By now, most people are tired of the campaigns and post-election analysis. But one measure on the March 7 ballot deserves a little closer look before we close the book on it.
Proposition 26, which would have reduced the vote threshold to pass local school bonds, failed by the narrowest margin of any of the 20 statewide initiatives. Voters were put to the test by the Yes on Prop 26 campaign, which was financed aggressively by the education, business and development communities.
The Yes campaign spent more than $24 million, while the opponents spent less than $2 million, yet it failed. It failed, however, by only 164,000 votes, out of more than 6.5 million cast. In Orange County, the margin was overwhelming: 342,665 votes (58.9%) against to 239,021 votes (41.1%) in favor. These votes out of Orange County provided nearly two-thirds of the entire statewide margin of defeat.
Yet other than what was spent for the Indian gaming initiatives and the insurance company-trial lawyer battles, more money was spent on this measure than any other. The millions of dollars spent on promoting Prop 26 were intended to make the voters believe that the two-thirds vote requirement for local bonds is somehow hurting local schools and it would only be fair to reduce this vote requirement to a simple majority. But the voters saw through the propaganda and realized that this measure was not as much about schools as it was about taxes.
Bonds are often used to finance state and local capital needs. State bonds are most commonly general obligation bonds, meaning they are the general obligation of the state and actually have first call on state revenues. No taxes are increased by their passage.
Local bonds, however, generate an assessment on property owners’ tax bills. When local bonds pass, property taxes go up to cover the bonded indebtedness that the local community faces.
The two-thirds vote threshold is not a requirement to incur additional debt, but rather a requirement to pass additional taxes to repay that debt. Therefore, we, as California taxpayers, should be very thankful that the state constitution requires this higher vote threshold to increase taxes.
If voters agreed to lower this super majority for tax increases because they felt there was a special need, where would this argument lead?
By creating this slippery slope, one could argue that taxes should be raised by a simple majority for every popular issue du jour. As school funding is currently in vogue, one might argue that the Legislature should reduce its vote requirement from two-thirds to simple majority to raise the sales tax by 1%, as long as those new revenues go to schools. Or reduce the vote requirement to raise personal income tax for healthcare for the needy. Or reduce the vote requirement to raise property taxes on businesses or higher-valued properties for support of local government.
These scenarios are not far-fetched. These tax increases, and hundreds more, have been proposed in Sacramento and it is the two-thirds vote requirement that has stopped them from being passed into law.
But the Yes on Prop 26 campaign nearly convinced the electorate that this was a good idea. One must ask, why?
Voters are susceptible when it comes to children. Political campaigns tell us that our schools are bad and we are not doing enough. The truth is that we, as a state, as taxpayers and as voters, are doing a lot.
For example, one election ago, the voters of this state passed the largest general obligation state bond for school construction and repair in America’s history, totaling $9.2 billion in bond money.
But even with that, state bonds alone cannot address all our public school infrastructure needs. That is why many communities consider local bonds. On this past ballot, there was one school district in Orange County and five in Los Angeles County that tried to pass a local school bond with a two-thirds vote. All six of these districts were successful, garnering more than 70% of the vote in each case.
Recently an overwhelming majority of local bonds in California, even some in Orange County, have passed with the two-thirds vote. Since 1986, which includes the bad economic times of the early 1990s when few fiscal measures survived voters’ scrutiny, 768 local bond measures were placed before various communities in this state. Of those, 414, or 54%, passed with a two-thirds margin.
The Yes on 26 ads showed some schools from the Los Angeles Unified School District as needing repair. But those ads did not tell the viewers that the residents of Los Angeles passed the largest local school bond in our country’s history, more than $2.4 billion, in 1997 with 71% of the vote.
Still, are we spending enough on school operations?
In 1988, the voters of California passed a constitutional guarantee for school spending. Over the past six years, the legislature has virtually doubled state general-fund spending on K-12 education, from $14 billion in 1994-95 to $27.9 billion in the proposed 2000-01 budget.
But that is not all California taxpayers spend on schools. If you include the local property tax dedicated to schools, lottery money, federal government funds, local debt funds and other state and local school funding, the 2000-01 tax funding for California schools will be $47.16 billion , $8,319 per pupil.
On March 7, California voters, and the Orange County electorate in particular, stepped up and did the right thing in opposing Prop 26. This defeat for the measure, even with the opposition being outspent 12-to-1, should put an end for a while to attempts to reduce the two-thirds vote requirement. But the need to hold our schools accountable and to make sure that taxpayers’ dollars are spent to deliver a quality education for California school children must continue.
Pringle, the former state Assembly speaker, is now principal of Curt Pringle & Associates, a pr and government affairs consulting firm in Irvine.
