With the California Financial Crisis at stake, the impartiality of the California Attorney General has come under scrutiny.
Proponents of the California Democracy Act, a ballot initiative that would restore a majority vote for revenue and budget in the legislature, are asking Jerry Brown, the Attorney General, for a new title and summary. An exhaustive poll has shown that Brown's title and summary changed the meaning and intent of the proposed initiative by one of the largest margins ever seen in a poll.
The poll was conducted by David Binder Research, one of California's most respected polling firms. The poll showed that the actual initiative for majority on revenue and budget is supported by likely California voters by a 73-to-22 percent margin - a 51 percent lead. But Attorney General Jerry Brown personally wrote the title and summary with wording that shifts that favorable margin to a 38-to-56 percent unfavorable margin - a 69 percent shift!
The poll was conducted March 6-11, with a random sample of 800 likely voters with a margin of error of ±3.5 percent. The summary appears on www.CaliforniansforDemocracy.com.
If unchanged, Brown's wording, not the actual initiative, would appear on the ballot, leading voters to misinterpret it and vote against it. Brown's wording, if not changed, could kill the initiative, despite overwhelming voter support.
The effect is crucial, since the lack of majority rule in the legislature has made it impossible for the legislature to raise the revenue the state needs to prevent financial meltdown. It is the single biggest factor in the state's budget crisis.
The California Democracy Act is one sentence long.
MediaNews has a story about the grassroots/institutional divide over the question of how to challenge the supermajorities.
A split between Democratic activists and the political pros who run the party may be growing over how to approach the issue that has bedeviled the party for years: the two-thirds vote required to pass taxes and budgets in the Legislature.
Most Democrats in the upper echelons of the party apparatus are convinced it's a fool's errand to try to persuade voters to hand the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes. Instead, they're gearing up for a campaign next year to lower the threshold - from two-thirds of both legislative bodies to a simple majority - on budget votes only, a path they believe voters can embrace.
But some grass roots liberals say they're frustrated with the caution of party leaders and believe, if sold right, voters would hand over both taxing and budgeting powers to the majority party. (CoCo Times 9/21/09)
I'm not sure this is totally accurate. Not all elected Democrats agree with the assesment of what has been called by some as the institutional position. Specifically, at the Progressive Caucus breakout groups, Sen. Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Asm. Torrico (D-Fremont), disagreed on this subject. Sen. Hancock took the so-called institutional position of challenging the budget side, and then moving on to revenue. Asm. Torrico said you have to do both at one time.
The article goes on to point out the CA-Majority-Rule website that was organized by Susie Shannon and Deana Igelsrud, and their effort to organize funding for a poll based on the work of Berkeley professor George Lakoff. (Incidentally, you can donate here) The poll will probably yield some interesting data, but I think the question of viability misses the gorilla in the room.
Budget/ Taxes
Budget 2/3
Budget Majority
Revenue 2/3
Status quo: Parties get to blame each other and we keep on fighting a losing battle.
Democrats are stuck with accountability for bad budgets during revenue declines without control of the tax structure
Revenue Majority
Not going to happen: nobody is going to put this situation on the ballot and it wouldn't pass
Optimal: Democrats get to sink or swim. We have the majorities; under this plan we get to see how Democrats would really govern.
Specifically, I think it is clear that a measure to get majority rule on the budget will be a lot easier victory. However, the question is whether a world where we have complete power over the budget without revenue authority is a good thing for Democrats. I've even made a little matrix (-->) Because with power, comes accountability, whether justified or not. So, as it stands, neither party has complete authority over the budget. And thus, each party can point the finger at the other for portions of the budget that are unpopular.
But what happens when we win just the budget measure? Sure, we'll get a heck of a lot more authority over the budget. Policy wise, that's a really good thing. But politics wise, you have to wonder if that's really so great. When the cuts are made, guess who gets the "credit" (aka, electoral anvil)? Yup, we get left holding the bag for the mess, without the tools to fix it. Seems like a bit of Pyrrhic victory to me.
There's a reason why the Constitutional Convention idea is so appealing: the entire system is messed up, and far past the point of one fix having anything than a minor difference in how the system functions as a whole.
Whatever the beef, there could be wide, unintended damage to noncombatants. The Republican weapon was blatant abuse of the two-thirds majority vote requirement for passage of many bills.
The two-thirds rule is not used merely to protect taxpayers from politicians trying to reach deeper into their pockets. It's used by special interests -- mainly big business -- to game the system; a tool handy for legislative leverage, or extortion. If you don't give us what we want, we'll withhold the votes needed for the two-thirds. (LA Times 9/17/09)
See, that's the problem when you give a wide, expansive veto power to a minority. It's fundamentally unworkable. I'll make an analogy to my patent law days here. Sometimes a patent holder owns a patent on part of a device or process. They frequently try to expand the scope and power of that patent by contract and license to block other firms from using or selling something that isn't covered by the patent.
See the thing is with patents, when you do that, it's called an anti-trust violation. It's against the law. But with the supermajority in the Legislature, it's just par for the course.
Sen. Maldonado, quite possibly the loneliest Legislator, shunned by his own party and the Democrats, makes the theoretical argument.
"I was embarrassed," says Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, the only Republican to cross party lines and vote for the bills. "I said, 'I'm here to govern.' They wanted all three things or nothing.
"The two-thirds vote is a good tool when put in the hands of people who are reasonable, pragmatic and open-minded. But partisans use the two-thirds as a tool to hold up the Legislature.
And if wishes were unicorns, then we'd all live in Arnold's Fantasyland. But back here in the real world, this is how this is going to play out every time. A minority will wield its minority veto like a club and bash everybody over the head with it until they get their way. That's just the way it is.
As you know, Perata has called for a panel to suggest fixes to the budget process. I'm wondering where you stand on these ideas, follow me over the flip
I really, really don't like to agree with Dan Walters. He's quite obtuse, but I suppose that's neither here nor there for the purpose of this particular insight: the GOP has managed to leverage the 2/3 supermajority for the budget requirement to extort other compromises. Compromises for which they don't otherwise have the vote. We talked about this briefly on the Calitics Show with Mark Leno on Wednesday, so maybe Dan was listening to me when he wrote this in today's SacBee:
Initially, trailer bills were just boring bits of legislative ephemera. But politics being what they are, someone eventually noticed that the trailers, drafted and enacted quickly and secretly, made them perfect vehicles for "lowballing" other stuff.
Trailer bills have proliferated, filled with provisions that either have nothing to do with the budget or change it in mysterious ways, and are routinely enacted without any analysis of their effects, much less any opportunity for outside input. They are, moreover, "urgency" bills that take effect immediately upon being signed by the governor.
This year, the Senate Republican caucus is trying to get bills limiting Atty General Jerry Brown's power and to drastically cut back on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). They would have no leverage outside of the budget process to demand these changes, so they use the only process where they have some sort of governable size: the budget.
It is unacceptable that a minority should be attempting to kick and scream their way to overrule the majority's decisions. It's just one more reason to get rid of the 2/3 requirement.
In this video, you'll see Speaker Nunez talking about the budget being "fiscally responsible". The problem? Well, "fiscally responsible" is a complete misnomer and straight out of GOP talking points. Here's the thing, would it have been fiscally irresponsible to:
Provide for LA's transportation plans? Nope, that would have been truly "responsible" and allow for people to cut their emissions by riding more public transit options.
Would it have been fiscally irresponsible to ensure that BART's Transbay tube gets the seismic retrofits it needs to ensure safety? That one rings of how the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bush Administration was "responsible" by not reinforcing the levees. By cutting transportation funds, we are hardly being "responsible", we are putting our collective head in the sand and hoping with all our might that we don't get a major earthquake that could devastate our precarious transportation corridors. Now, tell me how that's responsible again?
Was it fiscally responsible to cut tax credits for teachers while providing for an expirement in trickle-down economics? Cities with high costs of living already have problems retaining teachers because they can't afford to live nearby, so we're going to make it harder to be a teacher in LA, SF, and San Diego? Sure sounds like a seven year old getting back at their teachers for giving them a timeout. And that's pretty much how the Senate Dems are acting right now.
"Responsible" is GOP code for "we're adults and you're not". The funny thing is, this is pretty much the same thing my 3-year old niece says when she's not getting her way. "I'm the adult, not mama". Well, we are letting Republicans convince the public, through their temper tantrum, that they are the adults. When you repeat these talking points, you end up reinforcing the view that Republicans are the adults and Democrats can't be trusted with money, because, like children, they'll go off and spend it at first opportunity. Responsible would be pushing for the removal of the 2/3 requirement so that the majority of this state could actually govern instead of using the budget as a political chit and putting children and the most vulnerable in the crossfire.
I'm not saying this budget is bad given the 2/3 restriction, but we must start informing voters on how they are being disenfranchised by this requirement, how they are being put in jeopardy by this requirement, and how the Republicans are choosing short-term poltical points over our long-term infrastructural and educational needs. It is time to seriously start working this point, and hopefully we can get rid of it during the next governor's administration.
