First Gollyvorya, then the nation!

I’m a teacher in California…Ain’t a pretty thing, except that the republicans are again rendering themselves unelectable in the future.

How is it looking like this might shake out for the CA university system?

It’s a selfish questions, as our son is a soph at Humboldt State. He doesn’t want to have to come back to Alaska and finish his fisheries degree in a university program run by oil companies and Bering Sea trawler enablers.

Have him check out some other systems if he has to leave CSUH, ET.

We’ve got a good fisheries and wildlife program here at Semi-Solid State U, complete with a USFWS cooperative research unit.

Can’t they just pass a budget by referendum?

CSU will not be lost. Nor will the UC system. Right now, every student is having trouble finishing in four or five years because of difficulties getting the mandated classes. The Community Colleges are having a particularly rough time.

The budget is one vote shy of a deal but it is an awful budget- 1 billion in tax breaks to businesses and lots of new taxes for everyone else. A handful of obstructionists goppers can sure muck things up.

There are fantastic agricultural opportunities in Humboldt County these days.

We should stop referring to the Republican dissention as simply a disagreement based on idiology. It’s not true. They lost and if they can’t have the country then nobody can. I see them as traitors at this point, willing to destroy the country rather than let the Liberals have their way. We critize Afganistan for their tribal warfare but we have tribal warfare on a grand scale.

$

Takes a 2/3 majority to pass a budget. If we had one sane republican in the state, it would have been passed last August. But they refuse any tax increases or motor charges. I pay only $104 to drive on the roads per year now. (2001 Acura)

Since Proposition 13 passed in the late seventies, property taxes do not go up once you own a home. Amazing, huh? Remember that Warren Buffet said that he paid more in taxes for a home in Texas than on the coast of California.

That’s your constitution, Chris.

California wouldn’t be in this complete mess if it weren’t for the supermajority requirement on passing a budget. Fix the state constitution, because the one you have is a complete mess.

While you’re at it, require a 60% + 1 supermajority on citizen initiatives, 50% + 1 on referenda. There is a difference and the constitutional requirement should reflect the difference.

California has a law that makes vote-trading illegal.

But look at the list one GOP holdout (Abel Maldonado) has presented to the Senate Democrats:

The Santa Maria Republican told reporters Monday outside his office that his list of demands includes four things. He wants an open primary system similar to those used by local governments in which the top two vote-getters regardless of party run in the general election. The system is said to favor moderate candidates, such as himself, rather than encourage primary hopefuls to woo voters at their party’s extremes. He acknowledged he plans to run for statewide office, but sold the open primary as more of a “good government reform.”

The open primary change would have to be approved by voters. Maldonado did not specify when he wanted it, but sources said he has asked that it be included on the May special election ballot before Maldonado attempts to run for statewide office next year.

Maldonado wants two items sure to be unpopular with his colleagues. He wants a law passed so the state would stop paying lawmakers if they do not approve the budget on time. He also wants a ban on legislative pay raises and per diem increases in years when California faces a budget deficit. An independent board, the California Citizens Compensation Commission, currently sets legislative pay.

And he threw in one last item: remove the pork spending from the budget package. He didn’t specify what qualified as pork, but leaders already have provided small sweeteners for various members to help win their support, such as $35 million annually for Orange County, where Sen. Lou Correa lives. Maldonado also wants to block state Controller John Chiang from spending $1 million on new office furniture, something Chiang’s office said was approved before Chiang was elected.

Agree.
Passing a budget in California has the exact same dynamic as trying to get the stimulus bill through the senate.
A handful of goppers and blue dog dems had way too much clout because they needed their vote.
At least the stimulus bill could be “fixed” a bit in the joint committee.
There is no such fix for the California budget.

Gee, it’s not what it is, but what you call it that counts.
How Republican.

It isn’t the Constitution, it’s that disaster known as Proposition 13.

The problem isn’t that homeowners’ property taxes don’t go up. The problem is that business property taxes don’t go up.

Under Prop 13, as long as you live in your home, property taxes can only go up by the rate of inflation or the cap, whichever is lower. When a property sells, the new owner will begin paying taxes based on the sales price. The problem is that business properties never change hands. So all the huge corporations are paying 1972 property taxes. Unfair much?

Prop 13 also put into effect a requirement that ANY referendum/proposition or any budget bill in the legislature must pass by a 2/3 majority. This results in tyranny by the minority since of course, the 1/3 controls. It also requires this same 2/3 majority to amend or overturn Prop 13.

Because of the tax benefits to corporations – you know the answer to why nothing has ever been done about this. The voters in the State of California were sold a bill of goods by the good Mr. Jarvis and his so-called tax-reform group. He is actually a big shill for big corps and that’s that.

We’re # 1!

(in the race to become the nation’s most ill-educated state…) Move over, Mississippi! Adios, Alabama!

As a bonus, tonight we get to burn $390 million in construction turn-off/turn on costs.

Thanks, Rethugs. Thanks, Southern Pacific and Catellus and Prop 13, your servant. Thanks Paul Gann and Howard Jarvits. Thanks, Chandler family and Hearst family. Thanks, Dobson and the other hate preachers.

Thanks, Arnold. Thanks Club For Growth and Grover Norquist. Thanks to your paymasters: the Mellon, Scaife, Coors, and Olin families and a few other billionaire reactionaries. Some of your families hated California since she almost elected Upton Sinclair….nearly a century ago.

Our prisons are stuffed, our roads are crumbling, one quarter of our people lack functional literacy, our health “system” ravaged, our schools and colleges decaying.

You won.

Are you proud?

Hmmmm.

California had an open primary system into the 60s. The Democrats killed it off and closed primaries, because the R’s were organized. They’d flood D primaries and vote for the weakest candidate, leaving a fairly clear path for the R candidate, who was generally running unopposed.

Going to an open primary might actually allow the GOoP to run some viable candidates.

Holding back legislator’s pay when they fail to do their job (pass a budget) isn’t all that awful an idea. Banning pay increases in deficit years is also not an awful idea.

I forget how it works in California, but here in Nuevo Mexico pork is pretty easy to define. It’s the capital expenditure budget, split 1/3 to the State House, 1/3 to the State Senate, and 1/3 to Guv.

Don’t forget to thank Darrell Issa for the recall.

Can you expand on the difference BC?

Grover: “It’s Clinton’s fault.”

I thank him with all the gratitude I usually reserve for car alarms in the night…

loky,

Prop 13 was (and remains) a fiscal disaster. I lived in California when it passed (I was college student at the time.) What happened was that a decent idea got hijacked by Howard Jarvis and his crew.

The net effect 30+ years later is that the property tax burden has shifted primarily to residential property and away from (more valuable) commercial property.

But 13 (which is a part of the constitution, by the way) isn’t the only problem California has. Your constitution is a complete mess. A 2/3 supermajority to pass a budget (yeah, that is in your constitution too) is simply insane. What it means is that you cannot pass a budget. Of course, you all are finding that out now.

We’re number one! USA! USA!

-G

And in CA cities now favor stip malls & big box retailers over homes becuse of the sales tax revenue.

Homes are a net cost to a city.

Will bankruptcy overturn the state consitiution?

Sure, Ian.

By the way, this is all courtesy of a class I had to take at Curran Jr High School in Bakersfield, California. It’s been augmented some since, but when I was in grammar school in California, you couldn’t graduate until you had passed a test on the California constitution.

A referendum is a proposed law that has been sent from the legislature to the people for their approval. Because it has been sent from the lege, it has been through a reasonably comprehensive hearing, debate and amendment process before it ever hits the ballot.

An initiative is a proposed law that is placed on the ballot by petition. The full name is actually the citizen initiative. An initiative has not been through the legislative debate and amendment process. In California, the Secretary of State’s Office tries to give a comprehensive analysis of initiatives, but a couple of legislative analysts aren’t a substitute for a full staff of legislative aides and legislators for poking and prodding and thinking about potential consequences.

In the analysis of the infamous Prop 13, no one mentioned the difference in turn over rates between residential and commercial properties. If you’d told people in 1973 that in 2008 2/3 of the property tax receipts would come from residential property, I doubt that 13 would have passed. On the same ballot, there was a lege referendum that would have controlled residential property taxes. Both it and 13 passed, but 13 gathered more votes and therefore was enacted.

Basically, the difference is that referenda have been pretty well vetted. It’s unlikely that even the California Lege would send forward a referendum to set pi = 3. But there is nothing to stop biblical literalists from proposing an initiative to make pi = 3 in California, in accordance with the Old Testament.

Since referenda have been vetted reasonably well, a simple majority seems reasonable. Initiatives haven’t been vetted (really at all), so a substantial supermajority should be required before the statutes and/or the constitution get saddled with them.

Thanks BC, that’s very helpful.

I don’t think the 2/3 supermajority in the lege was a part of 13. Prop 13 did have a requirement for mill levies to be approved by the voters, but I don’t think that it directly affected the state budget process.

I could be wrong about that, I’ve slept once or twice since 1973. Besides that, I left the Golden State in 1977 for grad school and didn’t return. So I’m not directly affected by California’s inanities as I once was.

There are some people on my street that pay $600-700/yr in property taxes and others that pay over $5,000/yr for essentially the same house. I voted against prop 13 because I thought it was really unfair, although I have benefitted from it greatly, as I have lived in the same house for over 30 yrs. In boom years, the state continues to rake in a lot of property taxes because people move or buy a new house. With values falling, people who have bought at the height of the market can get their property reassessed. That hurts the state budget.

Commercial and industrial properties are not reassessed as often when they are sold. This is because a corporation is usually the owner of the property and remains the owner when the people who have invested in the corporation change. So it is not reassessed. It sucks. Prop 13 was a bit iffy about this but it has never been tested in court.

After Prop 13 passed, local governments went berserk thinking up new ways to tax people. We got lots of “fees”.
Many of them are regressive. We get “capacity charges” and other miscellaneous fees tacked on to the water bill. People in apartments pay the same as people in huge estates.

In addition, lots of cities formed “redevelopment districts”. Redevelopment is a state law that was intended to help blighted urban areas. But it was greatly abused. The city I live in put almost all undeveloped land in the redevelopment area. Now they get to keep the “tax increment”- the difference in the property taxes from when the property was raw land vs the taxes with some development on it. Of course the city had to issue bonds to promote the development which will be paid back over the next 30, 40, 50 yrs with the tax increment that they redirect to themselves instead of state coffers. So the state is losing billions of dollars in property tax and the cities that overbuilt industrial and retail crap are now struggling to bring in enough money to pay back the bonds.

California needs to junk its entire constitution. Over and beyond the stupidity of the 2/3rds rule for budgets, the current document is a mare’s nest that nobody can entirely figure out. A host of amendments include detailed laws that any rational state would handle as statutes or administrative rules. The state needs to convene a constitutional convention, pronto, hard as that will be.

Actually, now that I think about it, you should require people to read citizen initiatives completely before they can sign a petition favoring its submission to the sheeple.

Then, in the SecState’s vetting process of the signatures, draw a random sample of names and call them to ask about the clear and obvious provisions of the initiatives. If fewer than 95% can tell what the damned thing says, then it should never reach the ballot.

a little history lesson

So why is it that over the past 20 years our Legislature has missed its June 30 deadline of a signed budget 13 times? As noted in a recent San Francisco Chronicle editorial-page column, California is one of just three states in the nation, Rhode Island and Arkansas being the others, which requires a supermajority vote of 66 percent to pass its budget.

This means that one-third of the Legislature can veto that which two-thirds desires. The Congress passes its budget with a simple majority vote. The California State Association of Counties and the California League of Cities confirm that not one of our 58 counties, and few, if any cities, have a similar requirement.

With nearly every state in the nation and all of California’s local governmental agencies eschewing this supermajority threshold, why do we require this added burden of our Legislature? Why do we continue to allow the demands of a small minority of lawmakers to halt the governmental operations of the eighth largest economy in the world?

The answer to the first question is steeped in Great Depression era history. In 1933, voter passage of the Riley-Stewart amendment significantly overhauled the state’s fiscal system. The centerpiece of the amendment dealt with taxation, but it also impacted the budget requiring a two-thirds majority vote for budget passage when it grew by more than 5 percent from the previous year. As the economy returned to long periods of expansion, the supermajority threshold became the status quo leading voters to drop the 5 percent growth formula in 1962, leaving us with our current predicament. Clearly, it is time to revisit this historical anomaly. Additionally, it was Proposition 13 in 1978 which added the two-thirds requirement for the passage of any tax increase.

here’s more….

The answer to the second question is both easier and more complex than the first. We continue to allow for this minority tyranny simply because voters have not reversed the decision made at the ballot box in 1962, though not for lack of trying. In 2004, Proposition 56 would have lowered the majority to pass both the budget and tax increases to 55 percent. Did voters not understand the poor reasoning and dangerous unintended consequences of the two-thirds requirement, or were they concerned that by lowering the necessary percentage to 55 percent their taxes may have more readily been raised? My guess is that both suppositions are likely true. Certainly the opposition’s 15-second television commercials stating that “if you want Democrats to raise your taxes, vote for Proposition 56″ played to that fear. Of course, no party in Sacramento would cavalierly raise taxes, for the ramifications of such an act could be devastating in the next election. How to explain to voters in a brief commercial the impact of our 66 percent requirement is a much greater challenge.

Amen.

Right after the election, I tried to read the California constitution to understand the amendment process. Basically, my question was, “Do Jerry Brown and the folks trying to get Prop 8 overturned have a hope?”

The thing is such a mess that I can’t tell. And neither can anyone else, apparently. There are sections that contradict other sections, and trying to figure out what is controlling is impossible. But somehow the California Supreme Court is going to have to figure it out. I presume that they have access to a better version (meaning, a better dated and cross-referenced version) than I do. If not, doG help them.

Are they going to lay off the prison guards? That would have a real effect in the gooper counties where so many of them have been located. Or maybe they will just cut the food rations. There’s probably some savings in substituting dog food for whatever they serve there.

” Federal judges on Monday tentatively ordered California to release tens of thousands of inmates, up to a third of all prisoners, in the next three years to stop dangerous overcrowding.

As many as 57,000 could be let go if the current population were cut by the maximum percentage considered by a three-judge panel. Judges said the move could be done without threatening public safety — and might improve a public safety hazard. “

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200…..california

Remember that Warren Buffet said that he paid more in taxes for a home in Texas than on the coast of California.

As I recall, what he compared was the property taxes on his place in [luxury enclave] La Jolla CA to his home in Omaha.

Hurray for Buffett that he has consistently been against Prop 13. That position got him “eased out” as an advisor to Arnold.

Thanks to all above for the lucid explanation of Prop. 13. I too lived in CA when it passed and have attempted to explain its evils in Comments to numerous diaries. None as good as yours.