Continuing a longstanding bipartisan tradition, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra came

Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, is sponsoring a measure to repeal the fuel tax and vehicle fee hikes approved this spring. The description given to Allen’s proposal by Becerra’s office didn’t mention taxes or fees. Instead, it said the measure “eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”

Allen’s lawyers said the description was fundamentally deceptive. Last week, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley agreed: “The Attorney General’s title and summary … must be changed to avoid misleading the voters and creating prejudice against the measure,” he wrote.

The revision Frawley ordered: “Repeals recently enacted gas and diesel taxes and vehicle registration fees. Eliminates road repair and transportation programs funded by these taxes and fees.”

The perception of attorneys general using ballot language to manipulate voters has been common for decades.

When Becerra’s predecessor, fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, was attorney general before her election in November to the U.S. Senate, Republicans alleged she was particularly ready to put her thumb on the scale. The ballot description for 2016’s successful Proposition 58 made it seem as if it reinforced English-learning standards in state public schools when its primary intent was to repeal mandatory English-only immersion programs required by 1998’s Proposition 227. In 2015, Harris was trashed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board for effectively killing pension reform measures with what the board called ballot descriptions that sounded like “union talking points.”

When Gov. Jerry Brown was attorney general before Harris, his office also courted controversy. Two of his ballot descriptions were castigated by state judges in the same week in August 2010.

One was for Proposition 23, an unsuccessful measure which would have suspended implementation of state climate-change pollution rules. The initial ballot language was condemned as prejudicial and misleading by Frawley, the same judge who recently ruled against Becerra.

Two days after Frawley’s ruling, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette rejected ballot language for Proposition 25. The successful ballot measure’s key change was to allow the state Legislature to approve a state budget on a simple majority vote. The ballot language Brown approved made it appear as if the measure’s main intent was to reinforce the requirement that the Legislature could only approve tax increases on a two-thirds vote of both the Assembly and the Senate.

Republican attorneys general also accused of voter manipulation

But in the 20th century, when it wasn’t unusual to have Republicans holding statewide office in California, GOP attorneys general drew fire as well for their perceived ballot language machinations.

The most famous example was in 1978, when California voters approved Proposition 13 to put sharp limits on how much property taxes could increase annually. Neither the ballot title or summary approved by GOP Attorney General Evelle Younger mentioned that it also would raise the threshold for raising taxes in the Legislature to a two-thirds vote.

In 1996, Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren also drew fire over the ballot language he approved for Proposition 209, a successful measure limiting the use of racial preferences by state government. In 2012, Chronicle editorial page editor John Diaz revisited criticism first made in 1996, arguing that Lungren used “loaded words” to sell opposition to affirmative action.

“[State policies give] many school districts a perverse incentive to keep immigrant kids in bilingual programs rather than moving them into English-language instruction.

“It should be remembered that a rapid but successful transition to English was the aim of bilingual education when it was begun in the 1970s. But like other noble experiments, it was taken over — and distorted — by education bureaucrats who care more about money and numbers than individual children.”

Claims that bilingual ed was crucial to help first-generation Latino immigrants assimilate were simply false. Here’s what Santa Barbara school board member Alan Ebenstein had to say in March 1998:

“One of the great misunderstandings regarding bilingual education is that it is a program intended mostly or even largely for students who are not born in the United States. This school year, 8.5% of Latino kindergarteners in Santa Barbara schools were not born in the United States, yet approximately 85% of Latino kindergarteners are receiving most of their instruction in Spanish. Bilingual education in California is predominantly a program to teach American children of Latino descent in Spanish for most of their elementary school years.”

Myths about bilingual ed revived

But this history has been forgotten or ignored by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who has introduced a bill to have a public revote on allowing and encouraging bilingual education. Check out the whoppers Lara offers in defense of his proposal:

“’English will always remain the official language of California, but we cannot ignore the growing need to have a multilingual workforce,’ Lara said.

“He said the global economy requires those who graduate from school to be able to communicate in multiple languages. ‘Employers seek multilingual employees and all students — English and non-English learners alike — deserve access to this invaluable skill,’ Lara added.”

That’s from a short L.A. Times’ web account of Lara’s bill. Here’s hoping subsequent reporting points out that California’s history with bilingual education hardly shows it was an efficient way of producing a multilingual workforce. Instead, it produced hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts who never mastered any language.

But there’s a larger and more sweeping context here. This could be the first sign of what eventually could be a powerful movement in which Latinos seek to make California akin to Quebec, where French is treated with at least as much official deference and respect as English, the language of the rest of Canada.

California as a Spanish-language version of Quebec

Why might something like this happen in the Golden State? Because it’s a dramatic display of power by a group slowly but surely on its way to control of the state’s largest political party. Emerging political juggernauts like such displays. And as del Olmo wrote in 1998 …

“A small but vocal cadre of Latino activists support [bilingual education] in the misguided assumption that bilingual programs promote cultural pride in Latino kids … .”

Is it nativist to worry about this possibility? If you’re one of those people who grouse about Spanish-language signs over stores, sure. If you’re someone who is annoyed to hear Spanish spoken by fast-food workers, damn right. If you’re someone who watches “Leave It To Beaver” or “My Three Sons” and pines for the America of the 1950s, absolutely.

But if you’re someone who knows bilingual education was a giant flop last time around — something that produced students who didn’t speak either English or Spanish well — then it’s not nativist to worry about its resurrection and the motives behind it.

Latinos have enough problems with a California school system that worries more about the interests of adult employees than students. They don’t need to be subject to a risky education experiment that history shows is likely to fail.

For now, these larger questions can wait until we see where Ricardo Lara’s legislation goes. In the short term, I look forward to Sen. Lara offering any proof of his claims for what bilingual education will accomplish in California.

He won’t, because he can’t. The evidence doesn’t exist.