Among the heavyweight proposals, with corresponding heavyweight sponsors:

amending the California constitution by initiative

convening a constitutional convention

changing the way the Secretary of State is elected and runs elections

reducing the majority for budget approvals from 2/3s to 51%

adjusting term limits

allowing a “split roll” to put commercial properties outside Prop 13 protection

Common Cause has not endorsed any of the initiatives. Feng said their scope, directed at political processes in the state, also relates to recently passed Prop 11’s redistricting commission. Applications for that citizen commission will be accepted starting December 15.

Feng’s comments followed background presentations from league members. The first was statistical, and according to my notes, California gets the constitutional Olympic bronze, with a constitution 8 times longer than that of the U.S.; only Alabama’s and India’s are longer!

The second presentation was on Repair California and California Forward, the two major sponsoring organizations of state government reform initiatives, and covered their founders, budget, and policy direction.

League member and attorney Ann Ansman, the final local panelist, insisted that “we have a good constitution” with many protections, and efforts to change it shouldn’t go beyond fixing the infrastructure of governmental processes (tackling legislative gridlock, for example).

Be prepared for an inundation of initiatives to reform California’s constitution, budget process, elections, and governance.

Shell games in the Senate for ObamaCare describes how a separate bill will undo major cost reductions in the Baucus bill, even though the two bills weren’t considered together by the Congressional Budget Office when it evaluated implications for the deficit.

Why Democrats’ Health Care Overhaul May Die points out that universal coverage is so expensive that it can’t happen without unpopular new taxes.

Critical Condition, from the National Review Online says:

The problem with Obamacare is not insufficient governmental force; the problem is that the Democrats are pursuing the wrong goal. They are desperate to enact something they can call “universal coverage” without any coherent plan to slow the pace of rising costs. In that context, a new entitlement for subsidized insurance is exceedingly expensive, which is why the sponsors try to hide some of the costs behind mandates, hidden taxes, compulsion, and insurance regulation. However, as they are now finding out, there’s no free lunch here. Someone has to pay for it all. It’s just a question of who and how much.

Both We’re Going to Let You Die, in the Wall Street Journal, and The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, in Pajamas Media discuss Robert Reich’s 2007 speech to UC Berkeley students explaining why politicians have trouble telling the truth about health care reform – you can’t have something for nothing.

A follow up question to that conclusion: is what we are getting better than what we have now?

The negative attention these cherished limits are getting lately should be a warning to the clear majority of Californians who oppose state tax increases.

A review article in the Glendale News Press on the idea of a state constitutional convention reported that it was “gaining traction among local lawmakers” and specifically mentioned the two-thirds majority requirement.

An LA Times editorial narrows the focus on the two-thirds majority requirement by advocating it only for tax increases, while allowing simple majorities to pass budgets:

The current system, requiring two-thirds for both, has diffused responsibility without protecting the state from excessive spending. If voters want to give a clear majority of their representation to one party, let the majority prevail — and let the people judge the consequences. Only three other states require a supermajority for budgets, but 15 require a supermajority to raise taxes.

Byron Williams, in the Huffington Post, believes that voters would preserve Prop 13’s residential property tax limit while removing the concurrent corporate property tax break, if they could. He’s apparently unable to develop a solid argument against the two-thirds majority requirement, so he simply asks if readers would have voted for it.

An earlier Calitics post by San Francisco Assessor/Recorder Phil Ting deals specifically with revenues that could be raised by eliminating the corporate tax loophole in Prop 13.

LA Times’ Joel Fox says Proposition 13 Isn’t the Problem, and disputes the notion that limitings its benefits to residential property owners would benefit the state:

The split-roll proposal is self-defeating for an economy trying to dig itself out of a hole, and implementing it would cost jobs. Former state legislative analyst William Hamm co-wrote a study last year that claimed a 1% increase in business property tax rates would lead to 43,000 jobs lost. With double-digit unemployment, that is something California can ill afford.

In the Sunroom Desk file drawer are two of its editor’s archived posts on Proposition 13 and the two-thirds majority requirement:

Next for California: Targeting the Two-Thirds Majority

Under the Paperweight, June 28 – July 4, 2009

Evans’ Budget Blog update today briefly describes a Democratic budget proposal that will be submitted for a vote Wednesday. Along with cuts to programs, and $2.1 billion in “revenue acceleration and fees”, it includes $1 billion in new cigarette taxes and $880 million in oil severance taxes (whatever those are). Most comments on this post pick up John and Ken’s themes: Why hasn’t state government gotten the message that voters won’t accept more taxes? Further, why won’t legislators start renegotiating employment contracts that are far more generous than most private-sector packages? Excerpt from one comment:

…as long as public employees make more money on average, with more benefits than in the private sector, we have a reasonable expectation to ask them to make sacrifices first.

There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live in the same world as the rest of us, contributing some of our salary towards medical insurance and co-pays. There’s nothing unreasonable about asking state employees to live with the same retirement plans the rest of us have (401K plans, not pensions with 90% of our salary for life).

Here is Evans’ more detailed report on the proposal.

More taxes aren’t the issue. What California needs is more taxpayers relative to government workers and users of government services. There are not enough taxpayers in California to support the level of services, wages, benefits, and programs our state government has decided to provide.

Fox & Hounds opinion has a similar viewpoint, focused on business development:

Activists who want to lower the two-thirds vote and raise taxes will argue that a low turnout election really doesn’t represent the will of California’s people. Expect to see tax raising initiatives aimed for the general election in 2010 along with a measure to lower the two-thirds vote.

Voters rejected a move five years ago to reduce the two-thirds standard and their attitude on the issue seems more set in stone today. I doubt it will soften much in another year.

So, if raising fees, seeking tax increases via the ballot, and attacking the two-thirds vote requirement must not happen next, what should happen next?

Besides implementing restructuring that has been addressed by the California Performance Review and other studies over the years, the legislature should do everything it can to spur economic activity and create jobs. That’s how we can get out of this mess. Encourage the entrepreneur to lead the way.

University and State reveals that the majority of California voters want spending cuts instead of higher taxes, and insist on the two-thirds majority vote requirement preventing simple majorities from raising taxes. The problem, according to this blog post, is that the majority also opposes “cutbacks in ten of twelve major categories of state spending, including the three largest – the public schools, health care and higher education.” In other words, ordinary Californians don’t know exactly how to cut the budget, or they expect (as they well should) their elected representatives to make the tough budget choices.

Matthew Yglesias includes the two-thirds requirement in his list of California’s political and financial problems. His mention of population as a source of “dysfunction”, however, reveals the real problem: high demand for services that can’t be met with reasonable tax rates.

The crux of the matter, as best I can tell from the East Coast, is that California has a set of political institutions that don’t work. The 2/3 rule in the state legislation doesn’t make sense, the profligate use of the initiative process doesn’t work, the combination of the two is disastrous. There seem to me to be other sources of institutional dysfunction in California (LA County is almost twice as big as the country’s second-largest, and five of the fifteen top population counties form a contiguous belt in southern California) but those are the big obvious ones.

The New York Times wondered how President Obama can avoid national insolvency while increasing health care entitlements, while USA Today wonders whether either party, or Congress as an institution, “is capable of addressing the nation’s dire fiscal circumstances, which will only worsen as Baby Boomers hit retirement age.”

Mother Jones suggests expanding the federal safety net, increasing Social Security payments, and lowering Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages to 55, while reducing the payroll tax burden. How will we pay for such a dramatic increase in benefits? The article doesn’t address this question, except to state that:

…Social Security and Medicare should be treated as the bonded obligations of the government—like net interest—thus making explicit what is obvious, which is that these programs cannot go “bankrupt” any more than the government itself can.

Another view, by Robert Reich, is that Social Security costs are manageable, while Medicare costs are not.

The LA Times covered Arnold Schwarznegger’s budget disaster-preparedness talks last week, while the Wall Street Journal framed government budgets as a taxpayers vs. public-sector unions fight. The facts and numbers in this last article resonate in California and in Glendale, where activists have deplored the growth in city salaries and city employee union influence:

Today, public-sector unions sit atop lists of organizations that devote the most money to lobbying and campaign contributions.

…in California, unions spent more than $50 million in 2005 to defeat a series of ballot proposals that would have capped growth in the state’s budget. Now the state’s teachers union is putting its clout behind a ballot initiative, to be voted on next week, that would restore more than $9 billion in educational spending cut from the state’s budget.

The results of such efforts are evident in the rich rewards that public-sector employees now enjoy. A study in 2005 by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute estimated that the average public-sector worker earned 46% more in salary and benefits than comparable private-sector workers. The gap has only continued to grow. For example, state and local worker pay and benefits rose 3.1% in the last year, compared to 1.9% in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

But the real power of the public sector is showing through in this economic crisis. Some five million private-sector workers have lost their jobs in the last year alone, and their unemployment rate is above 9% according to the BLS. By contrast, public-sector employment has grown in virtually every month of the recession, and the jobless rate for government workers is a mere 2.8%. For anyone who thinks such low unemployment numbers are good news, remember that the bulging public sector must be paid for with revenues that most governments don’t currently have.

The federal stimulus bill is not going to revive our local or state economy. It won’t solve our city’s infrastructure problems. Glendale and other California cities need to look to themselves, to make do, to cut back, and to get creative.

What is each candidate’s plan for coping with drastic reductions in state funds budgeted for Glendale and a drop in local tax revenues? It cannot be business as usual. A few weeks ago, one current council member expressed sympathy for local developers who were having trouble getting loans because of the credit crisis. Is sympathizing with these developers, or assisting them, the answer?

Building permits and retail projects have been a major source of revenue for Glendale during the past few years. But everything about the global-to-local downturn just screams out that this approach will no longer work. Build it, and they probably won’t come. New answers are needed.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, writer Matt Miller quoted McCain advisers telling him that McCain would have been forced to raise taxes if he became president. Miller’s editorial concludes:

The real question once this recession has passed will be: Given that taxes have to rise, how should we raise the revenue we need in ways that are best for the economy?

Miller’s question is a great one to ask each city council candidate. Glendale needs job creation, not more retail, and not more development. Voters: check out each city council candidate’s proposals for bringing jobs to Glendale and increasing local revenues.