Isn’t it great how Prop 25 has fixed the budget process?
Remember
all the arguments for Prop 25? The majority party will own the budget now. They
can fix the problem all by themselves. They’ll move quickly. The minority party
won’t hold the budget hostage. Instead, they’ll offer a specific alternative
that they can take to the voters in the next election.
How’s that
working it out?
It isn’t –
for reasons that should have been obvious to reformers then, but weren’t. I
can’t tell you all the grief I received from good government folks, not to
mention folks on the left (and some on the right), for calling Prop 25 a
mistake last fall. I was told that it was at the very least a good first step
in the right direction.
Well, I
told you so.
Instead, it
was a well-intentioned move that may leave the state even worse off than
before.
The reason
is that the California budget process includes so many tools for blocking
consensus – from the two-thirds supermajorities on taxes (and now on fees!) to
all kinds of constitutional amendments and voter initiatives that protect
spending – that simply removing one impediment isn’t enough. In fact, moving one
piece of the process may make things worse – in part because it discredits the
notion that California can improve itself by unplugging its huge number of
fiscal rules, from tax limits to spending mandates.
The
minority party, local governments and other interests still have plenty of
supermajorities and other tools to frustrate any kind of coherent budgeting. So
the Republicans and other interests are taking hostages in the process.
With
revenues short, the two-thirds vote on the budget offers little positive. It’s
the 2/3 restrictions on taxation – and on referring measures to the ballot –
that are causing the problem. But Prop
25 left the rest of the system in place.
Prop 25
also wasn’t paired with any kind of electoral reform that would give Republicans
a credible path to winning legislative elections. Without that piece, the GOP
has little option but to use its supermajority leverage to take hostages.
What’s the
lesson? That piecemeal reform won’t get us there. Constitutional revision is
required so that we can redesign our election, governing and initiative systems
so they fit together.
All the
wise old heads in Sacramento – in government, the unions, business groups, the
media — will tell you that’s nuts. That incrementalism is the only way. They
probably still think that Prop 25 worked.