Tag Archives: Prop. 1A

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Resolutions Committee Recommends Yes on All Propositions on May 19 Ballot

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In the Resolutions Committee meeting here in Sacramento, the committee approved a “Yes” vote for all the measures on the May 19 ballot.  The discussion was fairly revealing and typical of what I’ve seen around the state.  The committee members, almost to a man except for Calitics’ own Brian Leubitz, argued that the ballot measures reflected the best that the legislature could do, and spun tales about the consequences of failure.  Out in the audience, the crowd loudly cheered any time this official narrative was challenged by remarking on the consequences of success, for example the spending cap that would ratchet down state services permanently.  My favorite part was when someone, arguing for 1D, said that “if we don’t pass this, children will suffer painful cuts.”  Which of course is the POINT of 1D.  “We have to think of the children when we cut programs for children!” was the basic message.

Once again, we see the grassroots/establishment divide, where the legislature and their compatriots in learned helplessness wail about tales of woe while urging a Yes vote on measures that would make things demonstrably worse in the state.  We’ve gone through this over and over again, so the fact that the resolutions committee supported the measures doesn’t surprise.  However, the strength of the opposition in the room tells me that something may occur on the floor on Sunday.

I would guess that the establishment will try to push the entire package through, and since the only real institutional opposition is on 1A, there will be an effort to pull 1A from the consent calendar.  I think it’s genuinely up for question as to whether or not it was successful, which is interesting in and of itself.

More later…  

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Shorter Arnold: It’d Be A Lot Easier If This Were A Dictatorship… As Long As I’m The Dictator

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This is simply an incredible performance by Der Governator, captured by Josh Richman:

The governor went on a bit of a tirade against dissent, first talking smack about U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger’s 2007 order reducing the operation of pumps in the Delta to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, then about a three-federal-judge panel’s moves toward ordering the release of certain inmates to reduce California’s chronic and unconstitutional prison overcrowding, and then about Clark Kelso, the receiver empowered by a federal judge to demand $8 billion from the state to correct unconstitutional, decades-long underfunding prison health care.

“It’s not productive for the state to have so many chefs in the kitchen,” the governor grumped. “Those are the kinds of things that make it very difficult.”

But his ire wasn’t just directed at the federal courts. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, he said, opposes him on fiscal policy at every turn, he said: “He’s running for Congress now, so that’s good.”

And he cited state Controller John Chiang’s and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s opposition to his plans to cut state salaries last year. “How does a coach win a basketball game when all of the players are running off in different directions?” Schwarzenegger asked.

Maybe that’s why he’s so hot for Proposition 1A, which would give the governor new authority to unilaterally reduce some spending for state operations and capital outlay and eliminate some cost-of-living increases, all without legislative approval – shoo, you pesky compromises; begone, consensus! Also, maybe he’s forgetting that these federal judges’ job is to hold California to its obligations under federal law and the U.S. Constitution, and that the Democratic statewide elected officials he’s knocking are with this state’s majority party while he’s in the minority.

Now you tell me that this Governor is a good-faith operator when he seeks to grab additional executive power without legislative oversight.  He’s an actor used to getting his way because he has the biggest trailer on the set.  And he has little use for those measly checks and balances.  It’s all so very American.  So why not just get rid of them?

Only problem for Mr. Whiny Ass Titty Baby, nobody in the state likes him and they consider him to be a terrible steward of government.  That’s why they’re rejecting his efforts to hamstring the state even further.

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Burton Out-One-Lines The One-Liners

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Budget Reform Now group released their first TV ad yesterday, full of buzzwords and bullet points (“Hold the politicians accountable!”) and admitting that the package includes a “spending limit,” which is certainly further than the Democratic legislative leadership has been willing to go.  But as one-line summations of the election goes, you can’t get much better than future chair of the CDP John Burton, who took a pass on giving his specific voting choices for May 19, but who uttered this classic quip:

In any case, pressed on the question of whether his lifelong bleeding heart liberalism would allow him to back some of the permanent budget cuts that would result if Prop. 1A is passed, Mr. Almost Chairman responded with a classic Burtonism:

“I think when it’s all over, the ones getting fucked will be the poor people.”

Now, I could give you the charts showing how spending will be forced down and payments to the reserve fund mandated even in bad budget years, or offer the example of TABOR’s spending cap in Colorado, which was disastrous.  And I could follow you through the contours of this bad public policy and how it does nothing to relieve the structural problems that can get California out of the ditch.  But I cannot improve upon that line.  I’ve been critical of Burton in the past, based on the need for forward-thinking strategies at the CDP, but I’ve never questioned his liberalism.  And you have to give him the credit for this, er, bon mot.

Now who will have the guts to put it on a mailer?

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SEIU Money Drops Into No on 1A

The SEIU donated $500,000 to the No on 1A campaign, the first truly major expenditure by any group against the ballot measures on May 19.  The No on 1A campaign now hold about $1 million in their bank account.  While this is dwarfed by the money dumped into the Yes campaign by, among other groups, the CTA, billionaires like Jerry Perenchio, and Chevron, given the attitudes of the electorate even a little money on the No side could be enough to stop the onslaught and tip these measures.  Politicos understand this fairly well:

“It just got a lot harder,” said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a former Republican strategist.

“The biggest advantage the proponents have had all along is the lack of a well-funded opposition,” Schnur said. “Historically, you don’t need to outspend ballot measures to beat them, and in a low-turnout election this is a decent amount of money.” […]

“Right now there’s a tremendous tendency to reject anything out of Sacramento,” said Republican strategist Dave Gilliard.

Good for the SacBee, by the way, for pointing out that Prop. 1A “has a long-term impact and would not directly alter the budget until 2011.”

I’ve been speaking at a lot of grassroots Democratic groups against these measures, purely on the public policy merits, and the overriding sentiment I’m seeing out there lines up with what Dave Gilliard says there.  The disconnect between the establishment and the grassroots is truly striking.  People don’t feel like their concerns have been met, either this year or for the last thirty, really.  They see another layer of budget dysfunction forced upon the voters that fails to get at the structural problems.  And now, they’re starting to see their voices manifested with action, as well as the mother’s milk of California politics, money.

Budget

Be Afraid, Yacht Party, Be Very Afraid

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In a last-ditch and ultimately futile attempt to get the Republicans to support the May 19 ballot measures, Yacht Party leader in the Assembly Mike Villines played the majority vote card.

One fear of GOP lawmakers surrounding the May 19 special election is that should the ballot measures fail, Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could go around them and simply swap certain taxes for fees and raise revenues without their votes […]

“I know it’s counterintuitive, but by coming to the table and negotiating, we saved the two-thirds protection,” Villines said as the California Republican Party opposed the measures. “Mark my word, I believe that if these initiatives don’t go through, you will see a majority-vote budget, you will see it signed and you will see the defense of taxpayers in this state disappear.”

Mike, you say that like majority rule is a bad thing.

Unfortunately I don’t share the optimism of Asm. Villines about the backbone of the Democratic Party to go ahead and fill the budget gap with a work-around fee increase.  I had the opportunity to share the stage with a couple members of the legislature this weekend to debate the special election, and in particular, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez seemed especially pessimistic on the majority vote option.  He basically said that the lawyers advising the legislature questions the legality of the effort and that if the ballot measures fail, “we will have a cuts-only budget.”  He even went so far as to identify particular cuts that have already been discussed, all affecting the usual suspects – the elderly, the blind, the IHSS patients, kids without health care, CalWorks members, etc.  So that’s the May 20th strategy that the legislature is teeing up.

Now, maybe it’s easier to ramp up the fear by playing up this disaster scenario in the event of the failure of the ballot measures.  But I definitely expressed disappointment that the Majority Leader was foreclosing on an option which the nonpartisan Legislative Counsel found perfectly legal.  I see no need to shut down creative solutions to the budget problem, especially when they can offer a glimpse into how a working government can function in a post-two-thirds environment.  Even moderates and conservatives understand that the Yacht Party has hijacked the state and irresponsibly used their chokehold on legislative rules to force failed solutions and drive California into a fiscal ditch.  The point is that this is coming, or at least it ought to be, whether by a work-around or ballot initiative, and we can end this hostage situation that Republicans have forced upon us for the last thirty years.  To their credit, everyone in the legislature that I’ve talked to wants to move forward on repealing two-thirds.

Sen. Florez and I had a lot else to discuss in our debate (including his admission that “if you want to vote No on 1F, go ahead,” which was a bit off the reservation), including the continued debate over the state spending cap, Prop. 1A (or a spending constraint, if you prefer, but certainly not anything like the inoffensive tweak that supporters make it out to be).  In the end, the West Los Angeles Democratic Club took no position on anything but No on 1E, and PDA, where I also spoke this weekend, voted NO on all the ballot measures.

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Don’t Fall For The Assumed Ubiquity Of The Yacht Party Mentality

That wise Mr. Skelton intones that Prop. 1A is not “a sneaky trick to raise taxes.”  I agree.  It’s a sneaky trick to drown government in a bathtub.  

We touched yesterday on this bigger concern about the lessons that may be learned from the special election battle.  It is clear that those anti-tax forces on the right will take credit if the ballot measures, particularly 1A, are defeated, saying that this is proof that California has had enough and the vote signals the rise of the teabaggers.  That actually would be a dangerous lesson, mainly because it’s not true, and it’s part and parcel of the vast disinformation around taxes that the cynical forces on the right spare no expense in delivering to the public.

Low-, not high-, income Californians pay the largest share of their income in state and local taxes. Here’s an updated analysis of data we’ve blogged about before that takes into account the temporary tax increase included as part of the February budget agreement.

California is a moderate, not high, tax state when all state and local taxes and fees are taken into account.  This results from the fact that California has moderately high state taxes, but low local property taxes due to the impact of Proposition 13 on local property tax collections.

High-income Californians aren’t leaving the state due to higher taxes. In fact, the number of millionaire taxpayers is growing at a rate that far exceeds the increase in the number of personal income taxpayers as a whole.

Over the past 15 years, lawmakers have enacted tax cuts that will cost the state nearly $12 billion in 2008-09. That’s a larger loss than the $11.0 billion 2009-10 temporary increase in state tax revenues included in the February budget agreement.

Moreover, while the tax increases included in the budget are all temporary, regardless of the outcome of the May election, the September 2008 and February 2009 budget agreements included massive corporate tax cuts that are permanent and that will reduce state revenues by approximately $2.5 billion per year when fully implemented.

Saying that tax policy is just plain wacky and inconsistent neglects these plain facts – that the past thirty years of the conservative veto have tilted tax policy, and most everything else, in a very rightward direction.

In actuality, we are seeing a grassroots/establishment divide, where the grassroots in the Democratic Party would like to see some leadership instead of another layer of failed solutions.  Unfortunately, because the voices on the right are so loud in their opposition, and because advocates of the special elections would rather frame themselves in opposition to the right, the right is well-positioned to take credit for the defeat of these measures, should that happen.  When that’s simply not the lesson that ought to be learned.

The resultant fear is that the feckless Democratic leadership takes that lesson, and then cowers from going down the road of enacting the real structural reforms that represent the only solution possible to lift us from this perpetual disaster.  That would be catastrophically wrong.  Don’t assume from a short-term setback that the Yacht Party mentality runs the state.  People will pay for taxes in exchange for services; that was proven in 2005 and it’s just as true today.  Californians elect their leaders to function and yet the structure of government denies them.  Dismantle that barrier, and restore democracy to the state.

Budget

LACDP Doesn’t Bow To Fear

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The Los Angeles County Democratic Party held their endorsement meeting for the May 19 special election yesterday.  The Yes side brought out all the big guns to talk up Prop. 1A: four State Senators, including President Pro Tem Steinberg, Attorney General candidate Ted Lieu, State Superintendent for Public Instruction candidate Gloria Romero and Lieutenant Governor candidate Dean Florez.  The No side had two union members from the SEIU and the California Faculty Association and a 2008 Assembly candidate. (UPDATE: It was Carol Liu, not Ted Lieu.)

And the LACDP went neutral.

It’s quite remarkable to see practically the entire establishment of the Democratic Party selling fear and so few people buying.  My fear is that they will chalk up their failure to the typical right-wing anti-tax bias, when the real indictment here is a failure to lead, to articulate an actual solution instead of the same nonsense that does nothing to effect structural reform.  The first ads for 1A and 1B only have one unequivocally true statement in them – that the budget is “A total mess, and we all know it.”  And yet the prescription for solving the mess is nothing more than making people afraid of some amorphously bigger mess, while neglecting the clear disaster that would arrive with the passage of a spending cap.

This is not about an aversion to two years’ worth of sales taxes.  It’s about an aversion to more demonstrably awful solutions to layer onto an already dysfunctional system.  Maybe instead of dictating to their constituents, the leadership in Sacramento could bother to listen to them.

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SEIU, Other Top Unions Oppose Prop. 1A

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I touched on this in Quick Hits, but Kevin Yamamura has now followed up.  The SEIU state council, representing 700,000 workers in the state, has teamed with two other unions to oppose Prop. 1A.

Service Employees International Union’s California State Council, which says it represents 700,000 workers, has teamed up with the California Faculty Association and the California Federation of Teachers to form a committee opposing Proposition 1A. The ballot measure would limit state spending in good fiscal years, diverting money to a “rainy-day fund.” But it also would extend $16 billion worth of temporary tax increases on sales, income and vehicles to 2013.

“Prop 1A won’t be able to do what its supporters claim,” said Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, in a statement. “This constitutional amendment, supported by the governor and legislators was developed with no public scrutiny and won’t stop the budget chaos. Once voters read this proposal with their own eyes, they will see that it is flawed and overly complicated, and will give extraordinary new and unrestricted power to the governor and his political appointees, with no checks and balances.”

The response from Budget Reform Now, the Governor’s ad hoc group supporting the measures, is unintentionally hilarious, because it frames once again with the same tired doomsaying rhetoric:

“This is disappointing since those who we hurt the most should Propositions 1A thru 1F not pass will be teachers, schools and the hard-working families of SEIU,” said Julie Soderlund, spokeswoman for Budget Reform Now, proponents of the six budget-related ballot measures. “During these tough economic times, it is unfair to do anything that will likely cost many people their jobs.”

Way to advocate for your position, guys.

…Meanwhile, Arnold can’t leave his house to advocate for the ballot measures because everybody hates him.  Boy, Misters Brown, Newsom, and Villaraigosa, you’ve all really hitched your wagon to a star.  Way to go.

Environment, Jerry Brown

More Fear From Establishment Special Election Supporters

Jerry Brown has become the last potential gubernatorial candidate to make a view on one of the propositions on May 19, which is part of a pattern, as Brown has studiously tried to avoid giving any legitimate opinion whatsoever throughout the winter and spring.  He supports Prop. 1A, not because he can advocate for its substance, but because it represented a compromise:

The 2010 contender for governor was tepid in his endorsement of the measure, but credited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders for their effort in crafting a compromise: “The budget thing is complicated and it is daunting,” he said. “They tried . . . and did the best they could to come up with something.”

“You can’t make the perfect the enemy of the possible,” Brown told calbuzz.

It’s a ringing endorsement.  And I’m thrilled that the leading candidate for Governor finds the budget “daunting” – very reassuring.  In addition, he declined to take a position on the other 5 measures because “I have to read them.”  And let’s be clear that only John Garamendi, among Democratic hopefuls, opposes Prop. 1A.  Maybe he read it.

The League of Conservation Voters, similiarly, endorsed the special election ballot measures without telling voters what the propositions would do, but with a healthy amount of fear.

Failure of these measures would open up a gaping hole in the budget and leave critical protections for our health, safety, and prosperous future at great risk […] The measures are not perfect, but they are our best option to protect critical funding for essential environmental, public health, and education services […] We need all of these props to pass, or California will lose more than $23 billion over the next four fiscal years-forcing billions upon billions in deeper cuts to education and other popular services […] When the state was near a complete shutdown this February, a small minority of legislators tried to use the budget meltdown to extract policy concessions on some of California’s most fundamental environmental protections in exchange for budget votes. Thanks to your help, we were able to fight back and defeat the most significant proposed rollbacks. If the Propositions fail in May, the budget deficit for next year will add an additional $6 billion dollars in cuts to essential programs to an already impossible budget.

That’s not even true on the merits.  The Governor and the Yacht Party GOT those concessions on environmental protections, exacting delays in regulating diesel pollution, to use just one example of the many concessions.  The CLCV is shading the truth and appealing to fear.

Calitics will have their special election ballot endorsements early this week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, education, Health Care

Arnold Schwarzenegger Presents: Apocalypto (UPDATED)

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I’m telling you, this special election campaign resembles the Bush-Cheney “9-11 9-11 9-11 Terrist comin’ to kill you in your beds!!!!1!” 2004 campaign more with each passing day:

As he launched a radio ad campaign Tuesday for his budget measures on the May 19 ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said failure to approve the package would worsen the state’s already-dire fiscal crisis.

“If they don’t pass, we will be facing a $50 billion problem,” Schwarzenegger said at a meeting with Daily News editors and reporters. “It will mean massive cuts in education, hospitals, prisons. These are things people don’t want to see cut.”

$50 billion.  How does the Governor arrive at that figure?  He includes $16 billion dollars for the two years of regressive taxes that would be washed out in 2012 and 2013 if Prop. 1A fails.  He includes an expected lawsuit from education interests to force payment of $9 billion in raided Prop. 98 funds if 1B fails.  He includes the $6 billion that would not fill budget gaps from the last budget if Prop. 1C-1E fail.  And then… I don’t know, that’s only $31 billion, I guess $50 billion sounds like a nice big number.

You can put it on posters!

This is not the first time the Governor has flat-out made up numbers to win an election.  That was his road to victory in 2006, when he lied about Phil Angelides’ tax programs.  The True Lies are back, and sadly I don’t expect a soul to call him on it.

Let’s partially accept the Governor’s premise and agree that we would have a deficit caused by cutting two years’ worth of tax increases in 2012 and 2013.  Is he suggesting that the legislature would be barred from acting on anything for 3-4 years until that future problem arises?  He might as well say we have a $200 billion dollar problem, extrapolating out to 2050.  

The “doomsday scenario” only exists if you accept the premise of the conservative veto.  Only then does California risk going over the cliff.  A responsible, functional legislature that has the ability to reflect the will of the people of the state is in no danger, which is why the only reforms anyone should be voting for are the full repeal of the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes.

Somehow the Governor feels that ratcheting down services and leaving behind millions of Californians is the “responsible” course.  Right now we’re at the bottom of per capita spending in almost every major category – 44th in health care, 47th in per-pupil education spending, dead last in highway spending and 46th in capital investment among all states.  Heck, the state can’t even get people their unemployment checks in a timely fashion.  The so-called “responsible” course has utterly failed, and the Governor and his allies want to constrict this pitiful investment even more.

I will quickly tire of these nonsense efforts to scare people into backing another layer of restriction onto an already failed budget process.  Hopefully the voters feel the same way.

UPDATE: This is amazing.  Shane Goldmacher queries the Governor’s spokesman on where the hell Arnold came up with the $50 billion dollar figure, and look at the response:

“He was speaking hypothetically,” said spokesman Aaron McLear. “His point was if we don’t reform our budget system then we’ll be right back where we were with that huge budget deficit.”

I’m sure he’ll continue to “speak hypothetically” in the most hyperbolic way possible.  Some would call this manner of speaking, um, “lying.”