Funny you should ask.
On Monday Feb. 23rd at the Ojai Valley Democrats general meeting at the Ojai Art Center, we were treated to a very enlightening presentation about a poorly understood, often boring subject—the California State budget. Professor Scott Frisch of the Political Science Department at California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) came and talked to us about our dysfunctional budget process. Prof. Frisch is incredibly knowledgeable about budget issues, in fact, it happens to be his specialty, and he really schooled us on the fact that the entire sordid mess is our own fault.
Join me after the flip to see what you can do.
With a subject like the budget, I know some of you might be congratulating yourselves on your decision to stay home and not come to the meeting, but I’m here to tell you that you really missed something. Scott came to tell us about the California budget process, which was timely considering the fact that the legislature had finally voted to pass a budget on the previous Thursday the 19th. Ordinarily Prof. Frisch likes to use Power Point to navigate through the complexities of the budget process. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a projector for him to use, so he decided to “wing it”. I know Power Point is an extremely helpful tool, but I don’t think the presentation suffered at all from its absence. I often find that people have a tendency to slip into a television-watching, alpha wave mode when they are watching a screen and listening to a presentation. With a subject as complicated and–well, byzantine as the California budget process and history. It’s better that audiences stay on their toes.
Prof. Frisch laid the blame for California’s perennial inability to pass a budget at the feet of the California electorate—aka us. He identified California’s direct democracy through the use of the initiative as the primary cause of our governmental morass. He outlined a series of past initiatives that led us to our current predicament. Below is a list of my impressions from the presentation and any inaccuracies or omissions probably come from my poor note taking and should not be attributed to Scott:
Prop 13 (1978) – This now infamous proposition basically upset the apple cart completely from the stand point of State revenue. It withdrew a stable revenue source — property taxes, and cut them an average of 57%. Scott explained to us that property taxes are a more stable form of tax revenue than income taxes because incomes tend to vary. This meant that the State must get more of its revenue from other taxes that can vary widely and thus the revenue of the state became highly variable from year to year. This is not all that helpful from a budgeting perspective.
Since being enacted California’s public school system has seen a precipitous drop in most indicators comparing it to the rest of the country. Depending on which indicator is used, California is near the bottom of the list. How can this be happening in the richest state in the richest country in the world? Prop 13 is definitely one of the reasons if not the major reason.
Two-Thirds Majority Rule (1933, 1962) – Prop 13 also combined with the two-thirds majority rule, first enacted in 1933 requiring both houses of the legislature to pass by two-thirds any spending increase in excess of 5%. The rule was later modified in 1962 so that a two-thirds majority was required for any spending increase. Prop 13 added that the rule also applies to any new taxes. Further, it placed the same restriction on county and municipal governments seeking to raise special taxes. Prop 13 and this malodorous rule recently played out with a disastrous consequence locally with the Ojai Unified School District’s Measure P.
Measure P was an increase in property taxes to help the Ojai Unified School District deal with a projected $1.5 million budget shortfall that would force them to close school(s) and layoff staff. From the OjaiPost: “(Measure P)… asks for… $89 per parcel (per year), is capped at seven years, and residents over 65 years of age are exempt.” Prop 13 required that a two-thirds majority of voters, 66%, was needed to pass this fairly innocuous, limited parcel tax. Measure P was billed as an effort to Save Our Schools (SOS). We all know how dire the situation is here in Ojai with our public school funding, to say nothing of the state as a whole. Measure P lost despite getting a majority of the vote. In fact, it received 65.95%. It failed by just 71 votes. Another way to look at this is, despite having won the majority by 1,726 votes, just 71 votes were able to defeat the will of the majority and basically disenfranchise those 1,726 people above the majority who voted in favor of the measure. The two-thirds rule is fundamentally undemocratic.
Vehicle License Fee – Scott informed us that for fifty years, from 1948 until 1998, the VLF was 2% of a vehicle’s value. This was another fairly stable revenue stream to the State. Starting with Pete Wilson and culminating with the sleazy machinations and fun of freaks like Republican Darrell Issa, the recall of Gray Davis and the election of the steroid-addled Arnold Schwarzenegger, the VLF was reduced by 67% to just .65% of a vehicle’s value. This is a tremendous loss of revenue to the State.
Prop 184(1994) – Another wonderful example of our direct democracy here in California is the 3 Strikes Law. Much has been written about this draconian law. There are endless debates about whether or not it has been effective, whether the drop in crime at the end of the 90’s was a result of this law or whether crime dropped anyway as a result of demographic shifts. All that noise aside, Scott informed us that from a budgetary prospective, Prop 184 is basically an unfunded mandate. It requires that tens of thousands of people be locked up and housed… forever. It provided no mechanism to fund this increase in prison population.
A record 7.3 million people are counted as “in the corrections system” nationwide because they are incarcerated, on probation or on parole. As of the end of 2007, there were over 2.25 million people held in local, state and federal prison nation wide. Private prisons held about 120,000 of them. The California state prison population is about 160,000 and as of last month California is going to have to cut that number by 30% because of rulings in federal court about overcrowding. By some sources, as of 2008, there were 41,284 people in jail on three strikes and the California Legislative Analyst’s office estimated in 2005 that the law cost taxpayers $500 million a year. Half a billion a year sounds about right for reactionary vengeance. Consider for a moment that our state currently spends nearly the same amount on prisons and corrections as it does on higher education. How about this startling fact; a first year prison guard with a high school diploma makes more than a first year college professor with a PhD. There is something fundamentally wrong here.
Term Limits – Scott also told us about term limits in the Assembly and the Senate and how they adversely affect institutional memory and expertise when it comes to the immensely complicated issue of budgets. Budgets are hard. You have to have your own green eyeshade, maybe a pocket protector and I’m sure a calculator would help—probably one of those wide ones with the extra buttons. You also have to understand how it all works and how it has worked in the past. Term Limits, just six years in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate, is not a lot of time to gain that rather specialized knowledge. Scott pointed out to us that in the US Congress the men and women who had been there the longest often sat on the budget and appropriation committees because they knew how it all worked as a direct result of their longevity with the institution.
Gerrymandering and potential solutions – There was a lively discussion throughout and many questions back and forth about how to fix the debacle that our state has become. I’ll briefly summarize them here.
Scott went into gerrymandering and talked about how its partisan nature perpetuated the problems outlined above. He seemed to think that Prop 11, which just passed in November, might help mitigate this problem. I actually don’t think Prop 11 is a good thing, but that’s a whole other matter.
Prof. Frisch then went on to talk about some potential fixes to alleviate these systemic problems. He pointed out that one of the least, if not the least representative state legislature in the country is our own. He suggested that in light of the nightmare budget fight we’ve just witnessed it might not be such a bad idea to actually increase the number of people in the Assembly and Senate. Now this may sound shocking at first, but it’s actually something I’ve thought of before for the US Congress. Thomas Jefferson originally wanted each representative in the House to represent no more than 20,000 people. If we held to that we would have a whole lot more representatives than our present 435 in the House. Similarly, here in California we only have 40 State Senators. That means that each Senator represents 846,791 people! Some representation, huh. An amendment to the State Constitution could be proposed, and an initiative could be voted on. However, this is likely to be a hard sell. People are taught not to trust politicians.
Scott showed us a poll that seemed to indicate the citizens of California might finally be getting sick of the two-thirds rule. According to this poll, a majority (53%) said that the two-thirds rule should be eased. Of course, the poll was taken at the height of the budget impasse in January and the State had just stopped some four billion dollars in publics works including our own bridge project on the East side of town. An initiative to repeal the rule would be a very difficult battle, but it might win if it were fought correctly. The bottom line is that the two-thirds rule has got to go if we hope to move California in a more progressive direction. If we could pass budgets with a simple majority, a lot of the balance could be restored to the system. In addition to the undemocratic nature of the two-thirds rule described above, another major side effect of the two-thirds rule is that the minority party becomes disproportionately powerful. They can simply obstruct and force concessions. In fact, Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) did just that when he traded his deciding vote for a ballot measure on the June 2010 election to have Open Primaries here in California. I am against open primaries because they would seriously weaken our ability to nominate progressive candidates in the Democratic Party. Just imagine a scenario where the majority of Democratic voters want a progressive candidate and they vote for him/her, but then right-wing nuts like talk radio’s John and Ken on KFI start sending out a clarion call to their Republican and Independent listeners to go to the polls and vote in the Democratic primary against the progressive candidate. This will happen in this state if we have open primaries.
Like I said, if you weren’t there you missed a lot. I hope my synopsis didn’t do too much violence to Professor Frisch’s presentation, and I would like to sincerely thank him for coming up to share some of his knowledge. Scott also went into the ballot measures that we’ll be asked to vote on in the statewide election on May 19th. All of the initiatives have to do with this budget deal that was passed on the 19th of February. We will be having a speaker at the Democratic Club’s General Meeting in April about those measures specifically. Look to the calendar for that meeting and I post something about this measures when I understand them better. Most of the tables, graphs and images came from Prof. Frisch’s Power Point presentation.
Cross Posted at the Ojai Valley Democrats website.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Sean – regarding Open Primaries, which I’m not a fan of either – if one were to reverse the situation where Democrats are mobilized to vote for a certain GOP candidate, they wouldn’t knock out the progressive equivalent – they would go for the wingnuttiest candidate they could find.
I recalled this, and dug it up from Wikipedia:
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Gray_Davis
Realizing that his likely opponent would be the well-liked, moderate Republican Richard Riordan, Davis loaded millions of dollars into attack ads before the GOP primary that helped convince Republicans to switch their support to the lesser-known, extremist candidate Bill Simon, who lost to Davis in November 2002 by a slim margin
It’s true that the open primary could work both ways. But have you ever heard the expression, “like herding cats?” That’s the whole problem getting Democrats to march lock step on a strategy like that. Somehow that kind of uniform, take orders from the top, goose stepping works better on the right.
I’m not sure about this latest iteration of open primaries, but Prop 198 from 1996 established open primaries and it was ruled unconstitutional in 2000:
They must have written this one differently so it would pass judicial review, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
This is a very informative and well constructed article. Thanks for posting Sean! It’s strange to me that more of the common visitors to this site aren’t weighing in and commenting on this very complex set of circumstances. It might just be a perfectly demonstrated sample of why we’ve seen all this horrible legislation come into California Law in the first place. I’m thinking that too many people are not tuned in, not turned on but certainly have “dropped out.”
Great info Sean. Thanks.
Good stuff spk.
As always, beware the experts, however.
Bad individual initiatives are not the fault of direct democracy – getting rid of the initiative will not fix our problems, but worsen them. Beware analyses that lead down this path.
Here in Ojai, our city council recently spent $100,000 making the initiative process less democratic, and more the tool of moneyed interests. If you examined the “good” and “bad” initiatives over the years, I think you would find that if we retooled the initiative process – or simply reversed the present trend – to essentially apply only to grassroots efforts, and banned, for example, paid signature gatherers and the now legal and semi-legal mechanisms by which moneyed interested push and block initiatives, you would have better results.
Be that as it may, let’s also not indulge some canards. For example, that Prop 13 is a bad thing.
The good professor apparently criticizes Prop 13 because, in time when people’s incomes are down, the ability to increase property taxes independent of incomes would give the state a steadier income.
That, my friend, is exactly why Prop 13 passed. There you are, living in your home. A bunch of Repugnicans get in and tank the economy (as they always do), and you are struggling to make ends meet. Your local government kicks you when you are down, by raising your property tax. You pay, or lose your home.
No wonder there was a revolt.
As a progressive, I am surprised you would favor the idea that taxes should not be tied to income. That’s something for the Cato Institute.
Prop 13, of course, was the epitomy of a successful grassroots effort.
“Three-strikes” and much of the other prison agenda have been just the opposite. And you are right, those are terrible initiatives.
Logging off for now, perhaps more later…
Several mischaracterizations, failures of reading comprehension, digressions and misunderstandings of the historical record in your comment Anon. #5.
Nowhere in my article did I advocate eliminating our direct democracy or initiative process. Perhaps I didn’t spell it out clearly enough, but Prof. Frisch did not advocate its elimination either. However, his analysis that our direct democracy is responsible for many of the “broken” parts of our budgeting process is right on. This does not mean that it should be thrown out completely. It simply means that the citizens of California often behave like impressionable sheep. Herded by any Tom, Dick, Darrell Issa, Mormon Church, Howard Jarvis or any other well funded special interest seeking to stoke hatred or stupidity. Direct Democracy is incredibly powerful medicine and it requires an informed electorate. I’m not certain we really qualify as informed these days.
There is a lot more in your comment that I wish to address, like your total misread of prop 13, but I don’t have time right now. In the immortal words of our steroid-addled governator, who once met with Ken Lay of Enron fame during the “energy crisis” brought on by that company before he “decided” to run for Governor and recall Davis: I’ll Be Back.
spk- we DON’T have an informed electorate.
That’s why we have politics.
Well MK, I would agree that many, maybe most, in our electorate are uninformed; however I seriously doubt that “politics” would not exist if everyone were informed. Your usage of the word politics seems to imply that you hold a rather negative view. Further, people are uninformed because they choose to remain ignorant. Or rather, theirs is a sin of omission. I don’t hold the elitist view that people are stupid or that there are classes of people that are less intelligent than others and therefore incapable of discharging their duties as citizens, namely becoming informed and participating. What I see is a whole society that is encouraged to remain divided, uninvolved and atomized because this is the state most conducive to corporate consumerism.
spk- you are clearly a political animal.
I believe I am not.
Just curiously have you read Aristotle’s “Politics”?
If so, what is your view of it.
Well, I’ll wait to hear more, spk, but your first shot is less than convincing. Arguments that blame our “initiative process”, generically, rather than individual bad initiatives, for the arguable results of individual bad initiatives, are arguments that misplace the blame. Worse, they are used to eliminate or further deform our initiative process in favor of moneyed interests and others who can game the system, and use it to push more of the bad initiatives on us. There are several quotes in your piece which could be used by someone with bad intentions to support the argument that “even noted progressive commentator spk” believes our direct democracy is a bad thing. (Not all tongue in cheek: You might just be a local irrelevant blogger today, but all you need to do is say a few juicy quotes that fit the Cato-Heritage line, and you’ll be a “noted commentator” in no time.)
Its not a reading comprehension issue. Its a precision of language issue. There is a very different political discussion that issues from arguing that our budget woes stem from this, that and the other bad individual initiative which was foisted on the people by particular monied interests- and your statement:
The first leads toward dissection of how moneyed interests have been able to abuse direct democracy and an ignorant or too-harried electorate into passing bad laws; the second argues for eliminating the one tool the people have to hold these interests in check.
Be that as it may, let’s move on to canard number two: Our two-thirds majority requirement is a bad thing, and to blame for our budget mess.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, I would argue that the 2/3 requirement should apply across more areas – how about any jailable, nonviolent offense? Can you even imagine how much we could save, and how much more robust our economy and tax base would be, if the roughly eighty percent of presently imprisoned people in California who have done nothing threatening or violent to any other human on the planet, could be released and working productively? There is a very good chance we would not be where we are budget-wise, without these draconian and stupid laws.
[An aside: You assert bad initiatives like Prop 187 are responsible for this growth. Yet, what about initiatives like Prop 136? I think if you look at these two initiatives, and the implementation thereof, you will see something interesting. Prop 187 has been fully implemented, funded like crazy, expanded on, and goes unchecked towards its bad ends. Prop 136, on the other hand, has been fought at every level - courts, local governments, state government - limited, truncated and underfunded. Examine this difference, and I think you will begin to discern the real problem in our politics. Again, its not direct democracy.]
The two-thirds requirement makes sense, and your example of our own local Measure P is a good illustration. Here at the local level, our school district faces a budget crunch. Why do they need to hit every property owner in the Ojai Valley for an additional $89 per year, forever? Are you telling me the parents of kids in the Ojai public schools refused to kick down an additional $200, $300 or perhaps more for some of our more wealthy families, so that excellent teacher XX would not have to be laid off, or excellent program XXX could continue? Or, is it possible that the administration was not proposing a budget that the parents of kids in the schools support – forcing the administration to try to foist it on your uninformed public?
What I’m saying is, if $89 a year from a portion of property owners within the school district would plug the gap, assuredly the gap could also easily be plugged by the people closest to the situation ponying up – parents, etc. Foisting a new and permanent tax on people who are not close to the situation, and cannot evaluate whether the money is well spent or not, is a poor solution. The two-thirds majority requirement helps prevent that, however imperfectly.
There are quite a few more points, but I’ll have to leave it here for now. Here’s where I’m headed: The problem, to be fixed, requires a changing of the guard. Term limits doesn’t get you there, because that ends up putting the real power over budget issues in the hands of the lobbyists and legislative hangers-on who have no term limits (and fund these term limits initiatives). What we need, is more, better direct democracy; strong, constant and loud exposure of false ideas, ideologies and policies (such as the failed Republican ideology – turning Republicans into a fringe party, and fostering an intelligent replacement party such as the Greens, would go far to cure our ills); better media (California’s newspapers are atrocious; we need new media; blogs like the Ojai Post could contribute, writ large); and more of a stake for more people in this state, which will translate to a better informed, more participating electorate.
(PS: I am sure no offense taken, but: “local irrelevant blogger” is only meant as a characterization of what the usual media and Cato-Heritage people would call you, and me, right now.)
I’ll suggest something that would really save money in the prisons = no toilet paper at all. Install bathroom bidet sprayers in all the toilets and all they’ll need is a towel to dry off. It’s cleaner, cheaper (yes for those who just have to object to everything water is cheaper than toilet paper!), it’s better for the environment and it has health benefits like lessening hemorrhoids which would save even more money. After they try it, like most people, they will like it. As Dr. Oz said on Oprah: “if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn’t wipe it off with paper, would you? You’d wash it off” This is a logical, doable and simple way to save allot of money and actually improve the prisoners living standards. But of course like all new ideas people will find countless silly and inane objections, that is the way of things. Theses sprayers are available at http://www.bathroomsprayers.com I installed mine myself, easy.
Give please. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. Help me! There is an urgent need for sites: Acai berry research. I found only this – lose weight with acai berry. Webmd examines the health benefits of the acai berries, known as a “superfood” because of their many health benefits, anti aging properties, and weight loss. Them I am not authorised to give you that information.
Thanks in advance. Kat from Mongolia.