These are my links for May 1st from 13:50 to 14:20:
- Untitled (http://www.sacbee.com/2011/05/01/3592230/dan-walters-steinberg-proposes.html#mi_rss=Dan%20Walters?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) – Darrell Steinberg proposes sensible California tax plan?
- Darrell Steinberg proposes sensible California tax plan? – They had no way of knowing it, but when voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, they created a nettlesome juxtaposition of sociopolitical megatrends.
The measure – which imposed a tight limit on local property taxes – was enacted just as California began to undergo massive demographic and economic shifts, and as the state Capitol's culture was changing.
The unintended consequence was that fiscal power of an increasingly complex state was shifted from local voters and officials into a Capitol that was becoming more crassly political, more ideologically divided and ill-equipped to make effective policy.
The result, more than three decades later, is political paralysis, as the chronic budgetary imbroglio attests.
It is impossible for the governor and the Legislature to make one-size-fits-all fiscal policy for the most complex society in the Western Hemisphere.
Jerry Brown, who was governor when Proposition 13 passed and is back in the gubernatorial saddle again, acknowledges this fundamental problem by proposing what he calls "realignment" – pushing some programs back down to county governments.
Read it all….
Dan Walters forgets what happened prior to Prop 13. The cities and counties would tax and spend like drunken sailors. So, would the state – hence the current state of affairs.
Education funding must be equalized because of Serrano Priest so taxpayers will leave heavily taxed counties to less taxed ones and demand the same services.
The Problem today is the failure to reform the welfare system, education system, and illegal immigration.
Without those reforms, taxes may be shifted from state to counties and taxes will massively increase for all. More businesses and young taxpayers will leave for less heavily taxed states.