times had to Prop. 31 was that it was “long and complex.”   TV station KQED in Northern California said it was just “too complicated.”

But even those who found it too complicated never mentioned that Prop. 31 would have mostly ended California’s republican form of revenue sharing.   In its place would have been a hybrid regional form of governmental revenue sharing.  The new revenue sharing mechanism under Prop. 31 would have funneled gasoline and property taxes to the Strategic Action Committees, rather than cities, counties, and school districts.  And some of Prop. 31’s provisions could have trumped the “home rule” of zoning, housing, etc.

This would have been one of the most radical changes in California history.  But none of the official voter guides mentioned it.  For the most part, neither did the mainstream media.  And neither Prop. 31’s supporters nor opponents made any mention of this.  Nobody seemed to care if California’s republic effectively ended.

Except for this writer, the only other source to alert the public that Prop. 31 would end the republican form of government in California was Stanley Kurtz of the New York City-based National Review magazine.  Kurtz’s opposition to Prop. 31 was based on his timely book, “Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities.”

Imagine all those liberal, leftist, green and even big government Republican Party-hating libertarian voters out there who might have voted for Prop. 31?  Satirically: If only they had known it would have ended republicanism and replaced it with regionalism and socialized wealth redistribution, they might have voted for it?

‘Neutral’

So the next time you look at one of those so-called neutral state or third party voter guides, think again about whether you should trust their analysis or recommendations.  One should be reminded of the definition of a neutral person from the New Devil’s Dictionary:

“Neutral, n.  A person whose prejudice is so terribly obscure, so incomprehensible, or so transparent that others see no purpose in silencing that person.”

California’s republic was in peril, but hardly anyone noticed it. As Machiavelli wrote, “The people, when deceived by a false notion of the good, often desires its own ruin.”

Which raises the deeper question of whether much of the media and citizenry entirely miss historical social change?  The winners may write history; but the winners only in error write the news.

Proposition 31 was rightly defeated at the polls but for the wrong reasons. But who would have known or even cared?

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles on the propositions on the November ballot.

Oct. 8, 2012

By Dave Roberts

Proposition 30 is either a vital lifeline for budget-ravaged schools and social services. Or it’s unnecessary taxation by a government with a record of wasting money that will accelerate the exodus of residents and businesses out of state. It would increase sales taxes a quarter cent; and boost income taxes up to 3 percentage points on those making $250,000 or more a year. The top income tax rate would rise to 13.3 percent, the highest state rate in the nation.

Those were the contrasting views of numerous Democrats, liberals and education officials supporting Prop. 30, and a couple of Republicans and a taxpayer advocate opposing it at the Assembly Budget Committee’s recent informational hearing.

The latest Field poll showed Prop. 30 losing support, with just 51 percent saying they will vote for it, down from 54 percent in July. Forty percent believe they are already over-taxed.

Prop. 30 is expected to generate about $6 billion annually for four years beginning in 2013, after which the sales tax hike expires. The income tax hike on top earners continues for three more years after that. The actual amount generated could be a couple billion dollars more or less than $6 billion, depending on how the economy is doing, according to legislative analyst Mark Whitaker. The Legislative Analyst’s Office does not factor in the ramifications of residents and businesses leaving the state as a result of higher taxes.

Prop. 30 is competing on the ballot with Proposition 38, an income tax hike on nearly all Californian earners lasting 12 years that is projected to generate about $10 billion annually in initial years, with most of the money slated for schools. If both propositions receive a majority of votes, only the one receiving the most votes would take effect.

League of Women Voters

Arguing in favor of Prop. 30 at the committee hearing was Trudy Schafer, representing the League of Women Voters of California.

“Californians recognize that education and other services like health care, child care, the courts have all been cut to the bone,” said Schafer. “Prop. 30 begins to move California toward financial stability and adequate funding for all the services that we want from our government. We can’t continue to cut vital public services like schools and public safety. After years of such cuts, our schools, our universities, public safety services and others are at the breaking point. We just can’t continue to do this and still keep an economy that is strong, well informed, well educated for the next generation.”

School funding has been cut $20 billion in the last four years, resulting in 30,000 teacher layoffs, according to Schafer. She warned, “If Prop. 30 is not enacted, schools would be forced to shorten the school year, lay off thousands more teachers, increasing class sizes perhaps by another 20 percent, stop buying textbooks and increase community college tuition even more. So we need to stop those things.”

Jarvis group

Making the case against Prop. 30 was David Wolfe,  representing the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. He argued that calling Prop. 30 a “temporary” tax hike is deceptive because it lasts seven years and it’s likely there would be an effort to extend it at that time, as occurred with the failed Prop. 1A tax extension effort in 2009. Wolfe also pointed out that Prop. 30 would do nothing to solve California’s problem of unpredictable levels of tax revenue from year to year.

“Prop. 30 will not fix our progressive income tax system that created our current structural budget problem,” he said. “In fact, by adding three new brackets to the seven already in place it makes the problem worse. Already the top 144,000 taxpayers in the state, the top 1 percent, pay 37 percent of the total personal income tax revenue that the state receives. And this is a problem that Proposition 30 does nothing to address. Everyone knows that the number one problem with California’s tax structure is volatility. And even the governor admits that Proposition 30 makes this volatility problem much, much worse.”

Wolfe argued that raising income taxes on those making $250,000 or more will hurt small businesses, which typically file their taxes as personal instead of corporate income. “This is something we can ill afford with 2 million Californians out of work right now,” he said.

California doesn’t exactly have a strong track record in spending tax dollars wisely, Wolfe noted.

“It’s very difficult to justify a $50 billion tax increase when one considers the amount of wasteful spending and lack of reforms that have been uncovered just this year alone,” he said. “Let’s start with high-speed rail. The Legislature authorized this year that $6 billion worth of bond money at an interest cost to taxpayers of $300 million a year go to build not a usable segment but a piece of track between Bakersfield and Merced.”

Wolfe also cited pension reform that is estimated to save $30-$50 billion over 30 years when the state’s unfunded pension liability has been estimated at $500 billion. “We would argue this is not reform, this is window dressing,” he said.

And he mentioned the budgetary “rainy day fund” that was supposed to be on the 2012 ballot but instead was moved to 2014 after Democrats reneged on their agreement. There’s also the $54 million parks department slush fund that no one knew about while parks were threatened with closure.

“We can’t even manage the money that we have available,” said Wolfe. “And now taxpayers should give $50 billion more? No way.”

No new money

Ironically, although Prop. 30 is touted as helping schools, “it will actually provide no new money for educational programs,” he said. “And although it supports Prop. 30, this was clearly articulated by the California School Boards Association.”

Howard Jarvis has run a radio ad making that point and quoting the CSBA.

But Dennis Meyers, CSBA assistant executive director for governmental relations, told the committee that its words were taken out of context. “Proposition 30 is good for public schools; they are much better off with it than without it,” he said.

However, Meyers acknowledged that Prop. 30 won’t in fact provide new funding, but instead would simply restore some of the funding that has been cut in recent years.

“Without Prop. 30, schools are 14 percent below the amount of funding they received in 2007-08,” he said. “With Prop. 30, we are 9 percent [below]. It begins to build back what we lost over the last five budget cycles.”

One of the main points of contention in the two-hour Assembly committee hearing focused on whether California’s government is actually spending more currently than it has in the past. Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, said the budget cuts have been overstated because many are only temporary.

“They are almost illusionary because they happen one year to the next and then go right back,” he said. “Your overhead stays the same, basically. But as far as spending overall, spending is up overall. I’m not going to argue that these aren’t hard choices. But the point of fact is that if you factor in the use of special funds, it’s $20-30 billion more than it was a couple years ago. Federal monies, tens of billions of dollars more. Money that the state spends from the federal government, from special funds, from our general budget is up every year since I’ve been here. That’s just a fact.”

That assertion threw the Democrats on the committee into a tizzy. One after another cited cuts to schools, the courts, health care and a plethora of social service programs, which are all paid out of the General Fund.

But Nestande is correct about the increase in overall spending, according to figures from the state Department of Finance. Total state spending in the 2012-13 budget is $225.4 billion. That includes $91.4 billion in the General Fund, $39.4 billion in special funds, $11.7 billion in bond funds and $82.9 billion in federal funds. It’s true that General Fund spending is down from its high of nearly $103 billion in 2007-08. But total spending is at an all-time high. It’s now $31 million, or 16 percent, higher than the state spent in 2007-08, and has more than doubled in the past 14 years.

Nestande argued that what’s really needed in California is an overhaul of the tax system, moving toward a consumption tax.

“Economists agree, right or left, a consumption-based tax is the best taxing system for an economy,” he said. “You get more revenue into the state by allowing the economy to grow and not having this disproportionately heavy income tax, heavy sales tax, which harms the economy and inhibits growth and inhibits revenue to the state.”

Commentary

July 24, 2012

By John Seiler

Anyone who observes California politics knows that the government-worker unions dominate the state from top to bottom. They forced union pension spiking on the state a decade ago, leading to the spate of bankruptcies by cities here; and to the effective insolvency of the state government itself. The state simply cannot pay the $500 billion unfunded liability for state pension funds, according to a Stanford study.

Union dominance means that union bosses effectively sit on both sides of the negotiating table: as workers, and as employer — because union clout at the polls means the elections make union hacks like Gov. Jerry Brown the employer.

Proposition 32, on the ballot in November, would curb union power. According to the official ballot summary, it “Restricts union political fundraising by prohibiting use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes.” Union members still could contribute to political causes. But they wouldn’t have their paychecks directly pilfered for union campaigns.

Not surprisingly, the major leftist organizations in the state oppose it, beginning with Common Cause and the supposedly unbiased League of Women Voters.

“It’s not at all what it seems,” said Trudy Schafer, of the state League of Women Voters, as reported in the Mercury News. “It promises political reform but it’s really designed by its special interest backers to help themselves and harm their opponents.” The backers are anti-union activists in Orange County.

But without this reform, the state really will go bankrupt — if it hasn’t already — because of union looting.

Common Cause

“I’m all for campaign finance reform,” said Derek Cressman, western regional director for Common Cause. “I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life working for campaign finance reform. I know campaign finance reform, and, friends, Prop. 32 is not campaign finance reform.”

Actually, Common Cause has worked to suppress free speech. Back in the 1970s, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, at the national level the group was instrumental in the so-called Watergate reforms that severely restricted campaign contributions. Doing so made elections so complicated that only professionals and rich people could run for office — not just for national office, but in many cases even for local offices.

It was a typical liberal “reform” that had the opposite effect of what was intended. Instead of reducing the power of the rich, it increased it. Before, a candidate for the U.S. Congress, for example, could tap a few rich people for campaign contributions. After the “reforms,” the candidate has to be rich himself to fund much of his campaign; or he has to spend most of his time fundraising small amounts. The result was that a good local candidate with ideas and character finds it almost impossible to run for office.

Political vacuum

Another result was that unions filled the political vacuum once they were given collective bargaining rights, which they were in California in 1977 with the Dills Act. It’s the same old story: The Left empowers itself and calls it “reform.”

Reported the Mercury News, “Still, labor groups view the ballot measure as a deadly threat and have far outpaced supporters in the money chase. Since the most recent finance reports on April 30, they’ve added $3.4 million to the $3.9 million cash they had on hand for a total of $7.3 million. The Yes side has $1.9 million.”

So it’s going to be tough the get this reform passed. A similar reform, Proposition 75, was on the ballot in 2005 as one of four initiatives on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reform platform in that year’s November Special Election. The whole reform plank was badly conceived. And Schwarzenegger gave it his usual half-hearted attempt. He only ever campaigned hard for himself. After his reform plank was defeated, Schwarzenegger turned sharply to the left, passing massive new regulations, such as AB 32 and tax increases, that left the state in ruins similar to those on that island at the end of his movie “Commando.”

But the joke is on the unions, unCommon Cause, the League of Liberal Women Voters and their leftist cohorts. There’s no more money. Business and jobs are fleeing the state. California is going to have to cut union pay, perks and pensions — no matter what.

When you strangle the goose it no longer lays Golden State eggs.