Prop 13

Today's LA Times story by my longtime colleague Evan Halper makes one thing painfully clear. California's Republican legislative leaders, for all their championing of direct democracy and the rule of the people when it comes to subjects such as Prop 13 (property taxes) and Prop 22 (same-sex marriage ban), are prepared to violate all sorts of voter-approved initiatives to get a budget deal and avoid a tax increase.

Halper got his hands on a memo that details what Republicans are talking about. As Halper recounts the memo's contents, the Republican proposals involve "diverting money specifically set aside by voters for local governments, road and other transportation projects, mental health programs and early childhood education." To give a little history, voters set aside money for transportation via ballot initiative with Prop 42 (2002), for local government with Prop 1A (2004), mental health programs with Prop 63 (2004), and early childhood with Prop 10 (1998). For Republicans to want to raid such funds is hypocrisy. To borrow against such funds in the name of opposing tax increases is dishonest. The act of raiding such funds creates a debt for the state that must be paid back. The very act of raiding the funds is thus a tax increase in disguise.

Check out the latest initiative from Arizona. Currently circulating on those hot, hot desert streets, the proposed measure -- which could make the November ballot -- would require that a majority of all registered voters sign off on any tax increase at the polls.

That's right. Not a majority of the voters who show up at an election. But all registered voters. Staying home would be a vote against.

Deadline to get the signatures is July 3.

Dan Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee provides a great summary of what Prop 13 did, and didn't do.

Thirty years ago today, California voters passed Prop 13. At the time, inflation was soaring, the president was losing popularity, and Jerry Brown was running for governor again. So nothing's changed.

The impact of the initiative, which limited property tax increases and required a two-thirds vote in the legislature for any tax increase, is still popular and still being debated. In general, descriptions of its impact are overblown. It's blamed for big declines in school and local government funding that exist only in fevered imaginations. But its impact on state politics and the structure of state government is undeniable. In general, Prop 13 has been a great distorter, separating constituencies and their funding, spawning an initiative industry that dominates politics in California and other Western states, and pushing California towads a volatile, income tax-based system that produces constant uncertainty and crisis. Prop 13 isn't solely to blame for the state's dysfunction, but it's a significant part of the problem.