Your Legislative Anal-ist: Special Election Endorsements

Californians: We have an election coming up in one week. Don’t know much about what’s up for grabs? Then grab a cup of coffee, settle in and relax, for I have read the fine print for you. Have extra information? Comment here or send it to theyellowmenace1@gmail.com. These opinions are subject to change, pending the discovery of heretofore unforeseen facts or mood swings.

Yes on 1A

Our spending woes come from Proposition 13, which hurt our elected officials’ ability to pay for things on two fronts: Locally, it reduced the amount we can collect in taxes from residential properties. As a result, we’ve seen the metastatic growth of strip malls and big box centers because that remains the only way cities can collect property tax, and we’ve seen huge surges in sales taxes, our other attempt to make up for what we couldn’t collect. Our schools primarily depended on property taxes to fund their operation, and we went from near the top of the nation in per-student spending and achievement to near the bottom, even after we passed Prop. 98, which guaranteed 40 percent of the state budget to public education. Prop. 13’s other hand made it near impossible for the state to raise taxes by requiring a two-thirds majority in both houses. We’ve had more ballot propositions demanding funding since Prop. 13 passed in 1978 than in the 128 prior years of our statehood. That should tell you something.

Prop. 1A doesn’t fix the double whammy. It takes our emergency pittances in sales and vehicle taxes and keeps them in place until 2011 to fill the gaping hole we have in the state budget, as long as we establish a savings account we can’t draw from unless we can’t raise enough in revenues.

It does, though, plug a big chunk of the budget gap we now face, which is why we have to vote for it. Inaction only forces the state to reduce our services even more and begin laying people off. Remember, the money to run our state has to come from somewhere. You only get what you pay for.

No 1B

I am not going to badmouth spending on public education. I attended public schools for all but the very beginning of my education. I just can’t support incredibly large payments to the school system when Prop. 1A revenues are set to end because it seems obvious that the state wouldn’t be able to keep that promise. This ballot measure also furthers the guilty tradition of voting more shackles onto our budgetary process, which will make it even less likely that we’ll be able to handle funding crises in the future.

Yes on 1C

California’s addiction to borrowing against the future is dangerous. You can’t really argue with it, except that a lot of it is the voters’ faults with the incessant bond measures approved in the post-Prop. 13 era. If we don’t approve this measure, our budget deficit goes from $8 billion to $13 billion simply because we want to remain one of the only state lotteries to never have been re-written since 1984. A lot has changed since then, and so should the way we use the proceeds from our gambling habits.

Yes on 1D

In 1998, Rob Reiner helped convince us to approve Prop. 10, which approved a 50-cent tax on tobacco products to help fund First 5 programs. Marvelous, except those pre-school programs haven’t even been spending what they’ve got. Prop. 1D doesn’t take any services away, it takes unspent money and uses it to plug our current budget holes — which prevents further cuts.

Yes on 1E

In 2004, Darrell Steinberg persuaded us to approve Prop. 63, which is basically Prop. 10’s kid brother. The measure slightly increased the income tax on the state’s top earners and allocated those funds for mental health programs. I think it’s telling that the former Assemblyman (now State Senate majority leader) is asking us to approve 1E, which does the same thing as 1D: It takes unspent money and plugs up the hole in our budget, and even Steinberg says this is a matter of being able to support current services before implementing ones that aren’t even ready yet.

Yes on 1F

The literature against Prop. 1F says it’s cynical and doesn’t accomplish anything to change the behavior of our legislators. True enough, but there’s no disadvantage to approving it, either. All it does is appoints a budget director to determine whether we’re operating at a deficit or not. If we are, government officials can’t get pay raises. Seeing as how the rest of us endure pay freezes during hard times, I don’t see why public officials should be any different.

Trutanich for Los Angeles City Attorney

The campaign has centered around how both of these guys are supposedly tough prosecutors, which is really lame considering that’s only one part of what city attorneys do. They also interpret the local charter. They’re the city’s main legal representative. They oversee hundreds of legal staff. All that is why we should be suspicious of both Trutanich and Weiss.

Trutanich has represented the interests of environmental polluters and was Rocky Delgadillo’s own attorney, so if anyone despised Delgadillo, there’s his new head. Weiss quickly gained a reputation for kowtowing to real estate developers during his time on City Council. Neither candidate sounds like they have my interests in mind, but at least Trutanich is a practicing courtroom attorney, which will make him markedly more effective at the job than Weiss.

Community College Districts: Incumbents Pearlman and Reddock

Nancy Pearlman and Angela Reddock are the only candidates in this race with enough of an understanding of the community college district to have a platform. Robert Nakahiro and Tina Park haven’t seemed to say much of anything except that Park wants the financial process improved. That sounds good until Reddock presents her efforts to get strict on course quality and transfer rates to four-year schools.

Now get out there and vote!