State Budget Battle Fizzles (Democratic Girly-Men Throw In The Towel Alert)

Los Angeles Times ^ | 06/15/05 | Evan Halper

[goldstategop]

The Democrats who control the Legislature have abandoned their effort to add billions of dollars in programs to the governor's proposed state budget, and are preparing to vote for a spending plan with no new taxes and no extra money for schools.

Shifting their focus to the coming special election fight, the lawmakers are surrendering to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the major spending issues that have separated the two sides for months. For the first time in years, they are rushing to meet their constitutional deadline for passing a budget today with a viable plan. Democrats fear that holding up the budget — even for what they argue is the noble cause of trying to restore $3 billion that schools say they are owed — would hurt them Nov. 8 and drive voters to approve spending controls the governor helped place on the ballot. They said they would try to secure the money by other means.

They say they will vote in favor of a budget that closely resembles the governor's latest spending plan, issued in May. The strategy shift is an indication of the extent to which the special election, ordered by Schwarzenegger on Monday, already has begun to dominate decision making in the Capitol. ...

Now, Democratic strategists and school groups fear that holding up the budget over that issue — just as the special election campaign gets underway — could backfire, fueling Schwarzenegger's charge that the Legislature is dysfunctional. The governor already is campaigning for the measures he endorsed, which could dilute the Legislature's power.

School groups say passage of the spending cap would be more harmful to them than losing the $3 billion this year. The measure would remove some education spending obligations from state law, potentially costing schools billions more.

[bill1952]

I suspect that California's biggest problem with funding their schools, is the requirement that they educate illegal aliens in their public schools

Bingo.

[Aarchaeus]

$135 home? Must be quite the place. Saran wrap roofing or did you spring for Reynolds wrap?

I figured it was scavenged cardboard put together with staples, with latex paint to make it rain-resistant.

[Koblenz]

Seems like Arnold has vanquished his enemies, set them before him, and heard the lamentations of their girly-men.

But seriously, Proposition 13 is fundamentally flawed. I'm all for lower taxes, but they also need to be fair. And it's completely unfair that two identical houses on the same street will have completely different property taxes simply because one family has lived there since 1978 and the other moved there in 2002. Proposition 13 has the same effect as rent control. You need to pay taxes. Just make them minimal for everyone. Prop 13 allows property taxes to rise only a fixed amount per year. So in any given town, residents can vote for whatever crazy ideas they want, because the property tax increases will only hit new residents.

[calex59]

Teachers should be paid their fair share and yet people in CA are getting away with outdated prop 13 from the 70's, you need to be brought into the 21st century and pay your fair share like we all have to!!

You probably should find out what you are talking about before making accusations such as these. CA spends 50 percent of its budget, 50 billion dollars, on schools, Schools are out single biggest budget item. Our teachers are among the highest paid , if not the highest, in the country. Our prop 13 has been gotten around very easily by the democrats by simply reappraising a house every year, higher and higher. We pay our fair share of taxes thank you and then some. We need to cut taxes here not raise them

I really doubt you are a republican and if you are you are certainly not a conservative, you sound jealous because you believe your property taxes are higher than ours. That may be but instead of trying to rip us up more you should be doing something about cutting your states taxes.

Prop 13 has nothing to do with any difficulty in our schools budgets. As a matter of fact if you would do a little research you would find that the school budget for this years was increased from last year, the reason the Dems and school unions are screaming is because they wanted even more, they are the only people I know who can get a budget increase and call it a cut!

I don't call a teacher gettting 100,000 grand a year a poor struggling person. If they would start to teach our children real subjects in school here in CA again instead of forcing sex education in kindergarden and making African history mandantory for graduation from high school as berkely has then maybe we might be disposed to raise their salary, although I doubt it. They are making plenty now.

Take your sour grapes about having to pay more property taxes and put them where the sun don't shine. If you want lower taxes don't come to CA because you will be sorely dissapointed!

[Mr. Jeeves]

Teachers should be paid their fair share and yet people in CA are getting away with outdated prop 13 from the 70's, you need to be brought into the 21st century and pay your fair share like we all have to!!

Listen up, Jackson: California schools have a budget of over $30 billion per year, $10 billion of which never leaves Sacramento. If there is a more bloated, overfunded, underperforming, corrupt, leech-like, baboon-infested, Bush-hating, preposterously managed juvenile detention system in this country than the California public schools, I don't know what it is.

Tom Campbell wrote a great column a couple of weeks ago showing exactly how much money is being wasted. Any talk of shoveling more tax dollars into the maw of this society-destroying behemoth is criminally irresponsible. If I were Governor, I would look seriously at shutting the whole mess down and contracting K-12 public education out to the highest bidder. The quality would go way up for half the expense.

[calex59]

You need to pay taxes. Just make them minimal for everyone. Prop 13 allows property taxes to rise only a fixed amount per year. So in any given town, residents can vote for whatever crazy ideas they want, because the property tax increases will only hit new residents.

BS. Try paying 500,000 for a small 3bd 2Ba home and see what your taxes are. CA is among the most taxed state in the Union and plus that we use lotto to funds schools also, as well as a number of taxes other than property taxes for schools. As I said in another post, CA spends 50 percent of it's total budget on schools and gets very piss poor education in return. Our teachers are among the highest paid in the nation. What has it gotten us? Nothing except waste in the school system, boon doggles and money poured down rat holes. Prop 13 has nothing to do with what is going on in CA right now and you people that think so need to do some serious research before you start mouthing off about it.

[doc30]

Fl has the "save our homes' cap that limits property tax increases to 3.5% max per year, provided you qualify for the homestead exemption.

[calex59]

Here, here. These people are talking about something they know nothing about but that doesn't stop them does it. BTW the budget for schools is 50 Billion not 30, exactly half of our budget, which is 100 billion.

[kittymyrib]

As an elementary school teacher in Texas public schools for many years, let me say that we always dreaded getting a transfer in from CA. They were uniformly behind by at least one grade level and often more, which we had to discover through testing and observation because they came to us with no grades! Instead, we were handed a list of educrat psycho-babble that gave us a good indication that the child had not been taught much that could be measured. From my experience, I would say the teachers in CA are overpaid for the results observed.

[Mr. Jeeves]

You're right, it is $50 billion - my typo. About three years ago, it was only $30 billion, though. Nice rate of growth for a public sector. ;)

[Condor51]

***Are you sure you're in the right forum?***

Oh he sure is.
And he's 1000% correct (that's 100% x 10 for those educated in Ca) on that idiotic prop 13 , which could only exist in la-la land where everyone (tax wise) is stuck in the era of tie-die tee shirts.

Also, if it wasn't for prop 13 the BUSINESS taxes wouldn't be so high and they wouldn't be fleeing la-la land in droves - maybe in herds but not droves.

Residential property taxes fund the schools AND the teachers. And trust me I b*tch like h*ll everytime the tax bill comes and I see all the; teacher pension fund this, teacher pension fund that, elementary school district tax this, HS district tax that, Community College tax this, etc. - but and it's a BIG but, we have some of the best schools and teachers in IL.

As such if you're paying 1970's tax rates to fund schools, you are going to get a 1970's quality education.

[Enterprise]

If a person buys a home worth 300,000 dollars they will pay 6,000 dollars a year in property taxes. Older homes which were bought when Prop 13 was passed are still taxed at a lower rate. As those homes sell, the state sees an increase in the revenue. For instance, a home purchased for 55,000 in 1978 might sell for 250,000 now. The taxes then go from approximately 1,100 dollars a year to 5,000 a year. The State of California is collecting huge amounts of money now because of real estate.

[rolling_stone]

Why worry about how we apportion taxes in California? Do you pay 9% income tax? 8% sales tax? High vehicle registration fees? Do you have 19 billion dollars going down the toilet to pay for illegal aliens?

Proposition 13 was passed to put a brake on the spending and ridiculous increased assesments of property taxes. The legislature itself proprosed prop 8 that did not pass while 65% of the voters vcoted for prop 13 and it was quickly found constitutional.

The state has been democratically controlled for years that coninues to this day to tax and spend and waste money.

The CTA teachers union is exremely strong and teachers are well paid and are difficult if impossible to fire for incompetence.

Workers comp rates are probably highest in the nation and wrought with fraudulent claims.

Prison guard union were granted 10,000 hours paid to use for union activities but have used over 100,000 and won in arbtration because our ex governor made a secret oral deal with them.

We the people have been sold out by democrats in oder for them to stay in office.

Without prop 13 a house that that cost 200k five years ago is now worth 500k and taxes would increase over $250 a month. Try having someone on a fixed income absorb that tax. Whatever amount the dems get they will spend, so prop 13 helps limit how much they have to waste. They of course could lower the rate for everyone and eliminate prop 13, but if they eliminated prop 13 they would not lower the rates, or quickly raise them

As Arnold said he has been approached by the dems wanting to "tweak" prop 13. When they got around to explaining what they meant by tweaking, it was basically to eliminate it. I'm glad he is taking a stand and the dems are caving, the people here are taxed to death, and much of that money is wasted.

Take a look at the pensions handed out in San Diego, the city is probably bankrupt. All because too many people are lining their own pockets and incompetence.

a little info on prop 13 including some reasoning:
http://www.caltax.org/research/prop13/prop13.htm

[stopem]

Seriously, thanks to all that have made us (like myself) to see the reality of the taxes and issues in CA more clearly,
I stand corrected.

The person who first posted that on a $700K home he was only paying $100 a month in taxes due to prop 13 is what set me off with my comments, I thought that was the case for everyone out there, now I see I was wrong and am big enough to admit it.

Than Arnold is right in what he is proposing.

[bill1952]

The CTA teachers union is extremely strong and teachers are well paid and are difficult if impossible to fire for incompetence

Yep. As I keep saying, the first step would be to make every state a Right to Work state.

Without that, little can ever be done to break the incredible stranglehold that the unions have over our very lives.

I refuse to let my two children attend public school.

They need to learn science, math,history, and literary skills, not be brainwashed into a Socialist hell of multicultural diversity by a group of rabid Socialists.

[fhlh]

yeah... only Kalifornia's school system must payout to educate illegals.... :\

[sharkhawk]

The problem I have with Prop 13 is that the state is dictating to local govt's their taxing policy. Local Govt's should, and I emphasize should, be the closest to the taxpayer's and allow for the most citizen control of expenditures.

Also, I think Prop 13 is one of the reasons that housing prices are so out of control in CA. If I understand it correctly, property taxes can be adjusted when a house is sold, but not before. Therefore, some older people own a house that might be too large for them, but these houses won't come onto the market, because if they sell and move into a smaller house, they still will end up paying more in property taxes than they were paying on the larger house.

[Koblenz]

Your statement on why older people don't move into smaller houses is exactly right -- because they'd have to pay higher taxes on a smaller house.

I would love for my property taxes never to go up again. Hell, I'd love it if my electric bill, my phone bill, my insurance bill, and every other bill, could only go up 2% per year or whatever Prop 13 allows.

If Prop 13 were to be repealed, then houses that are paying very low property taxes due to the grandfather effect would have their taxes go up substantially. But taxes on houses bought in the last two years or so would go down. Just like rent control.

So for those of you who say that the legislature would just spend the money, well, elect a better legislature. But don't keep a tax that is inherently unfair to all people born after 1965 or so. The reason it's unfair to the younger crowd is because younger people couldn't buy a house in 1978 and then let the rates go up much lower than even inflation since then.

You want an equitable real estate tax scheme that limits what the government can take. Then apply it to EVERY house and property every year. Don't let the taxes go up when it's sold. Because it is totally unfair that two identical houses have different tax rates. If Prop 13 said that the tax rates on all existing houses couldn't go up more than a certain percentage, and that tax rates on all newly built houses had to be comparable, then I'd have no problem with it. But the way it stands now is completely crazy.

[Utilizer]

The last time I looked into the matter, the vast majority of the funds allocated for Education were being paid out to administrative allotments, rather than teacher salaries. The entire educational system with its insane structure that no one has seen fit to overhaul is set up with more administrators and managerial/office positiions than teachers. Add to that incompetant teachers with tenure, administrators who view their positions as miniature fiefdems with the prerequisite hangers-on and 'lifetime' appointments, and school supplies of such laughable quality that the local supermarket has them outclassed, and you, My friend, are barking up the wrong tree.

Let Me ask you this question; ignoring for the moment the other difficulties I just shared with you concerning the current educational system we have to deal with, where specifically can you point Me to a location that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the amount spent on each child for their education is positively linked to the level of education they receive? If the amounts you think of are so important, why then do home-schooled children fare as well as if not better than (arguably) their public-schooled counterparts?

[djreece]

While the rest of us are FORCED to pay for school taxes, here in Texas we pay $200 a month on a $135 home for school taxes you all are paying nothing, so your teachers have to suffer because of that??

Are you sure you are in Texas? You sound like a subject, not like a citizen.

You may also want to check out some facts on how much money California schools and teachers get before continuing that whine.