County Is Still Tough to Sell on Tax Needs

Numbers generally make for dull reading. Unlike the forces and feelings and activities that lurk behind them, numbers are rigid and stark. But they can also be manipulated. And they are always open to a wide divergence of interpretation.

Let’s take the election of June 5, for example. It is a simple statistical fact that Orange County voters ran counter to bond-authorizing issues except two: money to construct rail systems and new prisons.

In other social and taxation areas, we were at least consistent. A county in which several municipalities have chosen to play hardball with the Constitutional rights of the homeless in our midst, that has voted down local taxes to ease the transportation crisis, and has rather consistently voted down bond issues to improve public education followed these same dubious priorities statewide on June 5.

Orange County voted against an increased state gas tax to support badly needed transportation improvements, and against bonds for facilities to help the homeless and to improve and extend our educational plant from the elementary to the university level--all of which were supported by substantial majorities in the rest of the state. (Orange County also voted against Prop. 116, a philosophical clone of Prop. 108--bonds to build rail systems--which we supported. So figure that one out.)

This kind of penurious rejection by Orange County voters of social and financial obligations that the rest of the state has accepted--it should be pointed out--to the benefit of Orange County citizens, as well, takes on an added significance when played off against yet another number. According to the California Statistical Abstract of 1989, Orange County trails only Los Angeles County in total personal income, and we rank sixth among California’s 58 counties in per capita personal income. (The five counties with a higher per capita income are all grouped around San Francisco Bay.)

What this appears to say is that one of the richest areas in the state--and probably in the nation, as far as that goes--is unwilling to share that wealth in order to create social and educational programs and provide badly needed infrastructure to deal with the increasingly desperate needs of the state--needs for which even a conservative governor is seeking help.

In other words, the majority of us in Orange County are cheapskates who lack a social conscience.

At least that’s the way it appears to me, but I decided to check out this conclusion with the local guru of studies, statistics and polls, UC Irvine Prof. Mark Baldassare. And it turns out there is a quite different way to interpret those June 5 election returns.

Baldassare--as befits a man in his profession--is totally dispassionate in his assessments, which always leaves me feeling like something of an hysteric. But in his direct, mild-mannered way, he finds the recent Orange County election statistics both encouraging and affirmative.

“Think,” he said, “about how Orange County voted 10 or 20 years ago. Then look at these returns in that light. They certainly show a considerable loosening up of hard-line thinking.”

Would he apply that same reasoning to Orange County’s rejection of the homeless bonds by a 55-45 margin? Does he regard it as a “loosening up” when, after making things as difficult as possible for the homeless in Orange County, we vote down a measure that would permit their problems to be addressed directly?

“A decade or two ago, the county was anti-tax and anti-social measures by maybe a 2 to 1 margin,” he answered. “On June 5, we had 45% of our voters supporting homeless bonds. Given the reputation of this county, it’s easy--and I think unfair--not to acknowledge this movement. While the recent election was a continuation of historic patterns in Orange County voting, it also showed that we are moving away from our old way of thinking about social problems and social welfare. There’s nothing in the studies I’ve done to show that we are mean-spirited here.”

So we have a classic example of the glass half-full and the glass half-empty analogy. I see the glass half-empty. To me, what all of this seems to add up to is that we’re still socially retarded, but not as retarded as we used to be. Baldassare’s half-full glass sees the county on a definite upswing of awareness.

“We’re beginning to see the pendulum swing back toward concern for social issues everywhere,” he said, “and in Orange County we are inching away from staunch conservatism. Admittedly this may be the last place the swing takes place, but it is happening.”

Well, OK, maybe so. I don’t like to think of us as mean-spirited, either, but I’ve seen some pretty mean-spirited acts take place in this county over the last year. And I haven’t sensed that they have been seen that way by the majority of our citizens. I have a feeling those acts will stop and directions will change when a majority of our citizens say, “Enough, already.” And that hasn’t happened yet.

I suppose I’m a little impatient. Maybe it’s time to be.