Quake Tax Seen as Threat to Measure M Vote

With less than a week before the election, proponents of Orange County’s Measure M sales tax for transportation may be facing a new opponent: the proposed earthquake tax.

Some of Measure M’s backers fear that a special legislative session convening in Sacramento on Thursday to discuss a sales tax increase for Northern California earthquake relief could harm the transportation plan’s chances at the polls on Tuesday.

“I’m very concerned that it will hurt M’s chances,” said Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), a supporter of the measure. “I pleaded with the governor when I went up to San Francisco to delay the special legislative meeting until after the . . . vote.”

Even if the Legislature does not immediately approve a one-year, quarter-cent sales tax increase statewide that Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders have requested, the specter of Sacramento politicians discussing tax increases on the eve of the election could be damaging enough, Ferguson said.

“If you call a special session, people will interpret that as that you’re going to raise taxes,” he said.

While Deukmejian’s is the most immediate proposal to boost taxes, there are others that loom in the distance that could also cloud voters’ minds.

The Board of Supervisors hopes to put another half-cent per dollar sales tax proposal--this one to pay for a new jail and courtrooms--on the June, 1990, ballot.

Also on that ballot will be a proposed statewide nine-cent increase in the gasoline tax to fund highway construction.

And last week, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy announced that he would seek voter approval to place yet another half-cent sales tax increase on the November, 1990, ballot to pay for anti-drug programs and additional law enforcement and prisons.

For Orange County, all those proposals could add up to an increase in the sales tax of 1 3/4 cents per dollar--although the earthquake relief tax would expire on Dec. 31, 1990.

Still, a 1 1/2-cent increase would mean an additional $180 on the purchase of a $12,000 automobile.

“Damn near everyone has an idea about how to raise taxes,” Ferguson said. “I can see (voters) sitting down at the dinner table and saying ‘Hey, I’m already paying about 47 cents out of every dollar to the government.’ They’re liable to say no to everything.”

But Bruce Nestande, a former county supervisor and chairman of the Measure M campaign committee, said lumping the tax proposals together is a serious mistake.

“You always have people with proposals to raise money for various kinds of things,” Nestande said. “You take them one at a time . . . focus on one issue, and vote it up or down.”

Orange County’s electorate, Nestande said, is intelligent enough not to be confused by the special legislative session or any of the other proposals in the news recently.

“I believe they can distinguish that we had a tragedy in Northern California . . . and you try to do what you can in a humanitarian way,” Nestande said. “This (Measure M) is an Orange County vote. We have made that point over and over and over again to anyone who is listening.”

Ferguson said he does not like the idea of a sales tax increase for quake relief regardless of the timing.

“I’m very seriously concerned about voting for any broad increase” in taxes for earthquake aid, Ferguson said. “The federal and state governments . . . are already paying” for some relief efforts. “All of those people (had) the opportunity to buy earthquake insurance. Half have it. What are they going to think if government bails out the other half?”

“State government is not a charity.”

Alan Hoffenblum, campaign manager for Measure M, said the timing of the special session could have been better, but he was not as worried as Ferguson.

“We’re concerned that there will be some confusion,” Hoffenblum said. “But we think it will sort itself out by next Tuesday.” Voters “are going to get a lot of mail between now and Election Day.”

Hoffenblum said it is too late to prepare any last-minute mailers explaining to voters the difference between the special one-year earthquake relief tax requested by Deukmejian and the Orange County tax increase that would raise $3.1 billion over 20 years, all of which would go for transportation projects within the county.

Besides, Hoffenblum said, “One does not relate to the other. . . . Hopefully, by Tuesday, those who’ve made up their minds that it (Measure M) is a good plan won’t change their mind because of a fourth-of-a-cent sales tax.”

Jerry Yudelson, central county chair of the Measure M opposition, said that while the earthquake relief tax is “something everyone can support,” it might focus voters’ attention on the string of tax increase proposals.

“I hope it will wake up a few people who weren’t planning on voting,” Yudelson said. “People are going to have to think: ‘What do we really need this money for? We have to make some choices here.’ ”

Orange County Transportation Commission member Dana Reed, a strong supporter of Measure M, said he hopes voters do exactly that.

“Unlike these other proposals, which are just that, this is a real program,” Reed said, “and 100% of the money stays in Orange County.”