How Many Times Must Voters Say No?

In the Capitol, the day after an election isn’t altogether different from the day after a sacrifice at an ancient pagan temple. Though exhausted from the previous evening’s festivities, everyone is busy picking through the entrails to divine whatever messages the gods have hidden there.

The gods whose signals we strain to interpret here are, of course, the California voters. And sometimes their meaning is obscure and confusing.

Last Wednesday, however, one warning came through like a lightning bolt, and the high priests of Sacramento would do well to heed it. That message is: The voters weren’t kidding 10 years ago when they decreed the Gann limit on state spending, and they still don’t want anybody messing with it--not even Paul Gann.

Ever since Proposition 4 was adopted with nearly 75% of the vote, the Capitol priests have saturated their sermons with apocalyptic reports of how the Gann limit--exceeded only once in nine years--has impoverished the state’s schools,destroyed the state’s highways and decimated the ability of government to provide for the basic needs of the people. (Never mind that Californians are still the 11th most heavily taxed people in the United States, that the schools have enjoyed more than a $1,000 increase annually in per pupil expenditures, or that the state budget has more than doubled from $19 billion to $44 billion under the Gann limit.)

Many of the priests of the Capitol missed the message 10 years ago and many more have long since forgotten it. Even Gann, the patron saint of the tax limitation movement, became convinced that if some adjustment wasn’t made for highway construction, the electorate, in a blind fury, would strike down the entire measure.

The voters dispelled any such myths last Tuesday by striking down both the $2 billion increase for schools (Proposition 71) advocated by state Schools Supt. Bill Honig and Gann’s attempt (Proposition 72) to bust his own limit by $700 million.

Although the margin of defeat for Proposition 71 wasn’t dramatic, the circumstances certainly were. Rarely has such an awesome panoply of interests lined up in favor of a ballot measure as did those behind Honig’s initiative.

For the last six years, Honig has worked relentlessly to build a formidable political machine from a statewide network of teachers, administrators, school employees, school boards, parents and even students to agitate for large budget increases. Proposition 71 was feverishly promoted by every major public-employee union in California and enjoyed lavish editorial praise in the state’s newspapers. By May 21, contributions totaling nearly $1.1 million had rolled in from every segment of society that had a profit to make--including $375,000 from the California Teachers Assn.

Against the tide stood a hopelessly outgunned group of taxpayers who took up the cause by default, despite a 4-to-1 funding disadvantage.

The forces arrayed behind Proposition 72 were just as overwhelming, with developers and contractors pouring in a total of $1.4 million by May 21, including $833,000 from the Irvine Co. alone. Most impressively, the spokesman to bust the Gann limit was Gann himself.

Until the voters spoke.

The rejection of Propositions 71 and 72 is already being rationalized by the liberals as a garbled and meaningless demonstration of the voters demanding services without the willingness to pay for them. If they really believe this, they’re making a big mistake.

California voters realize that they’re coughing up more taxes per capita than the citizens of 39 other states--and often getting less. Californians not only are willing to pay for top-notch schools and roads--they already are paying for them-- and they expect their servants to deliver.

There’s much that the Legislature could do to honor that demand, if it chose to do so. Even after absorbing the entire budget shortfall and providing a $600-million reserve, state expenditures still will rise about 6% this year. The average classroom of 30 students in California is now receiving more than $100,000 a year in funding, yet one of the nation’s most bloated educational bureaucracies absorbs most of these dollars before they ever reach the students. Meanwhile, California’s lavish “prevailing wage” system is inflating the price of public-works projects--including the cost of new highways--by an estimated 10% to 20%. And yet the Legislature this year rejected measures to mandate a reduction of the school bureaucracy and to adjust the state’s prevailing wage regulations to match those of the federal government--to name just two modest reforms.

Will Tuesday’s anti-tax message be heeded? Don’t count on it. The next morning at the temple, the Capitol priests were grilling a new sacrifice--state Budget Director Jesse Huff--and chanting solemn vows to fast until the governor sends them a new, inflated budget that will accommodate their appetites at the expense of the taxpayers.