Department of Hypocrisy: California Republicans, Champions Of Direct Democracy, Now Want To Violate It
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.
Parra’s punishment indicates political parties are not about governance
Sources and friends sent me a number of thoughtful criticisms of yesterday’s post about Assemblywoman Nicole Parra’s banishment from the Capitol and Assemblywoman Patty Berg’s comment, "We have spent millions of dollars ensuring that Nicole comes back three times in a row." These emailers make some strong points.
Among these: Party discipline is an important value. It’s selfish for one member to hold up something as important as the budget because of her own constituency. If legislative leaders were to permit such behavior, there would be chaos. Another criticism involved Parra’s cause — the water bond, which many see as welfare for the ag biz.
Let’s leave the water debate for another time (though it’s worth noting there is a bipartisan compromise on the table) and take on the party discipline point. Party discipline is fine — if legislative leaders enforce it in the service of delivering for the state. But in this era, when it comes to the budget and resolving California’s major problems, legislative leadership consistently has failed to reach timely compromises.
Perhaps it’s time for a new approach that seeks not to punish moderates but to encourage them to lead in the way in finding compromise. But there’s little interest in real compromise among leaders of either party. They’re about control, not governance. It speaks volumes that Parra, a high profile moderate who has had three tough races, has been kicked out of the Capitol.
How to repeal the two-thirds budget vote requirement
With the state budget now more than 50 days late, the usual suspects have again lined up to decry the two-thirds vote requirement to pass the state budget. But the problem isn’t a late budget – it’s an unbalanced, undisciplined budget.
The typical defense of the supermajority vote is that it promotes consensus and restrains overspending or tax increases. But in practice it has done neither: taxes are already checked by a two-thirds vote, and spending has obviously not been constrained by the budget vote hurdle.
So maybe the time has come to jettison the two-thirds budget vote, and replace it with some legitimate budget reforms that would actually control spending. After all, the fundamental cause of the budget debacle has been persistent bankrolling of workload budgets that have exceeded even extravagant revenue increases: to illustrate, a 44% increase in General Fund tax revenues between 2003 and 2007 was not enough to cover all the spending demands.
Caller: “SB 1-3-6-9”; Players: “Bingo!”
When I think of charity bingo, I have images of a Parish Hall with volunteers running the game and the parish priest calling out the numbers as parishioners mark their cards and at some point one of the lucky ones shouts “Bingo!”
Bingo came to the United States from Europe in 1929 and was quickly embraced as an inexpensive form of entertainment during the Great Depression. It was about this time that a Catholic priest in Pennsylvania facing diminished offerings to the collection plate began to use Bingo as a way to raise funds for his parish’s charities. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Since that time churches, synagogues and a wide range of charities from the Veterans of Foreign Wars to the Elks Clubs have used Bingo to fund their many and diverse charities. We in the Catholic Church have also used the proceeds to fund our schools and provide scholarships for the less fortunate.