Blame Institutions for the California Budget Mess
Kevin Drum says California has been the victim of fantasy budgeting:
Californians are living in a dream world. Prop 13 slashed property taxes and nobody wants to amend it, even for commercial property. Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected in the middle of a budget crisis by promising to cut taxes. When that proved to be an unsurprising disaster, the voters approved billions in borrowing, making the budget situation even worse. It’s easy to blame Sacramento for this mess (and I do!), but the public has been complicit every step of the way.
This is true. Kevin observes that you have your high-tax, high-service states and you have your low-tax, low-service states “but over the past few decades we Californians have somehow concluded that we can be a medium tax/high service state.”
I suppose it strikes me as unlikely that California’s budget problems are unusually intractable because California’s citizens as unusually unreasonable. The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work. The 2/3ds rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense, the profligate use of the initiative process doesn’t work, the combination of the two is disastrous. There seem to me to be other sources of institutional dysfunction in California (LA County is almost twice as big as the country’s second-largest, and five of the fifteen top population counties form a contiguous belt in southern California) but those are the big obvious ones. Voters and politicians suffer from similar pathologies all the world ’round. But differences in history and institutions can lead to very different outcomes. California needs not only to come through this budget apocalypse, but to adopt a different institutional model that forces some level of decision-making.
72 Responses to “Blame Institutions for the California Budget Mess”
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May 20th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I can’t wait until President Hope explains to the voters in 49 states why it is their interest to bail out California’s voters.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
This is one reason why we shouldn’t bail out california– they need to confront the consequences of their broken institutions and need a huge incentive to finally scrap their constitution and start over with a working one.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
“The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work.”
That’s like saying the USSR would have been successful if the Politburo just would have come up with better 5 Year Plans. It isn’t that CA’s political institutions don’t work, it’s that the state’s political elites and general populace have refused to do anything about that obvious institutional failure.
Mike
May 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
There are (supposedly) ungerrymandered election districts coming in a year or two are there not?
It will be interesting to see if this changes the “unreasonableness” of politicians since, in a sense, it matters little how reasonable the voters are if it is extreme politicians that get elected.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Well, as someone famous may have said, “A democracy can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” The Californians simply took that to the limit, through the ballot initiative process.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The 2/3 majority rule was actually a part of the infamous Prop. 13.
It takes signatures from 8% of the number of votes in the previous election to get an amendment to the CA Constitution on the ballot; I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be too hard to get. I wonder if a straightforward one that read “A budget in CA may be passed with a simple majority vote in the Legislature” could be placed on the next election’s ballot.
‘Course, then the Club for Growth and the Republican Party would spend gazillions of dollars to defeat it, so it would have to have some money on the other side to get it done.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
The thing is, we’re not much of a “high-service” state. Compared to everywhere else, the roads suck. The schools are below average. Basic services like the DMV aren’t very efficient. There are a lot of poor people and therefore a lot of social services, but they’re not extravagant benefits. The state’s spending has grown way faster than inflation + population growth, and I can’t point to one thing that the people of California have to show for it. I have no idea where that money went, except to higher salaries and benefits for state employees. I guess that’s the whole answer.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
[...] UPDATE: Matt Y [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I always loved that one. A democracy breaks down completely when its citizens realize that one of the most fundamental functions of a government exists, and that they choose their representation at the ballot box. If only governments didn’t have treasuries, or weren’t even slightly accountable to their citizens, we’d be in utopia.
See, there’d be nothing wrong with Californians voting themselves largesse if they also stopped voting down the initial collection of the largesse. Or allowed a smaller majority than two-thirds of those nominally chosen to represent them to deal with the largesse-balancing issues. So I think a better formulation would be along the lines of “A democracy can only exist until a distinct minority discovers it can destroy the general welfare out of batshit Randian ideology.”
May 20th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Matt, this doesn’t make sense: “I suppose it strikes me as unlikely that California’s budget problems are unusually intractable because California’s citizens as unusually unreasonable. The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work.”
If the institutions don’t work, but California’s citizens are reasonable, why did they reject past attempts to repeal the 2/3rds requirement? Why does public opinion polling overwhelmingly show voters favoring increased spending, lower taxes, balanced budgets, and less borrowing?
Maynard:
Without 2/3rds reform, redistricting is unlikely to change anything. Even under more “equitable” rules, you’re still likely to see 1/3rd of the state legislature made up of conservative Republicans who take the no-taxes pledge. And there’s the ballgame.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Also contributing to California’s dysfunctional government are state and local legislators who “represent” larger populations than members of Congress. The state has 53 congressmen but only 40 state senators. Los Angeles County has five (!) supervisors. Toss in gerrymandering, and you get legislators who can afford to be unresponsive (not that you could be really responsive to 1 million or more constituents).
May 20th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
If the institutions don’t work, but California’s citizens are reasonable, why did they reject past attempts to repeal the 2/3rds requirement? Why does public opinion polling overwhelmingly show voters favoring increased spending, lower taxes, balanced budgets, and less borrowing?
I’m not Matt, so I could be wrong, but I think Matt’s point wasn’t that it’s unfair to say California’s voters are unreasonable, but that their unreasonableness isn’t the cause of California’s dysfunction (that is, voters are unreasonable in lots of places, but most places don’t have political institutions that allow them to do as much damage as California’s voters).
May 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Simply trying to comprehend living in a state that revolves around ballot propositions is making me retarded. What an atrocious system.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
LA County is almost twice as big as the country’s second-largest, and five of the fifteen top population counties form a contiguous belt in southern California
By which you mean that the five most populous counties form a contiguous belt in Southern California? California’s most populous counties are, in order, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino. Why make your point weaker?
May 20th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
“It will be interesting to see if this changes the “unreasonableness” of politicians since, in a sense, it matters little how reasonable the voters are if it is extreme politicians that get elected.”
extreme politicians only get elected if voters elect them.
california voters are clearly to blame for the current mess in california.
also, the fact that they’ve allowed the initiative process to become the dominant mode of legislating is the biggest problem. the entire process has been perverted. it was meant to compliment the job that elected officials did, not supplant them. but these days, most officials will not take tough votes on any issue that could be decided by initiative, so a certain paralysis sets in. the people who are supposed to make tough decisions wait for approval from the citizens through various initiatives, so issue after issue sits around, unattended for months or years, while problems fester.
add to that the utter madness of having to stitch together something that resembles rational policy by trying to reconcile various successful initiatives that may or may not make fiscal and/or policy sense and you have a recipe for the type of disaster that you see in california these days.
unfortunately, the initiative madness that is endemic here on the west coast, is starting to spread, drop by drop to other parts of the country.
i hope voters in the rest of the country benefit from the hard lesson that california is learning and move away from the impulse to ty to resolve every issue by way of often nonsensical initiatives.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
If in June you ask the people if they’d like to have their cake, and then 6 months later in December you ask them if they’d like to eat it, too, don’t be surprised when you end up with a “have your cake and eat it too” fiscal situation.
“Blame the voters” is a copout. There’s a reason we elect legislatures–we can’t possibly expect normal voters to know about this stuff. California is DESPERATELY in need of constitutional reform. Seriously, that should be the price of the inevitable federal bailout–they need a sane government.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
How much of the spending done by the California government is mandated by the result of a ballot proposition? I have no idea what the answer to this is, but if the answer is little/none, then I wouldn’t say the institutions are all that dysfunctional. It was still the elected representatives who chose to commit money they would be unable to raise later. And its not as if there is no solution now, the solution is a budget cut.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
To answer StevenAttewell, Linkmeister and others, AFAICT the problem is we’ve gotten stuck at a local maximum (or whatever that term is from physics). The Republicans have self-organized around being a permanent minority defined by anti-tax rhetoric. The majority doesn’t really have a way to dislodge them. And as others have pointed out, the nature of civic life in CA is strained due largely due to explosive growth: since the era when the proposition system was put in place we’ve grown by 25 times (!). And the proposition system itself was a desperate move to repair a capture of the democratic system by kleptocrats.
I didn’t know how to vote yesterday, but I’m increasingly leaning towards the idea that the immediate suffering of the neediest caused by the propositions’ failures is worth paying even for the chance of cracking the current system, as Matt says. Of course, I have no reason to believe such a chance exists
.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
They needed a new constitution ever since Prop 13 passed; but homeowners are afraid they’d get hurt if it ever changed.
But Prop 13 is the root cause of every budget crisis in California since it passed.
Either it goes, or the constitution goes. But it’s such a sacred calf that no local politicians talk about it.
Also, you going to update your blogroll link for Ezra or leave him hanging?
May 20th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
When you propose that government is always the problem and that the way to make government better is to cut taxes and make it harder for government to actually do anything you’re always going to wind up with a government that doesn’t work.
Just as if you proposed that the problem with your business is the business itself and the way to make it better is to cut income and make it harder for your employees to do things you’d shortly go out of business.
Problem is, CA can’t just go out of business, though the same guys who backed Prop13 and term limits now back selling off every piece of real estate the State owns, including the State Parks. These guys want to live in the Third World, they should move to Somalia.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
The effect of the initiative process is to dumb down policy. It’s popular to blame the “do-nothings” in the legislature, but its been obvious for 30 years that California is an ungovernable mess. No one can make California government work given the constraints imposed on policymaking by a nonsensical initiative process.
Prop. 13 is very popular, but is just bad policy. My mother’s house is worth $1.25 million, but she’s paying property taxes on a $184,000 house.
Three strikes is very popular, but half the state’s general fund payroll obligation goes to the Dept. of Corrections.
Two-thirds budget approval is very popular, but the legislature hasn’t passed a budget on time in 12 years.
All totally unworkable policies, all completely untouchable politically. It’s insane.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
And by the way, all by itself Los Angeles County is physically larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, and has a larger population than New Jersey and 38 other states.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Steven, I grew up in California but left 10 years ago, so I can’t quote chapter and verse, but the proportion of the state budget allocated to education is mandated by a ballot initiative that passed, oh, 12 or 15 years ago. I don’t think prisons is mandated that way, but if the voters pass 3-Strikes-and-You’re-Out, you’re going to end up spending a lot on “corrections” anyway.
Which, according to the strictures of Prop 13, requires a 2/3 majority of each house of the Legislature.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
California also has the smallest county in the US – Alpine County with a population of 1,145.
The county-level results are interesting. Propostion 1A, the Conservative wet dream limiting future budgets, almost passed in supposedly uber-lberal San Francisco but went down 3-1 in Orange County.
This might have had something to do with the bribe that education-funding Proposition 1B would only take effect if Proposition 1A also passed. Proposition 1B passed in three Bay Area counties: San Francisco, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. In Alpine County Propositions 1A and 1B garnered 131 and 135 votes respectively – going down 3-1.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Pesto,
You are saying that a budget cut requires a 2/3rds vote? I didn’t realize. That does create a big problem if you have no money and can’t legally cut the budget.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
if the voters are not to blame for allowing the initiative process to run amok, then who is to blame?
california voters don’t want to take responsibility for the fact that they have put their state in this nightmarish situation because they would ultimately have to look in the mirror in order to assess blame.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Prop. 98, passed in 1988, commits 40% of the general fund to education.
I am actually of the opinion that state government shouldn’t really have any budgetary obligations besides education, but again, locking in a funding level, taking discretion out of the hands of the legislature, is bad policy.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
This post and the Kevin Drum post are hilariously clueless. CA wouldn’t have such great budget demands – and those who support massive spending wouldn’t have as much power – without the MassiveImmigration policies supported by people like MattY, the rest of the Dem Party leadership, and RINOs.
And, no one above knew about that or had the guts to mention it.
If you want to find out all the things that MattY won’t tell you about this issue, subscribe to my feed.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work. The 2/3ds rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense…”
Horse shit. “Political institutions” didn’t vote on the initiatives. Voters did. In a state that’s the bluest of the blue, where supporters of the measures outspent opponents by 10 to 1. They want generous government, they just don’t want to pay for it.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“The 2/3ds rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense, the profligate use of the initiative process” note the 2/3 rule came from initiative. Also note that our “initiative” process allows and encourages paid signature gathers. Commercial real estate paid for Prop 13, and they included the 2/3 rule to insure it couldn’t be repealed or modified once people realized they were getting the biggest benefits. Last election we had one ballot measure put on by Nevada casino owners to limit the Indian gambling, which was defeated by the Indian casinos who out spent them. On virtually every initiative 70% to 80% of the money to get it on the ballot and pass it comes from one individual or one commercial interest who wrote it directkly for their own benefit.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Sam at 18: “The majority doesn’t really have a way to dislodge them.” Yes there is. It’s called repealing the 2/3rds rule – but the voters of California repeatedly refuse to vote for it. There’s a method, but the majority doesn’t want to use it.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
One further note; “It takes signatures from 8% of the number of votes in the previous election to get an amendment to the CA Constitution on the ballot; I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be too hard to get. I wonder if a straightforward one that read “A budget in CA may be passed with a simple majority vote in the Legislature” could be placed on the next election’s ballot.” A balanced budget is required by the constitution, and to balance the budget you need revenue measures, ergo taxes, which requires 2/3.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Let’s not forget term limits, which make it impossible to retain legislators who finally figure this budgeting shit out. By the time you’ve learned enough about the California budget to speak knowledgeably on the subject, you’ve got about a year left in office. And, yes, my fellow voters suck. Less than a quarter of the eligible voters turned out yesterday.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
it’s unlikely that the initiative process was initially designed to be used by wealthy individuals and/or groups who could pay workers to go out and gather signatures. the fact that the process has been perverted in that fashion is probably the biggest problem.
whether that problem could be addressed – by legislation that required that only unpaid volunteers be allowed to work on initiatives so that it would actually become the citizen-powered process it was contemplated to be – i am not certain. don’t know what the case law is in that regard and i’m not certain what the specific statutes in california and other states actually say on the subject. but that one simple change would dramatically change the landscape. as long as rich guys – and corporations – are allowed to use the process for their own purposes, the initiative process will be broken.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
StevenAttewell: I meant the Democratic majority in the State Legislature, not the electorate. The electorate (unlike the population or their representatives) is just enough skewed towards old white empty nesters living in houses worth several times their purchase price to foil a Prop 13 rollback. Not coincidentally, those people don’t use the services they refuse to pay for.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
There might be a First Amendment issue with prohibiting paid signature gathering. Anybody know more about this area of law? I know that laws banning out-of-state people from soliciting signatures have been overturned on 1st Amendment grounds.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I knew this was coming …
In a case of belated “I told you so”, former Gov. Gray Davis sounded vindicated.
Gee, you could change “state” to “country” and it would sound like at slap at the Congress and POTUS.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Alpine County is the smallest county in California by population, but not the smallest in the U.S. That would be Loving County, TX with a population of 67 (yes, 67) in 2000.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Need I point out that California and its budget are in MUCH better shape than the US budget.
Or that all of our citizens have been fed the same drivel as California’s?
ObaFuhrer is simply Terminator to the 10th power. ObaFuhrer got elected by promising to cut taxes on almost everyone while “reforming” health care and almost all of our social programs.
And he is going to face what Swatzy is facing… an electorate wanting to hold him to his promises and not to raise taxes and fees in umpteen ways.
ObaFuhrer will be hoist on his own petard.
As to California one expects a constitutional crisis as the government MUST attempt to overturn citizen propositions through the courts in order to govern, a sort of state of emergency. It is either that or commit political suicide by slashing state services across the board.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if California’s citizens decide they REALLY do want smaller government?
May 20th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
@ too many steves
The state has grown explosively in population in the last 30 years. Spending has not, in fact, grown faster than population growth, particularly at the low end of the economic scale. In this situation, it’s possible to pay a lot of taxes and still underfund the state government resulting in disfunction.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Scott de B. -
Sorry for my mistake on Alpine County which I blame on my subliterate reading of Wikipedia. Although with a population of 67, Loving County might need more sex to go with all that love.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Brandon,
I was talking about the last 10 years, not the last 30, and in the last 10 years, spending has skyrocketed. The total state budget is at about $145 billion now, and it was just over $100 billion when Arnold took over.
I couldn’t find an unbiased source for this, because it’s something that only right-of-center types tend to point out, but these numbers from the Reason Foundation seem accurate:
May 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Matt is showing the wear and tear of opining on absolutely everything. This in particular makes no sense:
“I suppose it strikes me as unlikely that California’s budget problems are unusually intractable because California’s citizens as unusually unreasonable. The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work. ”
Does he not understand that the worst institutional features of California’s system, including thd 2/3rds requirement, come from initiatives approved by voters and the voters have consistently refused to change them? Even today, the 2/3rds requirement polls a healthy majority in CA.
California needs a constitutional convention. Wipe the slate clean.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
To finish that thought, if the state of California had locked in its spending in 1998 and indexed it upwards for population growth and inflation, there would be a surplus today.
And yet, I can’t point to any area where we get more or better state services than we did in 1998.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
@toomanysteves
“I have no idea where that money went, except to higher salaries and benefits for state employees. I guess that’s the whole answer.”
A bunch goes to prisons. It sure as hell ain’t going to teachers and professors; maybe to school/university administrators.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
By which you mean that the five most populous counties form a contiguous belt in Southern California? California’s most populous counties are, in order, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino.
I think what Matt meant here is that five of the country’s 15 most populated counties form that contiguous belt. A quick check of the Census data shows this to be the case; Riverside County was the 16th-largest in the country in 2000, but it’s growing so quickly I’m sure it’s in the top 15 by now.
Also, Alpine is far from being the least-populated county in the country.
Anyway, I’m not really sure how big of a problem the large counties in California are. There could probably be some well-considered divisions made (especially between the desert and non-desert portions of LA, San Berdoo, and Riverside Counties), and the LA County Board of Supervisors is extremely unresponsive to voters, but overall the counties at least work, which I can’t say for the state government.
The basic problem is that people got angry at the state legislature, so they voted in all sorts of limits to their power. So now the legislature can’t even do its job if it wanted to, so people get even more angry at them, and the cycle continues.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] by Matt Zeitlin on May 20, 2009 Matt Yglesias, responding to Kevin Drum, makes the argument that the public isn’t really to blame for California’s horrendous budget mess, at least [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
[...] Yglesias loves to blame institutions. He is frequently right. This is one of those times. And he has a [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
[...] has some thoughts about whatever the hell is wrong with California this time. This bit stuck out for me: The 2/3ds rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense, the profligate use of the initiative [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
“Blame the voters” is a copout. There’s a reason we elect legislatures–we can’t possibly expect normal voters to know about this stuff.
Blame the voters is not a copout. You may elect a legislature but their hands are tied by initiatives you passed. I agree with you that “we can’t possibly expect normal voters to know about this stuff”. That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be voting on everything from budgets to land use policy.
It is the fault of the voters who constantly vote on things in California about which they are completely ignorant.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
California needs a constitutional convention. Wipe the slate clean.
Now, if the legislature resigned en masse and said they’d keep resigning until the voters backed a convention, that might do the trick. But they can’t do it by themseves.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
More taxes aren’t the issue. What California needs is more taxpayers – relative to government workers and users of government services – to support the level of services, wages, benefits, and programs the state government has decided to provide.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
To poster #30
You shut up, you parasitic useless asshole.
I can’t help but notice that nowhere does Matt consider that the problem might be too high a pay for state employees – no, for folks like Matt, budget problems always mean that taxes are too low.
Those here who are blaming the voters need to remember that California passed a good budgetary downsizing measure- Proposition 187 – that was nullified by a federal judge (for supposedly being “unconstitutional”) and the governor at the time (I thnk it was Wilson) refused to try to find out exactly what changes needed to be made to make it “constitutional.”
I always loved that one. A democracy breaks down completely when its citizens realize that one of the most fundamental functions of a government exists, and that they choose their representation at the ballot box. If only governments didn’t have treasuries, or weren’t even slightly accountable to their citizens, we’d be in utopia.
The point is that once an unproductive majority decide to make their livings by voting for higher taxes on a productive minority, democracy breaks down because all of the productive people shut down and decide that it is easier to be a parasite (or they simply leave for places with more favorable rules). When only parasites are left, either the state breaks down, the system reforms, or the government resorts to alternate means of getting people to produce (mostly force).
See, there’d be nothing wrong with Californians voting themselves largesse if they also stopped voting down the initial collection of the largesse.
Except those who vote for largesse are not necessarily the ones who pay for it. What if those Californians who provide the largesse might eventually get tired of it and leave?
May 20th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko’s mini-me.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
too many steves:
I sure wish I knew where those highly-paid state employees were, because they’re sure as hell not in my office.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
The rich and famous live out in Cali? Folks like Brad and Angela, David Geffen, Steven Spielsberg, et al. They shit money and piss bling. Tax the fuck out of them rich motherfuckers!
May 20th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Sunroof:
Government workers pay taxes too, ya know.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Darkrose,
I didn’t say state employees were highly paid, I said they have *higher* pay and benefits than they did 10 years ago. All it takes is locking in, say, 5 percent annual raises for large groups of state workers to ruin the budget, because revenues aren’t climbing nearly enough to keep up with that.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
The point is that once an unproductive majority decide to make their livings by voting for higher taxes on a productive minority, democracy breaks down because all of the productive people shut down and decide that it is easier to be a parasite
If you are going to claim that a “majority” are unproductive perhaps you should provide some evidence to support that claim. Otherwise, what you say in just more right-wing talk radio idiocy. You can’t support your claim of an “unproductive majority”.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Shut up, everyone who doesn’t want to dissolve the American people and elect another! Latin Americans should take over the U.S. and throw all of the non-Hispanic whites out!
Shut up, those who don’t agree with this!
Waa! Waa! Waa!
May 20th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Property taxes are an anachronism. They’re a relic from the days before income taxes, and have no relationship at all to one’s ability to pay. Proposition 13 is a terrible law, but homeowners had very good reasons for passing it and not wanting to repeal it. House prices shot up in the 1970s as a natural consequence of high inflation. Many a working-class neighborhood was hit with gentrification and many people simply could not afford the rising taxes. What sense does it make to tax people on unrealized profits? Why should one’s taxes escalate merely because richer people are moving into the neighborhood? And why tax people beyond their ability to pay, forcing them to move from their homes and communities?
I say replace property taxes with progressive income taxes.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
too many steves
Which state workers have an annual 5 percent raise locked into their contracts? Which state employees have better health and retirement benefits than their counterparts did ten years ago?
Football Coaches, prison guards, surgeons and some top level administrators are a tiny percentage of all state employees.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:56 am
the number 1 problem we have here in California is a simple one the people we elect to office instead of doing what they were tasked to do instead put those problems in the hands of the people by introducing ballots every year to us to decide what to do like we would have any better luck getting it right I wade through these things every year trying to figure out what to vote for and what not and not fully understanding what our states money resources are I don’t get a hearing on this stuff and them add what people put up for ballot instead of going to their elected members and you go an ongoing disaster growing year after year add in the totally ridiculous act of trying to get 2/3 rds of the members to agree and your doomed prop 13 was the nail in the coffin for this state before this we had ways of raising a budget that gave us at the time the best schools and roads in the country now it’s just pain with so many paying so little taxes on their property as long as you don’t move your set time has come for a call for a constitution caucus to amend the state constitution
May 21st, 2009 at 10:06 am
flat tax is on the way. Prop 13 was a great law, but hasn’t kept up with the times to address commercial establishments. leave the little people home and not bothered as long as they don’t sell they’re fine. gavin will fix it all!
May 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Health and services–the cost of per capita health care highest in the US for everyone in state, so costs for health care under state auspices also high. Prisons–the prison industry as a result of sentencing and drug policies also unbelievably high. Roads–huge auto and truck wear and tear, commuters driving long distances from homes that are possibly ownable or rentable to jobs that pay a decent wage. Schools in the bottom ten percent of funding per student in US, but it’s a state with several urban–high populace–areas. The collapse of housing bubble here–ghost towns in Stockton and San Bernadino county, loss of construction jobs.
All this and a ridiculous legislative budgetary process in which a considerable minority can throw a monkey wrench in the works, a taxevasion nation mentality on the part of this minority that has had a foothold in California consciousness since the 70s, and a profoundly polarized voting populace. A long list of weak governors–it’s hard to remember a good one. Well there you have it–an economy larger than most nation states that was severely screwed by Enron, that has taken a beating in each of the bubble bursts–post cold war defense, silicon valley dotcom, and housing, plus the hisgest home ownership or rental coasts, grocery costs, gas costs, medical costs: you do the math.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:27 am
California’s problems come from the Howard Jarvis’s of the world just as the financial meltdown was due to the hands-off-our-markets crowd. I have relatives in California who are suffering and who will suffer more as the chickens come home to roost, so I really can’t feel to happy about their financial problems, but purely as a case of Facts Repudiating Ideas, it’s wonderful.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:29 am
[...] in favor of Governor Schwarzenegger’s idea of a constitutional convention to fix some of the institutional flaws that has the Golden State in this mess, he notes that the same institutions likely preclude said convention from working: [I]n order to [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 10:46 am
your take on CA is accurate — our governmental system and its practices lead to nowhere year in and year out. Ballot initiatives and the 2/3rd’s rule on budget changes was the work of many years of a conservatism that does not believe in government — but which then failed to find a way to defang government spending. Most of us are numb now. No one knows how to buck the legacy of anti-government conservatism to fix these budgetary issues. We are gonna have to tax ourselves now, cause the growth is not in the cards. We are gonna have to learn to admit we are not as wealthy as we were. The danger is the dreaded downward cycle that comes with retrenchment.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’m in Sacramento, we just voted on Tuesday, another “special election,” which was soundly defeated, at least the second case since the Terminator has been our Governor. Look, I lost hope as to what our state is capable of politically after that whole recall debacle. I turned 18 in 2000, just in time for W. and blackouts and the first anti-gay marriage initiative.
The proposition system has crashed this state. Not only do we seem capable of passing prop 13-level BS, but we’ve actually made SURE through initiatives that our assembly won’t do anything about it by passing the most restrictive term limits in the US (a response basically to get Willie Brown out of the assembly). Coupled with disastrous deregulation that 2/3 majority rule and a constant onslaught of propositions, we’ve already been held hostage by one beloved corporation, elected a terminator, and bankrupted the state into oblivion. So yes, it’s broken, AND incredibly expensive.
May 21st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
So many comments and no one bothers to link. So here’s a link to a reason for CA’s mess that no one has mentioned, we get less money back in federal spending than all but 7 other states, just $0.78 out of every dollar we put in. And since our population is well, you know, larger than those other states combined, it pretty clear that CA supports a whole lot of other people throughout the US. Y’all just give us our $0.22 back and we’ll balance our budget up right quick. Or you could, you know, STFU and just say thank you.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] said, the larger moral of the story is that public opinion is pathologically delusional everywhere and not just in California. What you want are institutions that result in politicians being held accountable for results—you [...]