California's Proposition 25 Would Have 'Majority Rule' on Budgets

I just finished up an essay for Pajamas Media on the top-ticket campaigns in California 2010. The piece should go live tomorrow or Monday, and I'll post it at that time. Meanwhile, I'm intrigued by Proposition 25, which would lower the legislative threshold for state budgets to a simple majority vote. The Howard Jarvis folks are squawking that the measure contains built-in hidden tax increases, and I agree that's not good. But we need some change around here. California's government sucks. I doubt either Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman will make things any better. I'm interested to see how thing develop at the grassroots. We need structural reforms, so this initiative might be a place to start.

In any case, at Stateline.org:

SACRAMENTO — California’s Democratic and Republican parties both held mock bake sales last month at the Capitol to protest each other’s “half-baked” budget ideas for plugging a $19 billion deficit for the year that began July 1 without a new plan.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has installed a clock outside his office ticking off the days without a budget and the growing size of the deficit, suggested last week he might leave office in January without signing a budget at all.

While this year’s stalemate has provided colorful political theater, late budgets are practically the norm in California. Since 1980, the Legislature has met the June 15 constitutional deadline for sending a budget to the governor only five times. Only ten times has the brokering been done by the July 1 start of the fiscal year.

Many people in Sacramento have come to believe that California’s restrictive budget rules are a big part of the problem. California is one of only three states that requires a supermajority vote of the Legislature to pass a state budget (Arkansas and Rhode Island are the others). In November, voters will weigh in on Proposition 25, a ballot measure that would lower the vote threshold down from two-thirds, so that lawmakers could pass budgets with a simple majority.

Supporters say the change would help California to wrap up its budget process on time and reduce the strain on state workers and contractors who this time of year get to wondering whether they’ll continue to be paid. The current system has “strangled democracy and put the minority party in control of major decisions to manage the system,” says Dennis Smith, secretary-treasurer of the California Federation of Teachers, one of several unions responsible for getting the measure on the ballot. The League of Women Voters of California also endorses Proposition 25.

In addition to changing the budget vote threshold, the measure would dock lawmakers’ pay and daily living allowance for each day the budget is not approved. Supporters insist that the measure would not change California’s constitutional requirement that any new taxes or tax increases pass both houses of the Legislature with a two-thirds vote. But business groups and other opponents say that’s not the case.

A coalition of taxpayers and employers called Stop Hidden Taxes, sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and California Taxpayers’ Association, says Proposition 25 includes “hidden” ways to allow legislators to raise taxes as part of a budget bill with a simple majority vote. “It should come as no surprise that the special interests behind this measure would try to sneak a measure by voters that makes it easier for the state Legislature to raise taxes on Californians,” says Teresa Casazza, president of the California Taxpayers’ Association.

More at the link.