Capitol becomes enthused about bond issues as budget funds dry up

The Sacramento Bee ^ | March 26, 2002 | Dan Walters:

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Turnout for the March 5 primary election was historically low, with scarcely a fifth of the 21 million-plus eligible Californians actually casting ballots, and post-election polling and statistical evidence indicate that there was a distinct rightward tilt to the fewer than 5 million Californians who did vote.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Comments in here regarding the Big Bond for the Power crisis also!

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[sigarms]

"Enthused" is not a word. Thank you.

[Carry_Okie]

Let's hear it for the Kalifornicated Republick, rapidly descending into the thurd whirled.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That is a direct copy from their Web Site!!!!!

Maybe the editors don't check the Website!

[monkeyshine]

I love California... but if I earn enough money someday, I'm going to buy a house in Nevada and take up residency there. I sure as heck don't want to pay off these billions of $ in bonds for the rest of my life as a California resident. 7-9-11% of my income goes (or will go) to this state depending on how much I make (which fluctuates year to year). 0% in Nevada. If I make enough, the taxes will wash out the Nevada mortgage. If I make even more, I'll be way ahead.

[Gophack]

You and me both ... I love California, I'm fifth generation, my children are sixth generation! But we are bankrupting our future, heaping debt onto our children. Still ... jobs are here, and until we can get comparable jobs out of state, I doubt we'll be making a move.

[glorgau]

The Bee is sooooo predictable. They see an opportunity to expand goverment funding (bonds) and dive in to advance the agenda. If they thought there was a chance for higher taxes, they'd be pushing that.

[Dog Gone]

So, the message California politicians have learned is that voters aren't scared by big bond amounts, and so they should quickly put many billions more in borrowing on the ballot.

Do voters not realize that they are voting to repay those bonds personally? Just the two bond issues upcoming represent about $1,000 per resident of California, and when you realize that a large portion of residents don't pay taxes, that is a huge new debt being assumed by each person who does pay taxes. Even that figure is low, because it only represents principle, not interest, on the bond amounts. Sheesh.

[Myrddin]

I made the move from San Diego, CA to Pocatello, ID. My work is 95% software, 5% hardware related. I can do most of it at home and deliver the product when I'm finished. That hasn't exactly turned out perfectly. I've had to be at the customer site to do the hardware design, supervise the construction and integration of the interface boards, then create the software to the customer's constantly moving target. The customer is quite happy with the arrangement, but my wife wasn't too pleased when I could only be home 69 days in 2001. In 2002, I've been home 8 days in January, 6 days in February and I'm back home now until driving back to San Diego on March 31 after driving 910 miles home on March 24th. Getting the "time off" required working 86 hours between March 16 and March 23. I don't regret making the move, but sometimes you simply trade one pile of troubles for a different one.

[Argus]

Funding ongoing expenses like education with bond issues is like buying groceries with a credit card. California is the grasshopper state, shoving all responsibility for its spendthrift ways into the future. Unfortunately, no ants are going to show up to bail us out.

[Gophack]

Good point.

If my family makes the move, it'll be because I can quit and my husband can get a good job in his field. Unfortunately, his field pays better in California and there is more need in California. If he can break free and do what he wants (write) full-time, then we can move anywhere.

But .... until then, we have to fight for our values and conservative principles, among which is to LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS!!!! (This means YOU, Gray Davis!)

[snopercod]

And it needs to repair many of its existing schools, whose maintenance was shamefully neglected for years in the financial scramble that followed enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978.

The libs still want to rewrite history, even 25 years later. They can't stand it that hindsight has proven that Ronald Reagan was right about both foreign policy and tax cuts, and that Prop. 13 actually strangled the government behemoth for a few years.

I lived in California in the years following 1978, and there were no schools in my area falling into disrepair. Instead, the economy boomed thanks to us peons being able to keep more or our money in our pockets thanks to Prop. 13, followed by Reagan's tax cuts in 1986.

Dan Waters is not stupid - he knows these facts. He is being dishonest.

[Myrddin]

I've seen the schools that are in disrepair. The school districts deferred maintenance year after year. The money was diverted to raises for teachers and administrators as well as classrooms loaded with illegals. The shell game is over. The school buildings are in disrepair. The school books are falling apart. The scholastic achievement levels are in the toilet. The money that comes from the lottery was directed to the schools and a matching amount of school funding from the general fund was redirected to things the liberals in Sacramento deemed more important. The schools didn't benefit. The pet projects snared the lottery money in another shell game. It is annoying to see the ever increasing volume of tax money sucked up by Sacramento in exchange for little or nothing of value.

I graduated from UCSD in 1976. At that time the university charged $212 per quarter for registration. That figure is $3850 per quarter in 2002 for residents and ILLEGAL ALIENS. Non-residents pay $13,850 per quarter. I recently purchased a car for my college age son for $14,000 that is of similar quality to the one my father purchased for me in 1973 for $4600. The car today costs 3 times as much. Why does the university education cost 18 times as much today? Idaho State University charges $1400 per semester in Pocatello.

[monkeyshine]

That's right, they don't think about it. And the bonds they (we) agree to pay for take 20-30 years to pay off, tying up money we may need to spend later. And, parents who vote for these bonds are also indenturing their children, who will no doubt be paying these debts off when they start making money in x number of years.

It doesn't make sense for any new businesses to start-up in California. I can't see how we will get the growth needed to grow out of our debts ($15 billion!), esp if we start tacking on new debt in the form of bonds.

[Dog Gone]

It doesn't make sense for any new businesses to start-up in California. I can't see how we will get the growth needed to grow out of our debts ($15 billion!), esp if we start tacking on new debt in the form of bonds.

Politicians tend to vote for band-aids that will get them past the next election cycle, and this is what we're seeing here. They can move on, but these long-term debts remain a legacy for the next generation.

I could see it, perhaps, if they were borrowing to build the infrastructure required to efficiently support a population of 50 million, which California will have before 2020. But it's largely long-term debt to service current maintenance items.

It's like taking out a home mortgage to buy this month's groceries. Not smart.

Any business considering moving or expanding in California should do so only if they are in a business where they can easily pass on the costs of the products or services to the consumer. Those costs will be higher than the rest of the country because of the crushing tax burden and regulatory hurdles. "Living Wage" ordinances don't help. Essentially, any business who has an out-of-state competitor will be in big trouble.

[d14truth]

Will the 'short title' for the new bond referenda be the 'California Bankruptcy Bond' I & II?

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Politicians love bonds because the average Joe doesn't realize it's borrowing. It's debt. And that's a good thing for the politicians, because even the average Joe realizes that no one ever borrowed their way to prosperity.

Someday a politician will come around and explain this to the folks. Maybe Bill Simon will be the one to do it.

[joanie-f]

Thanks for the ping, John.

Let's see....twenty-one million eligible voters....five million voted....and there was a 'distinctly rightward tilt' to those who did. Let's take a leap and define a 'distinct tilt' as sixty percent of the whole....which means that there must be at least 5,000,000 x .60 = three million 'distinct right wingers' in the state of California. That's about 4,999,900 more than I would have guessed (I have an Uncle Charlie in Fresno, and he has maybe a hundred friends).

With that said, Mr. Walters' definition of 'right' and mine (and I daresay that of most honest conservatives on this forum) differ greatly. No person of 'right' mind would have voted for these bond issues (long-term debt, obligating the California working class (of which there seem to be fewer each day) and their children to decades of paying through their noses for something the benefit of which by then will have already been realized and past).

And paying for what? 'Necessary' school construction and repairs, made 'necessary' by the fact that such mundane considerations as (a) projecting future enrollment figures so as to have an education infrastructure capable of accommodating them (lack of foresight appears to be a prerequisite for employment in CA state government), or (b) fixing physical problems as they occur rather than allowing them to evolve into more expensive deterioration, apparently took second place to (c) procurement of higher (bordering on exorbitant, I'm willing to bet) salaries for teachers and administrators and (d) the funding of education for the ever-growing number of illegals.

A local school district, or state program, which places (c) and (d) above (a) and (b) requires an overhaul, not a bond issue.

....school bond legislation may be modified at the behest of construction unions to effectively limit contracts to the relatively few unionized firms, thus denying work to many tens of thousands of smaller, nonunion contractors.

A 'modification' which the 'right' voters of California should veto before the ink is dry on the proposed (modified in order to be labor-sensitive) legislation. Labor-sensitivity = inferior workmanship at superior cost.

And it needs to repair many of its existing schools, whose maintenance was shamefully neglected for years in the financial scramble that followed enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978.

Mr. Walters has tipped his hand, and made apparent one of the main reasons he is employed at the Bee. He exemplifies the required hatred of Ronald Reagan, and a willingness to revise history.

I truly believe that the seeds for the movement to end big government in America were planted by Ronald Reagan, following closely in the footsteps of Howard Jarvis' Proposition 13. (And the fact that those seeds have failed to germinate properly over the past twenty-five years are not the fault of either Mr. Jarvis or Mr. Reagan, but it is a result of an abandonment of their agenda).

13 not only affected California finances, but its ripples were felt throughout the country, serving as an essential catalyst for Reagan's '81 income tax cuts. And, between 1979 and 1985, almost half of the states followed suit with their own versions of a taxpayer revolt -- and most of the resulting legislation is still on their books today.

Unfortunately, some of Prop 13's positive long-term ramifications were later nullified by Pete Wilson's and the CA legislature's passage of the biggest state tax increase in the history of the country. But don't expect the mainstream media to give voice that important truth.

California's economic upturn as a result of Prop 13 was momentous. During the ensuing decade, the state's budget nearly doubled (a seventy-five percent increase above the rate of inflation), and state tax revenues as a share of citizens' incomes actually rose (because of the resulting economic boom) from eleven to twelve percent. Hardly the economic disaster that liberal pundits (of then, and still today) would have us believe

The major effect of Proposition 13 has been to save the average homeowner in California tens of thousands of dollars in property tax payments over the past twenty years. That is money that would have fueled an even more rapid buildup in California's state and local public bureaucracies if it had been sent to Sacramento and city hall....Stephen Moore, Director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute