Property Owners Beware – Proposition 98 Goes Down in Defeat Along with Any Real Chance of Reform
It’s a sad state of affairs when millions of taxpayer dollars can be spent on a political campaign to fool voters into supporting faux property rights protections.
But that’s precisely what happened last night with the passage of Proposition 99 – which will do nothing to protect property owners from eminent domain abuse. Proponents of this measure, namely wealthy developers and government fat cats, have succeeded, for the moment, in protecting the status quo and their bottom line.
Primary Election Night – Some Winners and Some Losers
There was an election in California last night, and twenty-two percent of California’s voters bothered to turn out. There may be a few absentee and provisional ballots out there yet to be counted and the turnout percentage may inch up a bit, but not by much.
Regardless of turnout, elections have consequences and there were some big winners and losers last night.
One of the big winners was state Senator Jeff Denham, who easily beat back the recall election with 76 percent of the district voters voting NO on the recall.
Another winner was state Senator Tom McClintock, who carpetbagged from Ventura County to run in the 4th Congressional District located northeast of Sacramento. McClintock handily defeated former Congressman Doug Ose, 54 percent to 39 percent. In San Diego County Duncan Hunter, the son of the retiring incumbent congressman of the same name, trounced his three Primary opponents by receiving 73 percent of the vote.
Flogging Prop 13
Peter Schrag today praises Joel Fox with faint damnation. Schrag claims that the F&H editor was "partially right" in complaining "vociferously about people who he thought blamed too many of California’s problems on Proposition 13."
He further concedes that Howard Jarvis cannot be held responsible for earthquakes and wildfires. But that seems to be the extent of his absolution. Schrag identifies nearly every major post-1978 public policy affront as the progeny of Prop 13. Not just tax limitations but the adoption of term limits, anti-crime initiatives, and the stem cell boondoggle. It’s as if – if not for Proposition 13 – the California public (not to mention interest groups) would never have discovered this obscure constitutional power to legislate by popular initiative.
Water Here, There, Nowhere!
In case you haven’t been paying attention, California has just experienced one of the driest winters since we started keeping records – long before any of us were born. The environmental community and Al Gore have told us Global Warming is just around the corner and that means reduced snow pack in the Sierras – the largest part of our state water system storage.
Oh yes, we can’t forget that the endangered species act is doing what it is supposed to do and protecting the delta smelt resulting in a judge ruling that there has to be as much as a 35% reduction in the water pumped from the delta south to where the people are. 80% of the people are in southern California where only 20% of the rain falls and 20% of the folks are up north where 80% of the rain falls – and the only person in Sacramento paying attention to all of this is Governor Schwarzenegger.
New Poll on Prop 13
A just-completed survey of California voters shows that Proposition 13, the tax limitation measure approved by two-to-one in 1978, still has overwhelming support today.
The survey of 801 voters, conducted by Arnold Steinberg and Associates, reveals that 47.9 percent support Proposition 13 while 19.7 percent are opposed and 32.3 percent are undecided. When provided with information about what Proposition 13 does — placing
limits on annual property tax increases and requiring voter approval
of new local taxes — support swells to 60.4 percent in favor, 26.6 againstand 13 percent undecided.
These results are consistent with a recent Public Policy Institute
of Californian (PPIC) survey that showed 59 percent of respondents
thought Proposition 13 was a good for the state while 27 percent
disagreed.
View the survey questions and results here.