Publisher’s Notebook

• Close California’s Pre-Budget Loopholes First •

ANNE SOBLE

Winston Churchill would probably chomp on his cigar and growl as his oft-cited quote about the Royal Air Force’s role in the Battle of Britain in 1940: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” has been reconfigured in various permutations to describe last week’s California special election results.
Exempli gratia: Never have so few voters had a major impact on not only so many Californians, but also on so many elected and appointed officials, especially those who have been part of the political landscape since before the term-limits era.
Only about one-fourth of eligible voters went to the polls, but they were of a decidedly like mind. Even the often noteworthy differences between Northern and Southern Californians fell by the wayside as those casting ballots thumbed their noses at the governor, both houses of the legislature, the lobbyists and anyone else willing to publically align themselves with state government.
A resounding majority of the voters in every county in California rejected Propositions 1A (the tax extension/rainy day reserve measure), 1C (borrowing from state lottery funds), 1D (borrowing from children’s development funds) and 1E (borrowing from mental health programs). A majority in all counties also voted for 1F, which froze elected officials’ pay in lean budget years. Three counties short of unanimity voted against 1B, which would have required the state to start paying back over $9 billion in funds to public schools in two years.
The governor, who was not even in California on Election Day (some media pundits say he is not a registered absentee voter and are asking whether he passed on the election altogether), and many legislators now are threatening the voters with retribution for their attempt to actually have a say in the policy process (in a format that the governor himself devised and expected to breeze to victory).
All efforts at a “teach-the-voters-a-lesson” backlash must be challenged. The state’s serious financial flaws are not in needed expenditures but in special interest loopholes that are built into the budgetary process before dollars are ever allocated for such critical priorities as education, health services, firefighting, infrastructure maintenance and so on. Sacramento can try to pretend that the current budget has been pared to the bone, but corporate lobbyists and other big campaign donors have been immune from the cutting process for too long.