Prop Candy

-by 'tamerlane'

This month, we Californians celebrate one of our traditional cultural events. No, not Cinco de Mayo. On May 19th, we're holding one of our special Special Elections.

California is pretty much run by ballot measures these days. Our May 19th ballot has five propositions, labeled 1A through 1E, all related to solving our budget crisis. I won't bore you with details, but they call for shuffling funds & raiding earmarks-essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. A sixth, Prop 1F, which prevents the legislature from giving itself a raise during a deficit, was added as a sweetener.

To persuade us that these measures are required to escape this mess, the normally neutral voter's guide contains a multi-page editorial with a table showing how all five measures neatly add up to balance the budget-in the short run. In ads, firemen and policemen warn that if we don't pilfer the funds reserved for education and mental health, they might...Gasp...stop protecting and serving us!

Despite the heavy propaganda and the ominous threats, all the measures look to lose except 1F, the salary cap. If they fail to pass, the state legislature will be forced to do the unthinkable: agree on a budget.

But we've made that nearly impossible. California is one of only three states that require a 2/3 majority to change any tax or budget laws. The idea was to force compromise, but in reality it causes perpetual stalemate. You can't get a 2/3 majority on where to go for lunch! The anti-tax anarchists love this rule. It means no budget ever gets passed, no taxes ever get raised, and the government slowly starves to death.

Like true Californians, we put ourselves on an unhealthy, fad diet. Passed in 1978, Prop 13 limited property taxes to 1%. A handful of measures followed in quick succession that severely hampered the state's ability to raise revenue. Ever since, we've been scrounging for calories- ratcheting up sales taxes, floating bonds, jacking up licensing fees. Then we binge on propositions that earmark specific revenues for specific programs: lottery profits for K-thru-12, DMV fees for public transit. Government by ad hoc ballot measure hasn't worked, and is a major reason we're in this mess. Now the state's trying to get us out of that mess with more ballot measures.

On my summer vacations as a kid, my mom used to grant me & my sister one visit to the penny candy store. We were given a dollar, and set loose. This was a wonderful didactic exercise- what mix of 3 cent taffies, 5 cent gum drops and 10 cent peppermint sticks could we acquire with our 100 cents?

With our ballot measures, Californians are like kids who can't pass up a single piece of candy in the store, yet balk at forking over the dollar. We gleefully pass props for children's hospitals, mass transit, college campuses and prisons, but never, ever raise our taxes. When we want something we can't afford, we take out a loan.

California is a really big state - 37 million people, with a diverse economy of agriculture, tourism & entertainment, traditional & high tech industry. We ought to be able to afford all the components of a prosperous society. Yet we skimp on vital investments for our continued prosperity. Take education. Where California once ranked first in the nation, we're now 47th, just ahead of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

So how to fix this mess? The anarchists say: reduce the state government to highway patrol and pothole crews, and sauve qui peut on the rest. They'll decry your tax dollars going to cover 19 different ESL programs, then auger you with sales tax and obscene vehicle registration fees.

The sane solution is to elect moderate representatives who aren't afraid to make hard choices on wish-list programs or to raise direct taxes. We voters must also repeal Prop 13 et al., and the 2/3 rule, then delegate budget authority to the statehouse instead of micro-managing through ballot measures.

False dilemmas like 'it's either policemen or school teachers, pick one' are fatuous. But we voters need to apply the lessons of the penny candy store to our state. We can't have everything that catches our eye, but we must budget to meet the mix of items we do select. And after our purchase has been rung up, we have to pull that crumpled dollar from the back pocket of our cutoffs and plunk it down on the counter.

(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane'. All rights reserved.