Posted on 10/22/2006 8:26:35 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Historians depict Gov. Hiram Johnson's successful 1911 crusade to give voters the power to make laws via initiatives as a triumph of idealism. Ninety-five years later, initiatives inspire far more cynicism than idealism among voters – and the batch on the Nov. 7 ballot shows why, according to Union-Tribune editorial writer Chris Reed. He breaks the 13 measures down into three categories.
The good and pretty good PROPOSITION 1A advances the novel notion that the 6 percent state sales tax on gasoline should pay for transportation projects, as voters decided via Proposition 42 in 2002, and not be a kitty to be raided by a Legislature with other dubious priorities. Twice in three years after 42's adoption, lawmakers who had created a budget nightmare with their reckless overspending declared that their irresponsibility had produced an “emergency.” This allowed them to siphon $2.5 billion in transportation funds for use on prison guard salaries and school administrators who oversee bureaucrats who oversee officials who oversee principals.
Meanwhile, California motorists were left to stew. It's not just capacity problems on freeways that need to be widened or completed (or planned and built, whatever the NIMBY whining). It's basic conditions. Just this month, TRIP, a national transportation research group, released a study of the 10 U.S. urban areas with the roughest roads. Five were in California: San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, San Diego and Sacramento.
Bumpy roads are not just an annoyance. They cost a typical motorist hundreds of dollars a year in extra maintenance and fuel bills and speed up vehicle deterioration. This is a de facto tax on anyone who owns a car, and a hugely regressive one.
Against this backdrop, the traditional purist disdain for ballot-box budgeting is both misguided and detached from reality. According to the most recent federal data, California ranks last among the 50 states in per-capita transportation spending. The Legislature not only can't be trusted to address the headaches suggested by this absurd statistic, it routinely makes things worse by siphoning off gas taxes devoted to roads. By making such thievery much more difficult and all but guaranteeing that the $2 billion-plus generated annually by the gas sales tax goes to transportation, Proposition 1A offers voters an unusually direct method of improving their lives.
While they're not in 1A's league, two other measures are defensible – i.e., fairly coherent and/or helpful.
PROPOSITION 1E, which would authorize the sale of $4.1 billion in state bonds to pay for flood protection, is only on the ballot because of Hurricane Katrina's wipeout of New Orleans, which forced California's leaders to stop ignoring a network of levees in the Central Valley in gross disrepair. By some experts' assessment, only New Orleans is more vulnerable to catastrophic flooding than Sacramento.
It shouldn't have taken Katrina to get the state to act. Central Valley floods in 1997 inundated about 300 square miles, causing nearly $2 billion in damage and forcing the evacuation of 150,000 residents. Inexplicably, one of the largest disaster-related evacuations in U.S. history did not create any sense of urgency among state leaders.
Alas, Proposition 1E could be far better. As pointed out by Sen. Tom McClintock, the Legislature's top fiscal watchdog, about 25 percent of the bond proceeds would go to general government costs – not to building things that would still be standing in 30 years, when the bonds are finally retired. That's crazy. There is no more expensive way to finance government operations than through bonds.
PROPOSITION 85, which would require that physicians notify the parents of minors seeking an abortion, qualifies as defensible on completely different grounds than 1E: It doesn't have a hidden agenda, is relatively well-drafted and lends itself to vigorous, honest public debate.
There are powerful arguments to be made both for and against Proposition 85. And should it pass, 85 would, of course, be subject to an immediate court challenge. But unlike so many other controversial initiatives, it is not already plain it would someday be thrown out by a court for obvious flaws. By California standards, that makes 85 well above-average.
The horrible PROPOSITION 86, which would raise taxes on a pack of cigarettes by a whopping $2.60 to fund a 38-page list of beneficiaries, is somberly billed as a sincere effort to fight the scourge of youth smoking. Instead, it is a stealth measure by the hospital industry to both beef up its bottom line – the biggest chunk of the $2 billion-plus it would generate annually would go to hospitals – and, obscurely enough, to increase hospitals' bargaining clout in negotiations with emergency room doctors. Huh? What does that have to do with keeping little Johnny and the other junior high kids from lighting up?
What's particularly aggravating about 86 is that it does, in camouflaged fashion, raise an issue worthy of debate: the craziness of a health care system that funnels the uninsured into emergency rooms. But rather than seek basic reforms, hospitals instead seek to prop up a broken system on the backs of pariah smokers.
PROPOSITION 87, which would impose a tax on in-state oil production until $4 billion had been generated to fund alternative energy programs, is simultaneously incoherent and profoundly cynical. Its TV ads offer the bizarre argument that raising taxes on California oil would somehow bring down the price of gasoline and lessen our dependence on foreign oil, when common sense says it would do the opposite.
Meanwhile, media are more interested in the fact that 87 is being pushed with the benefit of a staggering $40 million donation from a louche, starlet-impregnating Hollywood mogul named Steve Bing than the fact the measure was initially bankrolled by a Silicon Valley tycoon (Vinod Khosla) who expects to garner a big chunk of the $4 billion it would generate.
On a normal ballot, Proposition 87 would qualify as the worst of the worst. This is not a normal ballot – because
PROPOSITION 89, which would set up an elaborate system of public financing for elections, is an odious measure whose ultimate effect would be to leave state taxpayers open to endless assault.
The measure is nominally an idealistic attempt to limit the influence of money on public policy. However, as admitted in an internal document from the initiative's sponsor – the California Nurses Association – 89's real goal is to bring socialized medicine to the Golden State via initiative. This would be accomplished with a provision limiting corporate, but not union, contributions to initiative campaigns.
Few would dispute that a lot of corporate behavior is disturbing. But when it comes to fighting higher taxes, big business is far and away the strongest ally of California taxpayers. If the nurses union – led by radical Teamsters veteran Rose Ann DeMoro – succeeds in changing the state's balance of political power, watch out. You could count on a parade of deceptively packaged initiatives raising or imposing taxes on income, homes, cars, cable TV, fast food, sunbathing – you name it. The unions and the trial lawyers and the do-gooders would be coming after your wallet – all thanks to a power-grab ballot scam that preposterously bills itself as the Mother Teresa of initiatives.
The merely bad PROPOSITION 1B, the transportation-focused $19.9 billion centerpiece of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's infrastructure bond package, is billed as a godsend for a state in desperate need of improving its highways, roads and ports. It is more properly seen as a grab bag of programs and projects whose main Big Idea is the factually bereft assertion that mass transit is the key to reducing congestion in a state defined by sprawl. If that's not bad enough, a Reason Foundation study suggests less than half of 1B funds would actually go to infrastructure. The last thing a state that is one recession away from a fiscal crisis needs is nearly $20 billion more in long-term debt for an “infrastructure bond” that's not primarily about infrastructure.
PROPOSITION 1C, the $2.85 billion low-income and affordable housing bond, is fresh confirmation that government housing policy is a bastion of defiance and ignorance. Every day in thousands of ways, we see the basic laws of supply and demand work their rational, result-producing magic. It could not be more obvious that ending the insane revenue incentives that cities have to discourage construction of housing and easing land-use rules is the path toward more and thus, duh, cheaper housing. Instead, we keep making the same mistakes over and over, and yet are surprised anew when the usual smorgasbord of subsidies, grants and edicts to developers doesn't reduce the problem.
PROPOSITION 1D, the education-focused $10.4 billion bond, amounts to Schwarzenegger's payoff to teachers union-beholden Democrats for putting 1B and 1E on the ballot. Thanks largely to a 2000 initiative making it easier for school districts to approve bonds, $41 billion in local measures have passed in recent years. This proposition would throw billions more at districts, without even giving priority to needs of the fastest-growing. Similar to 1B and 1C, only about than half the proceeds would actually go to infrastructure.
PROPOSITION 83, which would toughen penalties on and add new post-prison restrictions for sex offenders, is a well-meaning but costly mess. It would require global-positioning devices be attached to thousands of felons so they could be tracked at an eventual cost of $100 million per year, even though only a relative handful are high risk. States with similar rules limiting where sex offenders can live say they have had the dangerous effect of prompting the offenders to move to less populated areas with fewer police and counseling services.
PROPOSITION 84, which would authorize the issuance of $5.4 billion in bonds to pay for a collection of water projects of varying merits, amounts to an elaborate con job. Special interests funded the petition campaign for a bond measure that would reward them with multimillion-dollar projects, then pretend their only goal is to protect drinking water. Sorry, “pay to play” politics is odious even when it's practiced by groups with “conservancy” in their titles.
PROPOSITION 88, which would create a statewide $50-per-parcel property tax to generate about $450 million more a year for schools, is best described as ill-considered. It has no provisions for its proceeds to be shared fairly and is deeply regressive. Considering the relatively small sum it would generate, it's reasonable to wonder if 88's real goal is opening the door to a future assault on Proposition 13 protections against sharp increases in property taxes
PROPOSITION 90, which would both protect and increase the rights of private property owners, is another well-meaning mess. California badly needs eminent domain reform, thanks to the thousands of local officials who have employed bogus “blight” claims to justify property seizures. But 90 goes far beyond limiting eminent domain to saying that the government must compensate property owners any time any government decision affects property values. The language's vagueness invites endless litigation. This is anarchy masquerading as libertarianism.
What would Hiram do?
Of course, the initiative process in general has long since become a masquerade. Conceived as a way for the public to do an end run around the special interests in Sacramento, it is now far more often used as a way for the special interests to do an end run around the public interest. So come Nov. 7, honor the memory of Hiram Johnson – by voting no almost across the board.
Direct democracy, not cheap, not cheap at all.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
It gets harder and harder every year to drag myself to the voting booth to vote against these things, when I know that the minority of people who actually bother to vote will approve them anyway. On the rare occasion a proposition pops up that is worthy of a yes vote, it gets swatted down by the courts anyway...it's depressing!
Democracy is a flawed system. It is a form of totalitarianism that uses the moral authority of vox populi to justify its legitimacy.
It wasn't clear in my post, but I agree with you.
Ill drafted/knee jerk reaction legislation approved by the uninformed passions of the mob. Hmmm. Tyranny of the Majority here we come.
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