San Francisco Chronicle

Controller: California Voters May Decide Budget Stalemate

Joe Mathews — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:31:00 -0500

Add State Controller John Chiang to the list of California officials who believe that the way out of the budget stalemate may involve kicking difficult questions of taxation to voters. He told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview that if Republican and Democratic legislators can't agree on budget cuts and tax increases, "they may at least be able to agree to let voters make a choice." The full story is here.

Tom Campbell: Only $3.4 Billion of Dems' $7.5 Billion In Cuts Are Real

Joe Mathews — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:03:00 -0500

Widening his lead in the gravitas/ideas primary, former Congressman and current gubernatorial aspirant Tom Campbell has one of the most detailed pieces on the budget you'll read anywhere in today's San Francisco Chronicle. It's refreshing to read an honest, clear-eyed view of the budget from a Republican; Campbell is the furthest thing from the obstructionists in the legislature, to which the answer to every question is: "no new taxes."

Campbell makes the case for a form of spending limit that he championed in 2005. This was a legislative constitutional amendment that he drafted but never went anywhere; Prop 76, which was defeated by voters, had some similarities, but I believe it wasn't what Campbell wanted. Campbell would never quite answer my direct questions about his true feelings about Prop 76, which was championed by his then boss, Gov. Schwarzenegger.

His explanation of his own plan is better than mine, and you should read it. Here's my take: effectively, Campbell wants to create a constitutional requirement that revenues match expenditures. Fair enough. But he would enforce it by creating a sort of budget doomsday machine -- in the form of a requirement for serious across the board cuts if the legislature and governor don't agree on a budget that balances. Such cuts take away discretion and serve as a very blunt instrument. Which, to Campbell's way of thinking, is the point. The legislature will be more responsible only if they have something valuable to lose -- their discretion over budget decisions. I still think the better way is to eliminate the two-thirds requirement on the budget and tax increases, and thus make the legislative majority and governor accountable for budget problems. But Campbell's is a plausible alternative, a pragmatic Republican approach that relies on a very big stick.

More Than 500 Amendments

Joe Mathews — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:06:00 -0400

The San Francisco Chronicle thinks the California state constitution is too easy to amend. It's been amended more than 500 times. The paper doesn't say it outright, but it might make sense to make it more difficult to qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot, while making it easier to qualify an initiative statute. The constitutional change requires more signatures -- a number equal to 8 percent of the number of votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election -- than the initiative -- 5 percent.

I've been wrestling with what the best formula would be. I think that if certain kinds of initiatives are to be more difficult, thus limiting the people's ability to legislate or amend the constitution directly, then it ought to be much easier for the people to overrule the legislature via referendum. How about rolling back that current requirement for signatures -- now 5 percent of the gubernatorial votes -- to something like 1 percent?