Misrepresented Voter Propositions on February 5th Ballot

One of the things that really burns me up is when legislators create horrible propositions and rely on misrepresentation to fool ignorant voters to vote for them. On the February 5th ballot, there are two such propositions that are being misrepresented to voters, Proposition 93 the "Term Limit Reduction Measure") statewide and Proposition S (the "Communication Tax Reduction Act") in the City of Los Angeles. I do take solace in the fact that these Democratic legislators at both the state level and in the Los Angeles City Council realized that they need to market their schemes as conservative practices. Term Limits and Tax Reductions...what conservative voter wouldn't vote for those?

The issue with both of these is each ballot measure does the exact opposite of what their titles state. To start, Proposition 93 on the statewide ballot markets itself as a Term Limit Reduction measure. It does reduce the OVERALL length of a state legislator (going forward) from 14 years to 12 years, but allows the legislators to serve all 12 years in either the Assembly or the State Senate. Here are the two things that Assembly Leader Nunez and State Senate Leader Perata (the two primary sponsors of this measure) do not want you to know:

1) The measure will allow all of the current legislators to start their 12 years "now" (as in 2008), as opposed to counting the number of years they have already served toward the twelve. Proposition 93 will lock most of them in until 2020due to the inherent strength of incumbents. When's the last time a CA state legislator was voted out of office or had their seat switch parties? So if you favor the gross overspending by our state Legislature and its consistent performance of passing nanny legislation, passing this measure will lock in twelve more years of just that!

2) The current requirement is that legislators can only serve 8 years in the State Senate and only 6 years in the Assembly. This measure extends the number of years legislators can serve in each, which also retains incumbents. Termed-out assembly members and state senators usually have to decide whether to compete against each other for an overlapping district in order to "stay employed". This is one of the few incentives for legislators to appeal to a broader base. If they can't, then they'll be limited to the 6 to 8 years that their limited agenda can support.

The latest television ads for Proposition 93 talk about how important "experience" is, and that our current legislators can't gain the necessary experience in less than 6 years. Boy, I wish my employers had been open to giving me 6-8 years to become "experienced" before I could solve any problems! Our current legislators sure have found ways to run up our state spending beyond its revenues over the past 6 years! Why should we reward them with 4-6 more years of job security? Do you really think that these current legislators are now going to use their renewed term extensions to suddenly solve the financial problems they created? What indication do any of us have that the current legislators have learned "the error of their spending ways", and are now going to work with the Governor to reduce their spend-happy ways? If Proposition 93 passes, get ready for a HUGE tax hike! This is the only solution that Assembly Leader Nunez is considering to fix the state budget crisis.

I urge everyone to vote NO on Proposition 93!

(If you're not a voter in the City of Los Angeles, the next proposition will not be on your ballot. But it's still important to see what kind of misleading ballot measures exist on a local level as well as the state level.)

In 2007, the State Court of Appeals affirmed a Superior Court decision that found the current Communications Tax in Los Angeles to be constitutionally illegal. It was never submitted to the voters of Los Angeles for approval, and the heavily-Democratic Los Angeles City Council continued to ignore advice to place the tax on a measure for the voters to approve. (Maybe because they know that even Democrats have a threshold of the number of taxes they want to pay.) Villaraigosa’s so-called tax “reduction" from 10% of current phone services to 9% is actually a tax hike. Even though the Superior Court threw out the tax hike in July 2005, over two years ago, the City kept collecting it anyway, about $162 million per year. What the Mayor and the City Council don't want voters to know is that if you vote “no,” you don’t pay the tax at all, because the court threw it out. If you vote “yes,” the tax comes back, and not only will we continue to pay the tax on our phone services, but it will add Internet, DSL, wireless services, text messaging, instant messaging, VoIP, PCS and other similar services at the "reduced" 9% tax rate.

But this is not necessarily why voters need to vote NO on this proposition. The issue of this measure is the misrepresentation of the measure to voters. The Mayor's office and the Democratic City Council members are calling this measure a "tax reduction", when it is in fact a "Tax Preservation".

Lately they have been trying to appeal to social liberals by talking about the government services that will be cut if the measure fails. And there will have to be cuts, as the City will lose about $270 million. The City will have to ask the tough questions about its spending, such as why it allows the contractor for the new LAPD Headquarters downtown (a friend of the Mayor's) to run over budget by over $140 million without any accountability. They'll also have to reconsider the $285 million in pay raises to the public service employees. The list goes on and on, and my opinion is that the City Council should be able to tighten its belt. Those that cannot propose such fiscal responsibility should be voted out next year; I'll be holding my council member, Janice Hahn, to just such a standard.

There MUST be more conservative voters in both the State of California & within the City of Los Angeles than I have recently assumed! To have to market these propositions in such a manner as to try and attract naive conservative voters shows that even liberal legislators understand that basic human nature favors conservative principles and values. But of course...most of those reading this posting could have told them that!