The Bay Area Council has been promoting an effort to convene a constitutional convention, through legislation or through initiative. Their most recent draft of the language has been spreading around, and suffice it to say there are some problems:
The main group advocating for an overhaul of California’s constitution is circulating draft initiative language that would bar a constitutional convention from changing the property tax portions of Proposition 13.
The 2,000 word draft document has been distributed to numerous stakeholders and experts by the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based business group that has been outspoken in calling for an overhaul of the state’s governing document.
A spokesman for the group, John Grubb, said the document is still going through a revision process. But he does not expect the language about Prop. 13 and property taxes to change. (CapWeekly 6/22/09)
If we are to truly reform California, then let’s cut the bullshit. There should be no sacred cows. We need to build a system of governance built truly from the ground up, or it becomes unclear whether the project is worth doing at all. If we are going to have poison pills from our current constitution built in from Day 1, what hope do we really have of building a workable system?
The BAC’s reasoning is pretty traditional stuff really, they are worried of Howard Jarvis’ ghost and a few “senior groups.” If these supposed senior groups were really looking out for seniors, they would join the California Alliance for Retired Americans in calling for a fair and just budget that provides for services for the elderly, not a system that merely traffics in truism in how seniors are terrified of losing their homes.
The fact is Prop 13 was never about seniors losing their homes, it was merely a powerful political ploy to lower the taxes of corporations. And that is precisely what it has done. Howard Jarvis himself was before the Prop 13 extravaganza, just another apartment owners’ group attack dog. Prop 13 was really pure genius on the apartment and commercial property owners’ part. They get to use shell games and transfer their properties in whatever way they want, and never have to reassess their property. It’s a pretty slick little system, and it is why most their is a growing movement to fix prop 13. In fact, San Francisco’s assessor-recorder, Phil Ting, is pushing a Close the Loophole effort to split the commercial and residential property tax rolls.
But the Bay Area Council really can’t be treated as some savior group. It’s not some creature of the grassroots, it is merely an organization of large bay are companies. And that they want to preserve Prop 13, shouldn’t really be all that shocking. But if progressives are going to work on this effort, we must work to ensure that all options really on the table. Cut the third rail fears and just work from the ground up. Otherwise, it might just be more wise to pursue other avenues to reform.
It’s good to know that the BAC isn’t to be trusted. Not surprising either, since I would guess that they have members who will “suffer” if prop 13 is changed.
But how does the “grassroots” compete? These business organizations have the capacity to raise money and hire lawyers to write their proposals out so they can be evaluated and voted on by the group.
But as I have watched, and participated in, the pitchfork rasing of the grassroots in the blogosphere, I see a totally disjointed, disorganized and non-funded effort to just to be heard. Meanwhile all the groups that do exist and have organization, Moveon, Courage Campaign, Healthcare not Warfare, DFA, OFA, and so on and so on. They all are raising money for different issues – maybe they are all realated, but they not are coordinated, and a thousand voices crying out for 100 different things is just movie walla compared the trumpet blare of a single, large, well funded group calling out for one thing.
How do WE write drafts of proposals to reform CA government? How does the grassroots coordinate it’s various interest groups to align to one purpose (granted a constitutional convention might fulfill all their needs at once.) How do we raise the money and decide how it gets spent?
I do not think that prop 13 can be taken away. Yes, it is arbitrary, but for real, property values, for whatever reason, in some metro areas in L.A. are so high that there is simply no way to afford a 1.25% annual tax on them.
I think someone from the left has to say that personal residences are off limits. Then, prop 13 will be reformed for commercial properties. That is the bargain that may work .
I’m a huge supporter of a Constitutional Convention, but this is junk.
We need a real convention — everything on the table — and a huge number of delegates.
… if ‘everything is on the table’ that includes marriage definition, medicinal marijuana, and water use.
I agree that Prop. 13 should be considered, and I wholeheartedly agree that if a progressive advocate segregates residential from commercial property it could be done.
But please remember than Constitutional reform is a two-way street…
I can’t recall anybody on the Left ever mistaking the Bay Area Council or California Forward for anything other than what they are: the Voice of the California Establishment.
They are also very well organized, very well funded, and very far ahead of the game when it comes to the question of “what to do” about California’s governance nightmare and collapse.
They’ve been working on this for a long time, they see their opportunity, you bet they’re gonna pounce.
More than likely, they — and the Parsky Commission — are going to get just about everything they want, within a fairly limited timeframe, too.
The Grassroots Progressives are still at the starting block arguing over something they think is critically important RIGHT NOW but which probably won’t matter in a few minutes….
So it goes.
This Crisis is nothing new. It’s been around quite a long time now, heading into its second year as an Absolute Crisis, but with a whole lot of precursors and foreshadowing. We’ve known for ages that the way our Constitution is set up doesn’t work, that the intiative process has long been corrupted and co-opted by a bunch of well-funded crackpots and conmen, that the rickety construct of government and its Byzantine labyrinth of agencies and funding mechanisms is on the verge of collapse and is in desperate need of Reform — if not Revolution.
Seems to me that the Bay Area Council and California Forward are so far ahead of this game that it’s essentially too late for a Grassroots Progressive Movement to have more than a marginal effect — if any at all — on the Reform that is coming.
One way or another, we will get a New Constitution, and it will be written by and will serve the California Establishment first and foremost; it will serve to put everyone else on notice… toe the line or get the hell out.
Taxation will be more broadly based, falling far more heavily on the poor, the working class and the middle professional classes. Corporations and the rich will come very close to getting their dream come true: an end to their taxation.
Property taxes will not be significantly adjusted, and commercial properties will continue to receive extraordinary taxation benefits.
California’s social services and public education will be “reformed” dramatically. Some will say “destroyed.”
And so forth.
All this and more is going to happen in part because Progressives once again are not prepared and have little more than an outline of a Reform Program of their own.