Cool! Our Own Boston Tea Party!
You don’t want to make the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors mad. You really don’t. The supes have incredible power–they’re both the legislative and executive branch of government for a county of more than 10 million people. And there are only five of them. Do the math. Yep, those are districts of two million people each. That’s power that puts a mere congressman or state senator to shame. An incumbent supe loses a seat about as often as Halley’s Comet swings by the earth.
But oh, you state government. You’ve gone and done it. You’ve made the supes mad. And now you’re going to pay. Well, more precisely, you’re not going to get paid. Maybe. The county supes are so disgusted at the state government’s fiscal mess — and the legislature and governor’s delay in solving it — that they’re threatening to withhold tax payments to the state. It’s only fair–the state is refusing to pay its bills, and the delays already have cost the county more than $100 million.
Is it legal for the county to withhold payments, you ask? No. Is it practical? Probably not, since most taxes are collected by the state directly. But property tax receipts go through the county. Can they do it? Of course they can. Who’s going to stop them? The state of California? Ha! What’s Arnold gonna do–send the National Guard into the Hall of Administration?
The Not-so-Supermajority
It’s not easy getting your approval rating into the single digits, but the California Legislature may just pull it off. Back in January, before the budget impasse had reached the point where the state was forced to issue IOUs, the California Public Policy Institute polled state residents and found that only 21% thought the lawmakers were doing a decent job.
This is what happens to a Legislature that’s designed for failure. In ordinary times, California’s Senate and Assembly are structurally incapable of acting with foresight. In times of crisis, like the present, they are paralyzed by partisan stalemate. It’s not that the legislators, as individuals, are less intelligent or more venal than the rest of us. They’re they usual mix of political people. Their real problem is constitutional. They operate under rules that were meant to protect the taxpayers but end up producing bad budgets and a lot of public debt.
California’s budget and dangerous economic waters
During the first eight years of this decade, California has done an absolutely marvelous job of creating growth in government. According to the Employment Development Department (EDD), there are 184,500 (8%) more employees on the government payroll than on January 1, 2001. Over those same eight years, private sector employment is up only 33,600 (0.2%). This means that the public sector accounts for 85 percent of the overall growth in California over the last eight years. If you look at the chart below, it’s obvious, given our state’s trend, that the revenue “generators” can’t support the revenue “users” and a swelling government.
In a Word: The Sheer Magnitude of The Problem
According to the TV program: “Million 2 One,” showing now on the Science Channel®, if you tried to count to One Trillion counting each of your ten fingers, over and over, counting 24 hours per day, non-stop, it would take you 31,688 years of such non-stop finger-counting to count to one Trillion. Time Magazine (Jan . 26, 2009, ‘Inauguration Preview Edition’) contributes further to our knowledge base of this new frontier, right in time for the Super Bowl: One Trillion dollars would “cover every NFL player’s salary, on all 32 teams, for the next 313 years,” or, for those who have had quite enough football by now, thank you, “you could treat every person in the world [6 ¾ Billion, give or take a few stragglers] to [Starbucks’ finest] one Frappuccino per day for 37 straight days.”
“Let’s be realistic, $700 billion is not enough,” recently said one of the deans of the Wall Street Bar, H. Rodgin Cohen, Esq., chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell at a conference hosted by The Deal magazine a couple of weeks ago, talking about what it is going to take to get the ship of state righted and sailing ahead again; “I think it’s the ‘T-word,’ ” he said – One Trillion Dollars.