Californians thinking that we will have to wait until November 2010 and get a single shot to put a dent in the 2/3 rule may be in for a pleasant surprise if AD-11 Assemblymember Tom Torlakson gets his way.
My friend and fellow opponent of Props 1A-1F Sean Keenan, President of the Ojai Valley Democrats, was on our weekly “Reality Check” segment on KVTA 1520 in Ventura County today; among other things, we discussed Torlakson’s bills AB 267 and ACA 10.
AB 267 would authorize school districts to form education finance districts for the purpose of raising revenue for local schools. Under the measure, each education finance district must be comprised of three or more neighboring school districts. The districts would be authorized to place a parcel tax on the ballot for voter approval provided that they agree on the division and expenditure of the revenues raised by the tax. ACA 10 is a companion constitutional amendment measure to AB 267 which would allow Education Finance Districts to levy a local parcel tax with a majority vote instead of the current two-thirds vote required for single local school districts. Both measures have passed out of the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Allowing majority vote by the people for tax increases is a no-brainer: if people want to increase revenues for the common good and vote to do so, they should be allowed to do so. Ater all, as I’ve said before, we should be allowed as informed citizens to buy the government we want. It’s one thing for Republicans to argue about majority rule on revenue enhancements enacted by elected officials; it’s quite another to disallow the voters themselves to choose to raise their own taxes to benefit their own schools. Indeed, as Mr. Keenan said on the radio today, the voters of Ojai had chosen to levy just such an increase to benefit local schools with 65% approval, but failed to clear the insane 66.67% threshold needed for a 2/3 majority. Who needs schools, anyway?
Torlakson’s office states that the reason for creating the education finance districts comprised of multiple school districts in AB 267 is to help ensure that poorer school districts are not left out of parcel tax levies instituted by wealthier surrounding districts; additional measures to ensure this outcome would be added if it were discovered that wealthy communities were circumventing the intent of the law (thanks to Sean Mykael for relaying this info).
AB 267 is likely to pass through the legislature; it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the Hoovernator would veto the measure.
ACA 10, on the other hand, faces an almost impossible uphill battle: as a proposed constitutional amendment, it would require 2/3 of both the Assembly and the State Senate just to allow the measure to come before the voters, either in June 2010 or later in November. Can there be any doubt as to how the anti-democratic (in every sense of the word) Yacht Party will vote on this one? In an irony that will surprise no one, a 2/3 rule at the state level will no doubt prevent a remedy to the 2/3 at the local level.
In an environment where convincing voters of the need to do away with 2/3 at a state legislative level may be a challenge even given the budget crisis, convincing voters that they themselves should be allowed to vote on certain revenue increases without the onerous burden of 2/3 could be a significantly easier task.
Still, it will almost certainly require bypassing the legislature and moving to a signature-gathering effort and petition drive in order to put this commonsense change on the ballot. It will be interesting to see what kind of action this idea receives from the CTA and other motivated parties.