The California Future?

The ancient Greeks searched for glimpses of their future in the innards of butchered pigs and oxen; modern Americans tend to look west to California and its famous and numerous ballot initiatives.

California did not disappoint this year. The state’s approval of both the Medical Marijuana Initiative and the California Civil Rights Initiative sent a clear message of a future of getting high with your own kind. But just as no serious entrails reading relied on the condition of a single organ, looking at only the ballot questions covered in "Doonesbury" will not suffice for the contemporary soothsayer. One must probe deep into the viscera of the California ballot, down to Propositions 217 and 218.

Taxation has long been a California ballot preoccupation. Since 1980’s Proposition 13 property tax limitation cemented the state’s reputation as a forerunner of national trends, the permanent local government funding crisis that ensued has been something of a continual cat and mouse chase of local officials scrambling to utilize new revenue sources before a ballot question targets them and dries them up.

Proposition 217 would have eased that chase by earmarking the proceeds of the two highest state income tax brackets for local government use. They were otherwise scheduled to expire via a sunset provision five years after the state budget crisis that prompted their creation. Since their demise would result in a $700 million windfall for only the wealthiest 1.2 percent of the state’s taxpayers, supporters of making the top brackets permanent were hopeful for broad general support. Some went so far as to predict there would be no organized opposition (or at least none where it counts) from the business community, since the tax in questions was personal, not corporate.

But while class consciousness may be lagging at the bottom and middle of American society, it is in good health at the top. In the closing days of the campaign the committee to defeat Proposition 211, an initiative allowing securities fraud lawsuits against corporate executives, found itself so far ahead in the polls and so awash in Silicon Valley money that it siphoned some off to its comrades in the anti-217 campaign. This influx of cash allowed opponents to buy TV time which proponents couldn’t afford.

The gesture of class solidarity proved decisive--the measure failed by less than 1 percent, lending weight to the belief that in the current state of American politics a contest pitting the interests of the lower 99 percent against those of the wealthiest 1 percent must be considered no better than a toss-up.

But even if we can sadly rationalize the defeat of 217 as just business as usual, 218 broke new ground. The proposition, sponsored by the authors of Proposition 13, targeted the use of assessments levied for purposes ranging from parks to paving. In recent years local officials increasingly utilized such benefit assessments which could be enacted by a local governing body and did not need the approval of the electorate now required for most "general" and "special" tax options.

Proposition 218 was a constitutional amendment aimed to close that option by requiring a mail-in vote for any new special assessment. Supporters of government spending therefore found themselves in the uncomfortable but, unfortunately, not unaccustomed position of appearing to oppose majority rule. And, not surprisingly, they found themselves in the not unaccustomed position of losing--handily.

Since the proposition was but one of fifteen on the state-wide ballot there were few who got to the small print describing just how these mail-in votes were to be conducted. First off, only property owners in the affected area will vote, disenfranchising any tenants and removing taxing power from its traditional locus in the general electorate or its chosen representatives. Then "in tabulating the ballots, the ballots shall be weighted according to the proportional financial obligation of the affected property." In other words, one vote per one dollar of assessed valuation.

If there are any principles still held sacred in American politics, "one person-one vote "must surely be among them. Previously, the "one dollar-one vote" standard had only been seen in the quasi-governmental "Business Improvement Districts" sprouting up across the nation. Now it has gained a toe-hold in the California constitution. As of this writing, there are no known legal challenges to the measure.

Whether or not we believe that California is an accurate predictor of national trends, its recent election should serve as a warning that unless we take up the issues of progressive taxation seriously and aggressively there are few limits to what the wealthy can accomplish.