Restructuring state government

By Jose Calderon
Originally published in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

On 07/30/2009

I recently participated in a Southern California Constitution Convention Town Hall meeting and was enthralled by the excitement of hundreds of community leaders who are committed to advancing a framework that can restructure state government and particularly how Sacramento is handling policy-making in the areas of revenue and expenditures.

To make such a convention a reality, it will require a two-thirds vote by the legislators and I have no doubt that the small minority of legislators that were blocking any headway in the budget, will be the same minority who will block the decision for such a convention. A way around this is to place a proposition on the 2010 ballot that will enable the voters to hold a convention and a means of electing delegates to that convention.

To get there, it would take a mass populist movement that is sincere about tackling the key structural problems that are confronting California.

The first one is dealing with Proposition 13 which, since its enactment, has only promoted short-term solutions to problems that require long-term collaboration and planning. This initiative, passed by the voters in 1978, resulted in freezing the value of properties at time of purchase, limited the annual real estate tax to 1 percent of its assessed value resulting in a lowering of property taxes by as much as 57 percent.

Most devastating is that this initiative also included language that required a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for any future increases in tax rates or amounts of revenue collected.

This proposition has created an imbalance between state spending and tax revenues and contributed to an ongoing budget crisis, deadlocked the political system, and resulted in a small minority of legislators holding California hostage.

This proposition not only affected state government, it also required a two-thirds vote majority in local elections if local governments wanted to raise special taxes. At the same time, local governments have become more dependent on sales taxes for revenues resulting in "growth" at any expense with a minimizing of regional planned development. Our schools that at one time were part of a property-tax based finance system and ranked nationally among the top school systems in the nation are now ranked as low as 47th in student achievement.

As a property owner myself that is socially responsible, I am for turning around these massive reductions that were used to fund our schools and social services. A constitutional convention can do away with the two-thirds requirement that is the highest vote requirement of all states and change it to a simple majority vote on a budget implementation bill and a budget-balancing bill.

Another proposal that we can take up in a constitutional convention is the issue of term limits. A study by Professors Bruce Caine and Thad Kousser proposed that although proposition 140 (enacted in 1990) resulted in a more diverse Senate and Assembly, it also resulted in "greatly reducing the experience levels" of our legislators.

Further, they proposed that "with a six-year limit in the Assembly and eight years in the Senate and with a need to make one's mark quickly, there is little incentive to stay with a policy area and master its details ... and there is even less incentive to do the routine work of overseeing the executive branch."

These problems cannot be solved under the present structure and, without a lot more organizing, it will be difficult to envision that the voting public will support drastic changes. However, I do agree with a proposal by Caine and Kousser that might be more palatable to the voting public. This would be a provision that, instead of allowing legislators six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate, would allow for 14 years of total legislative service. This type of mix-and-match provision would ease the practice of legislators moving from the Assembly to the Senate when they are termed-out and allow legislators to stay in one house to gain more experience in long-term policy making and allow for strengthening the capacities to oversee the executive branch.

Finally, in this state, we need to increase the revenue source so that the essential programs are not cut. This governor, after being elected, did away with vehicle license fees that were historically used to close the budget gap and with no alternative to replace the $4 billion in revenue. This governor has been consistent in proposing short-term fixes to the $26.3 billion budget gap by cutting education and health programs that serve seniors, children and working people but he has not been willing to support new taxes on oil drilling, tobacco or alcohol (despite support for these initiatives by the general public).

Meanwhile, as in past economic crises, the immigrants are blamed and we have new initiatives emerging to cut out the citizenship rights of children who were born to undocumented parents.

Let's put the blame where it belongs. Let's cut out the unjust tax shelters that corporations use to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. It is estimated that $8 billion in revenue could be raised by the simple decision that the off-shore companies that earn money abroad have to pay taxes on those profits.

In this context, the dialogue for a constitutional convention is a positive one that has the capacity to become a catalyst for a social movement to create a culture of accountability and to promote long-term planning as an alternative to the short-term fixes that this governor and his minority of "blockers" have been supporting.

Jose Calderon is professor in sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College and president of the Latino and Latina Roundtable of the Pomona and San Gabriel Valley.