Posted on 01/19/2009 8:59:13 AM PST by NormsRevenge
If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls a special election this year, California voters might be forced to make the hard choices on the budget and taxes that the Legislature won't.
State Controller John Chiang said in an interview that he would support putting a tax increase package to voters in an effort to break the long-running legislative stalemate that has left California with a $42 billion deficit and weeks away from delaying refunds to taxpayers and grants to college students and low-income and disabled residents.
If Republicans and Democrats can't compromise on budget cuts and tax increases, "they may at least be able to agree to let voters make a choice," Chiang told The Chronicle.
Mac Taylor, the state's new legislative analyst, made a similar suggestion earlier this month in a critique of the governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year ending in mid-2010. A package of tax increases proposed by the Democrats and vetoed by the governor could go on the ballot for the voters to decide, he wrote.
"If there were members who didn't want to vote on a tax increase but were willing to allow the voters to make a choice, this could break up the logjam," Taylor said in an interview.
Such a package could be presented to voters as early as April.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Brilliant!
W.A.S.S.
Bohica
Why only let them vote on a tax increase? Let them vote on budget cuts too!
It’s worked everywhere else (at least the voters got to say NO before having there taxes increased)
Look for more library closings and other similar stories to push people into supporting more taxes while ignoring entitlements and state employee pensions...
To bad we don’t have the ability to have a vote of no confidence to throw out the legislature and elect a new one.
Good point.
Well, I guess if I'm "forced" to make the hard choice, I'll vote to not raise taxes. Send me a ballot, you've got the address.
What’s the point of having a legislature if they punt whenever a hard decisions come up?
I fear Californians would approve a tax increase. There are too many people who would benefit from additional taxes or are scared of losing services and not enough people who would pay.
Absolutely. They'll cut firefighters, police, libraries, highways at the drop of a hat. Ideas like jettisoning the K-12 government school system (i.e., turning it over the private industry) will never be entertained. Stop paying for illegal aliens' free health care (or demanding compensation from their native countries) is not an option. Neither is selling off Government land. Nor touching any favorite environmental program du jour...
Right on script. 'You don't want increased taxes? Then you force us to cut off police, firefighting, and highway services. We have no other choices...'
C-U-T S-P-E-N-D-I-N-G.
It seems California voters are forced to make all the decisions. It is obvious by the amount of propositions on every ballot.
If all decisions are being made by the voters, what’s the point of electing and paying legislators?
Sack em all!
It seems the majority would vote to raise taxes on the rich, but would not vote to raise the sales tax and gas tax.
Without raising those taxes or changing prop 13 they are sucking on a dry straw. The rich will up an leave if taxed more and realestate would drop further in price if they voted out prop 13.
Counties WILL cut libraries, law enforcement, (non-district) firefighters because these are funded by their General Fund. This is a fund where discretionary decisions are possible. When their revenues are cut, this is where the cuts are likely made.
Public Health, Behavioral Health nd Social Services are not discretionery funds. There are federal programs to which the states add their match and their own extra programs. From what I’ve seen, the Governator is proposing to cut social services pretty hard. He is also proposing to eliminate Behavioral Health benefits for Medi-Cal, which will pretty much empty out our County’s program.
Because of union agreements, the is not much leeway to cut on salaries and benefits until a new contract period. You pretty much have to lay off folks. There is also universality on certian benefits among counties. For instance, our restirement vsts at five years. We can’t change it, because anyone in the Public Employment System elsewhere is supposed to be able to come in and maintain their retirement benefits earned elsewhere.
I would like to see a back off from environmental regulation. Then we don’t need the massive bureaucracy needed to do all the studies, implement and enforce.
Calling on the same voters that re-elected all the high-spending socialist Democrats back to the Legislature decade after decade. Right, that will do it...
California is doomed. 10 more years and I’ll be gone and never look back. Counting the days.
The reason why they’ll cut everything else first is because that’s what the voters have decided in previous initiatives.
One of California’s biggest problems is that the voters have (via initiatives) put so much of the budget out of the legislature’s reach in budget discussions - and the lion’s share of this spending is on “the children” and “education.”
Were I running California, I’d kick all the illegals out of the state and I’d have children to pick vegetables and fruit, pick up trash along the roadways and clean their own schools.
It’s high time the little twerps started paying their own way. This boomer-inspired attitude that children get a paid vacation from the age of 5 to 25 has got to go.
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