Propositions 69 and 70 on the June ballot are both bad policy of the kind California has long pursued, to its great detriment.
Specifically, both measures add to the whips and chains that make California budgeting a house of bondage.
Prop 69 creates even more inflexibility in an already inflexible budget system and adds even more complexity to an already too-complex state constitution. Prop 69 does this via a constitutional amendment that requires new vehicle fees and diesel taxes that were part of the gas tax package be devoted to transportation, and only transportation. That may sound logical, and is good policy, but it makes it even harder to budget when revenues become volatile in California, which is often.
Proposition 70 creates yet another supermajority for California’s supermajority-mad system. The measure would require a supermajority of both houses of the legislature, in six years, to approve any future spending of cash from the cap-and-trade program. Since high-speed rail is funded in part by such funds, it would create a supermajority check on that project going forward. And that may sound good to such fans, but it’s likely to cost the state money—because when you have to get a supermajority vote, there are more votes to buy.
So if these are such bad ideas, why might you want to vote for them? Because they are both the product of difficult legislative compromises.
These aren’t ballot initiatives, qualified for the ballot by wealthy people or interests. Both measures were put on the legislature as part of bigger deals. Prop 69 is a product of the difficult negotiations to get the gas tax through; it was a way to get tax skeptics on board by promising the money would go to transportation. Prop 70 was the price Assembly Republicans demanded for their votes to extend the cap-and-trade program and put them on firmer footing.
Of course, these compromise measures were necessary because of the governing whips-and-chains I mentioned earlier. Both the gas tax and cap-and-trade required two-thirds votes, a reflection of our supermajority madness.
So the question for voters is: must we accept the supermajority madness, and honor the herculean efforts to compromise within the broken system? Or should we reject these policies as more of the same, even if it makes further compromise harder?
I don’t think there’s any easy answer to those questions. And you could make a credible case for either way of approaching the two measures.
But I lean towards saying no to both—and sending a message that the system is broken. And that instead of working out compromises that make the dysfunction worse, Californians need to work on a new rational system for budgeting and legislating.