so what do you think will happen should this come about?
(be sure to click on the comments...btw, being the home of technology, you'd think CA would have something a just little bit more up to date than a THIRTY YEAR OLD computer system)
sfgate.com
Voters may be asked to end state budget impasse
John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, January 19, 2009
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(01-18) 19:59 PST -- If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls a special election this year, California voters might be forced to make the hard choices on the budget and taxes that the Legislature won't.
State Controller John Chiang said in an interview that he would support putting a tax increase package to voters in an effort to break the long-running legislative stalemate that has left California with a $42 billion deficit and weeks away from delaying refunds to taxpayers and grants to college students and low-income and disabled residents.
If Republicans and Democrats can't compromise on budget cuts and tax increases, "they may at least be able to agree to let voters make a choice," Chiang told The Chronicle.
Mac Taylor, the state's new legislative analyst, made a similar suggestion earlier this month in a critique of the governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year ending in mid-2010. A package of tax increases proposed by the Democrats and vetoed by the governor could go on the ballot for the voters to decide, he wrote.
"If there were members who didn't want to vote on a tax increase but were willing to allow the voters to make a choice, this could break up the logjam," Taylor said in an interview.
Such a package could be presented to voters as early as April.
The Democrats' $9 billion in revenue increases involves a complicated plan to boost the tax on gasoline, add a new oil severance tax and increase the sales tax and income tax. Schwarzenegger has countered with his own oil tax, a temporary 1 1/2-cent sales tax hike and a nickel-a-drink boost in the tax on alcohol.
Republicans in the Assembly and the state Senate have refused to back any tax increases. But they haven't ruled out allowing a public vote on a tax increase, especially if it was linked to a future state spending limit Schwarzenegger and GOP lawmakers have long favored.
But dumping the state's fiscal problems on voters isn't a real solution, said Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan State Budget Project.
"Mechanically, it could work, but it would be an admission of failure by the Legislature," she said. "The state needs less ballot-box budgeting, not more."
Legislative leaders and the governor won't say whether a ballot-box tax proposal is being considered as a possible compromise. But they agree that "all options are on the table."
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), and state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, say an agreement between the Legislature and the governor is the best way to deal with the budget problem, at least for now.
Lottery plan on ballot
Voters already will have some say on California's budget. The Legislature last year approved Schwarzenegger's plan to borrow $5 billion against future state lottery earnings, but voters must approve the changes because the lottery was created as a ballot initiative.
Schwarzenegger also wants to redirect money from a pair of other initiatives - 1998's Proposition 10 tobacco tax and 2004's Prop. 63 tax for mental health services - a move that also would require voter approval.
Californians probably wouldn't mind the extra work. A December survey by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that 62 percent of voters were either very or somewhat happy to cast ballots on 12 measures in November's election.
Voters also were convinced they could do a better job than Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, according to the survey. Nearly two-thirds disapproved of the way the governor and the Legislature worked together on public policy, while 52 percent had a least some trust and confidence in voters' ability to make policy at the ballot box.
Just 37 percent had that same trust in the abilities of their elected officials.
Even anti-tax groups aren't entirely opposed to letting the public decide on the best way to close the state's budget gap.
"Organizationally, we like direct democracy, since we never would have had Prop. 13 without it," said Jon Coupal, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a group named for the man behind the 1978 initiative that limited property tax rates in the state. "If you coupled a tax increase with something like a hard cap on spending, that could be something people could make a decision about."
But getting a tax measure on the ballot is only half the battle. If it doesn't pass, it's no help to the state budget.
"People don't like taxes that affect them directly, like a gas tax or an income tax" said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. "They don't mind taxes on tobacco, drinking, rich people and things like that."
Voters also have been willing to approve taxes that are directly linked with projects they approve of, such as parks, school construction and road projects. Convincing them to support a tax to raise money that would be used to pay workers' salaries, bond payments, welfare checks and other state obligations would be much harder.
Conservatives' concern
Coupal's concern, and that of many other conservatives, is that if a tax increase was placed on the ballot, any opposition could be steamrolled by a multimillion-dollar political campaign bankrolled by liberal organizations, labor unions and education groups.
On the other side, Democrats and their allies are worried that conservative attacks could derail any ballot effort for a tax increase.
It doesn't take much to convince people to vote against a tax increase, even in the face of a fiscal disaster, said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California.
In 1994, for example, the failure of a series of risky investments forced Orange County to become the largest public entity in the nation to declare bankruptcy. But six months later, voters overwhelmingly defeated the county's proposed half-cent sales tax increase to raise desperately needed money for bond payments.
"Because there's so much distrust in government, people are very reluctant to believe there's a need for new taxes," Baldassare said. "Then there's a feeling that this isn't a mess the public created, so we shouldn't have to pay for it."
If Schwarzenegger and the Legislature decide to let voters have the final word on a tax increase, they're going to need a hard-sell campaign that brings everyone aboard.
"You need broad-based support from business and labor, from Republicans and Democrats, to pass this type of a tax increase," Baldassare said. |
