Posted on 09/24/2006 12:34:01 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Californians' wariness of new debt is just one problem facing backers
SACRAMENTO – After years of criticism about failing to invest in infrastructure, lawmakers now face questions about whether they are trying to do too much.
The Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger placed a record $37.3 billion package of public-works bonds on the Nov. 7 ballot for roads, schools, housing and flood control.
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The package is more than three times the size of the previous largest state bond proposal, a $15 billion deficit-reduction approved by voters in March 2004 to avoid a state fiscal crisis.
The infrastructure bonds appear on a ballot swollen with big spending decisions, including a separate $5.4 billion bond for water projects and four initiatives that would increase taxes by more than $3 billion.
A poll last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that the total amount of new bond debt proposed on the ballot, nearly $43 billion, is regarded as “too much” by 59 percent of the voters.
Big new debt is only one of the problems facing the backers of the infrastructure bonds, whose own polling and focus groups with panels of voters have found deep-seated skepticism about governmental plans to fix problems.
Supporters of the bond package also think their opinion sampling has revealed a potential key to winning voter approval: Show specific projects that would be built with the bond money.
“When they see what this plan actually does, the shift is remarkable,” Jim Earp, chairman of the Let's Rebuild California Committee, said after two sessions with voter panels. “There is really a lot of support.”
Getting the campaign message to voters has been made more difficult by costly battles over two initiatives to tax cigarettes and oil production, involving the heavy use of television ads that is driving up the cost of remaining airtime.
“We have seen the prices go up about 45 percent over the last three weeks,” said Paul Hefner, spokesman for the infrastructure bonds campaign.
Movie producer Stephen Bing, who inherited a real estate fortune, set a record for individual campaign contributions by giving $40 million to Proposition 87, an oil-tax initiative to fund alternative energy.
Earp said the goal of the infrastructure bond campaign is to raise at least $15 million, which would provide a “bare bones” budget as the cost soars for TV ads that are often a crucial part of ballot measure campaigns.
The bond campaign is buying airtime in the weeks near the Nov. 7 election, Earp said, and may also run some TV ads in early October as voters begin to receive absentee ballots.
In a series of news conferences on Oct. 3 and 4 to promote the bond package, Schwarzenegger is scheduled to appear with the four top legislative leaders.
It could be an awkward moment for the two Democratic leaders, Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata of Oakland and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez os Los Angeles.
As the Republican governor runs for re-election this fall, Perata and Núñez are campaigning for Schwarzenegger's Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides.
A Perata associate, Sandy Polka, is the lead consultant on an unusual bipartisan campaign staff for the bond package that includes Republican consultants and two pollsters, a Democrat and a Republican.
The bond package is a bipartisan compromise reached after talks failed to put measures on the June ballot. Schwarzenegger's original proposal was for $68 billion in bonds, spread over five election years through 2014.
More than half of the governor's proposed bonds would have been for education. His plan also contained bonds for new prisons, courthouses and local public-safety facilities.
The compromise with Democrats shifted the focus of the bond package to transportation and added housing, while dropping money for prisons and courthouses.
Following a pattern on other issues such as workers' compensation, the Republican governor's ability to get a compromise was driven in part by Democrats' desire to avoid what they regarded as a harsher initiative.
Another measure on the ballot, Proposition 1A, makes it more difficult to shift revenue from the sales tax on gasoline and diesel fuel, about $2 billion a year, from transportation to other programs to help balance the state budget.
As part of the agreement on the package, the backers of an initiative that would prohibit any shift of motor fuel tax revenue from transportation were supposed to drop their measure.
The secretary of state's office later found that the initiative backers, who turned in some signatures to increase pressure for a compromise, had filed enough to put the measure on the next statewide ballot after November.
To make it clear to voters that the bonds are part of a package, legislation directed the secretary of state to designate the bond measures with letters.
If not for the change in law, the legislative bond measures would have been given a number. For example, the $5.4 billion water bond placed on the ballot by a coalition that gathered signatures is Proposition 84.
In the ballot pamphlet, the governor and legislative leaders have chosen to keep their distance from the bond package that their compromise put before voters.
Schwarzenegger signed the argument for a sex offender initiative, Proposition 83, but did not sign the arguments for the bonds. He signed a number of ballot pamphlets in 2004 and again in 2005.
“The governor fully supports all of the measures and looks forward to campaigning to see them passed,” said Julie Soderlund, a Schwarzenegger campaign spokeswoman, when asked why he did not sign the bond arguments.
The infrastructure bond package has little organized opposition. The Public Policy Institute of California poll last month and a Field Poll in July both found strong support for the bonds among Democratic voters and opposition from many Republicans.
Officially, the two parties also are split on the bonds. The California Democratic Party supports all of the bond measures.
The California Republican Party supports the Proposition 1B transportation and Proposition 1E flood-control bonds. The party is neutral on Proposition 1D education bonds and opposes the Proposition 1C housing bonds.
Similarly but a notch cooler, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is neutral on the transportation and flood-control bonds and is opposed to the education and housing bonds.
Two nonpartisan policy groups, the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles and the Performance Institute in San Diego, have issued analyses that are critical of the bond package.
“Instead of making tough decisions about how to pay for these programs with money we actually have, state leaders want to max out the credit cards and let others worry about the bills and consequences later,” Adrian Moore, vice president of the Reason Foundation, said in a statement.
In the ballot pamphlet, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst says approval of all of the bonds on the November ballot would not push annual bond payments above what some regard as a prudent level, 6 percent of the state general fund.
See here or the following threads:
CA: Making a case against the bonds (Prop 1 A-B-C-D-E)
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | September 19 2006 | Paul Feist
Posted on 09/19/2006 2:18:46 PM PDT by calcowgirl
CA: State bond package has opposition
AP - Press Telegram ^ | 09/19/2006 | Aaron C. Davis
Posted on 09/20/2006 3:25:07 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Props 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, 84, 86, 87, 88 and 89 all propose new taxes.
Just say NO.
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