School Funds: No on 98

Proposition 98, the school-funding initiative, is attracting strong support because it would provide expanded state funding for the schools, kindergarten through 12th grade and the community colleges, and also begin the obviously needed process of breaking the stranglehold of the Gann initiative on the ability of the state to meet its future public-service requirements. But the glitter of those obvious contributions conceals a fundamentally flawed formula that would only make more difficult the tax and fiscal reforms that the state needs.

In effect, Proposition 98 would only compound the mistakes made when the Gann initiative was voted into law in 1979. Voters supported the Gann limits in the hope of controlling spiraling state expenditures, only to discover that the formula by which it set limits on public spending was defective--condemning the state to inferior education, roads and public services. To make matters even worse, Proposition 98 would further punish the University of California, the California State University system, state-funded public-health programs including the expanding AIDS emergency funding, and all other state services. They stand to lose $6.6 billion over the next 10 years, according to the estimate of the California Taxpayers’ Assn. That would be the result of Proposition 98’s strategy of providing exceptions to the Gann limits as they affect one segment of public spending without addressing the overall deleterious effect of the Gann limits on all public services.

The intent of Proposition 98, to provide increased funding for public education in California, is a good one. Years of neglect have seen the state’s schools slip from among the nation’s top 10 systems to the lowest of the low, now ranking 48th in terms of per-student expenditures and 50th in terms of class size. And this will only get worse as the growth and prosperity and expansion of the state’s economy run head-on into the flawed limits of the Gann initiative. But the need for more education funding, so much in the public interest, must not be met at the expense of other elements of the state’s needs. Paradoxically, the effect of Proposition 98 would be particularly grave for the state’s university system at the very time when it is clear that expansion, not contraction, is required. The University of California itself projects a need for three new campuses just to maintain university access to the top high-school graduates of the state over the next decade and a half.

In opposing Proposition 98, we find troubling the arguments of some of the other opponents. In the official ballot arguments, for example, opponents led by Gov. George Deukmejian argue that California can restore an appropriate quality of education without raising taxes, without changing the Gann limits. We disagree. This state has made strides in improving the quality of education in recent years. But it will not regain the premier position that it requires to maintain its economic predominance without raising taxes. The state simply cannot meet the standards of excellence in public services, including education, that are essential to national economic leadership, under the constraints of the Gann initiative. The political and business leaders of the state cannot afford to delay any longer the developing of a remedy.

Proposition 98 is a nightmare of complicated revenue regulations that are, at best, bewildering. There is disagreement on how it would work, how much money it would generate, precisely how it would affect other government services. True, there is no disagreement that it would generate a massive increase in school and community-college funding. That in turn would be tied to the establishment of a school accountability card intended to facilitate the judging of education quality in a given school. But even on this the critics argue persuasively that the accountability falls short of the reform that should be part of any increased funding.

This initiative’s good intentions are yet another argument for the correction of the Gann initiative. But the need is for overall correction, not piecemeal tinkering that would do more harm than good. Proposition 98 would only complicate matters by diverting state leaders from their responsibility to redraw Gann before its full effect is felt on services already operating at substandard levels. We recommend a No vote on Proposition 98.