Special election hones in on budget crisis

It’s been six months since we last visited electoral polls, yet it feels as though we haven’t had one break since then. The new year started out with state legislators failing to secure a final working budget. The stalemate lasted through February and the end result was a deficit higher than the state has ever experienced, looming somewhere beyond $40 billion.

Chalk up rising unemployment rates, home foreclosures and an economy that just doesn’t seem to be improving one bit, and it’s no surprise why 2009 has felt like one political gaffe and economic impasse after another, and another.

Now, we’ll be faced next week with going to the ballot box yet again in a special election hoped to bring some closure to the endless financial drain.

The six measures offered up on the ’09 ballot will implore voters to approve changes like adopting a state “rainy day” fund, altering long-term standards of the state lottery, paying out supplemental funding to schools, and diverting money away from mental health and children’s services.

Legislative analysts predict that if all six propositions pass, the state stands to usher in more than $98 billion in revenues. If that achievement is met and our financial strains are relieved, the term “special election” undoubtedly would apply.

Yet, “surprise election” could be a better phrase for a campaign that shows signs of hurried preparation, under-developed planning and confusing language.

The people behind Web site CaliforniaPropositions.org addressed this notion and responded, saying, “We’re confident that in the end having more people — not less — involved in the process could be a good thing.”

However, voters could still be unprepared — and maybe even uninterested or unaware — for the election. According to the Ventura County Office of Elections, of the 422,000 registered voters countywide, 168,273 ballots were mailed out this month. As of Tuesday, only 46,000 have been returned.

By nature, the special election seems almost last-ditch, defeating, because legislators are spending money as a way of trying to conserve money. And the fiscal effects are felt right down to your own local Government Center and polling places.

In Ventura County, Tuesday’s vote-taking and counting will cost upward of a million dollars, says Tracy Saucedo of the county elections division. It’s half the cost of last November’s election, yet a mere fraction of the scale.

Some consolidations have been made to compensate — 298 polling centers compared to 365 in November — but the expenses still don’t justify the efforts to cut back for an election that has been hasty at best.

Had the special election been presented to us later this year, the issues would have been better fleshed out, more studied by the voters. That way, even if the ballots were a bust, the cost would have been well worth that breather.

Polls are open on Tuesday, May 19, 7 a.m.-8 p.m. For more Election Day information, visit recorder.countyofventura.org/elections.htm on the Web.

Prop. 1A is about coming together
Most children were brought up to understand the importance of saving money. Many were given a porcelain piggy bank, and for every dollar earned, 10 cents would go into that piggy bank. Most parents understand that the day will come when earning a dollar may be harder than usual, and having money saved up for such emergencies is vital to survival. Now, move from adolescent lessons and piggy banks to Capitol Hill and balancing a multibillion-dollar budget.

The problem here in the beautiful state of California is that taxpayers and legislators live in a world of eternal optimism — where bubbles won’t burst, and there will always be ample opportunities to make mega-fortunes. But we got a reality check early last year and into this year when the housing market crashed, people lost millions in the stock market, and the unemployment rate soared.

One thing Californians finally got was that being optimistic has its costs. The budget deficit grew to $40 billion as property values and tax revenue declined, sales tax proceeds also went down as credit tightened and people had less cash to spend, and the overall economy hit lows similar to the Great Depression.

Upon reflection, we could have gotten through this recession without so much collateral damage to our schools and public services if we had set aside more money in the first place into our “rainy day” fund, which, with the passage of 1A, would go from 5 percent to 12.5 percent. Also, while no one likes paying higher taxes — income or sales — we have already been doing it for the last several months and with a looming deficit of $8 billion for 2009-10, we might as well keep trudging along and pull together to get through this. By the time Proposition 1A expires in 2012, our economy should have bounced back, and we will welcome the extra cash that we won’t have to pay in taxes any more.

Let’s better the situation now by paying a little extra for a little longer to be better prepared if and when another economic downturn should occur.  VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 1A.

Proposition 1B too convoluted
It has often been said, if something doesn’t make sense, then don’t do it. When it comes to Proposition 1B, the proposition’s definition is so convoluted, it would just be better to leave things as they are.

Proposition 1B allegedly is supposed to require supplemental payments to local school districts and community colleges to address recent budget cuts, but the payments wouldn’t begin until the 2011-12 fiscal year. But isn’t the money needed now?

And the proposition is supposed to result in annual savings of up to several billion dollars each year; however, according to other interpretations of the measure, it wouldn’t save any money during the next two fiscal years, when it is needed most.

So it’s not helping schools with the problems they have now or will have in the next couple of years, and it possibly won’t create any type of savings. The point of this measure is virtually lost in interpretation.
For the sake of making sense, vote no on Proposition 1B.

Proposition 1C just not a good plan
While it may seem justifiable to balance the budget by borrowing from a huge stockpile of money, i.e., the lottery, the unintended consequences just aren’t worth the payoffs.

As the proposition is written, our legislators decided the best way to balance the budget in an economic crisis is by borrowing billions of dollars from the state lottery. For this loan, our lawmakers promised to modernize the state lottery to improve its performance with increased payouts, improved marketing and effective management.

Apparently, the rule of thumb during an economic recession, according to those on Capitol Hill, is to indirectly promote gambling by improving the lottery system because of a debt-service to fix California’s budget problems. But isn’t gambling, for the most part, a bad thing?

Stan Mantooth, superintendent of Ventura County schools, doesn’t think using money allocated from gambling is such good idea. He also said that whether or not education receives money due to them based on a proposition passed in the 1980s, the actual amount is so relatively small, education would be fine without it.

This poorly worded and defined proposition would have very few positive results — which would include potentially higher lottery payoffs, but they would be negated by the fact it could possibly make balancing the budget in future more difficult and would promote gambling by better marketing of the lottery and higher payoffs.

This is a get-rich quick scheme with high risks that won’t help anything. Vote no on Proposition 1C.

Props. 1D, 1E — not sticking to the plan
When giving consideration to two measures on this year’s special election ballot, the term welching undeniably comes to mind.

Propositions 1D and 1E are connected by means of method. They’re both intended to take money away, albeit temporarily, from organizations that were themselves promised money from the passage of two prior ballot measures.

Those measures, propositions 10 and 63, have provided needed funding and organizational growth for programs servicing some of our most neglected people: children and the mentally ill. When passed, respectively, in 1998 and 2004, they ensured government monies to groups like the early-development First 5 and a host of mental health organizations.

Ideally, we’d like to think that when an election is over, the people have spoken; the results are unwavering and set in stone. Props. 10 and 63 ensured by a popular, mass vote that millions and millions in funding would be in place for those special interest organizations throughout the state.

But Prop. 1D intends to “divert” almost $1.7 billion in funding, over five years, away from Prop. 10-based California children and families programs. Likewise, 1E extracts about $230 million in Prop. 63 funding, for two years, sourced from the Mental Health Services Act.

The intent of state lawmakers is to use these propositions as outlets for balancing an emaciated state budget in fiscal crisis, a balance that, to their credit, has been a painstakingly long and arduous process to reach. And in May 2009, we’re still not close to closing the gap.

Nevertheless, propositions 1D and 1E continue a nasty trend we’ve seen somewhat with the likes of gay marriage and Prop. 8 — that if something doesn’t serve well the constitutional needs and whims of legislators or any resident of California, at any given place or time, simply place a new measure on the ballot.

One mental health services proponent in Ventura County has likened the process to a cheapening of the electoral system. It could set a future, habitual precedent for lawmakers to grant funding, only to take it back (through exploiting California’s voters) so they can make up for their own financial irresponsibilities and missteps.

There’s also no guarantee these ballot measures, even if they pass muster, will achieve their goal of state fiscal health. In the end, all parties involved could be none the wiser — or richer.

Props. 1D and 1E are similar in approach, and both beyond reproach. Vote no on Propositions 1D and 1E.

An A for 1F
It’s the last ballot measure at the very bottom of the list, and it bears the letter of a failing grade, but by all standards, Proposition 1F is the clearest and most obvious winner of this year’s special election. An “A” all around.

Prop. 1F is nearly infallible. There’s almost no way to find anything wrong with the fact that legislators should never receive raises in pay when our own state budget is in a deficit.

Simply put, if Prop. 1F passes, elected officials can’t even think about getting a salary increase during any year when the state budget hasn’t been balanced.

According to the state elections division, California’s elected politicos are eligible for salaries ranging from $116,000 to $212,000. Political commentator and Prop. 1F detractor Pete Stahl likens those figures to the average middle-class pay scale; yet their individual salaries are more than some entire families in Ventura County earn in a single year’s time, if not longer.

The California Democratic Party’s recent endorsement of Prop. 1F echoed the sentiments of President Obama. His own verbal slamming of bailout-receiving AIG execs and their lofty bonuses resonated with a nation fed up with a lack of fiscal due diligence.

Lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves for desiring, or expecting, more money when California is $42 billion in the red.

Prop. 1F makes sense because it places priority on where precious funding should be going in times of crisis. And in the worst fiscal emergency since the Great Depression, voting yes on Prop. 1F is one of the best safeguards we can take for our financial future. Vote yes on Proposition 1F.