Measure M: Pragmatic Traffic-Relief Effort or Unfair Taxation? : Con: Why should taxpayers have to fund something they’ve already paid for? The state has the money to tackle our transportation woes--if it only would.
The year was 1774. Dublin-born Sir Edmund Burke, eminent British statesman, political writer and friend to the upstart American colonialists, rose in London to deliver his now-famous speech on American taxation to an unfriendly group loyal to the Crown: “Would 20 shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden’s fortune? No! But the payment of half 20 shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave.”
Cut to the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel, September, 1990. Eminent citizen-activist, dedicated political problem solver and newly elected chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission Dana W. Reed addresses a decidedly friendly group of businessmen. Reed vigorously offers that Orange County can only begin to seriously attack its traffic gridlock problems if Orange County residents pass Measure M. After all, the tax will amount to a mere $5 per person per month, he explains (with, I might add, some economic license, given the regressivity of a sales tax). Surely the resolution of such a major problem is worth this minimal sacrifice, isn’t it?
Herein lies the philosophical rub between the pro-tax Establishment that genuinely believes it is responsibly asking so little of us to tackle so much and the intransigent anti-taxers who believe that everyone’s “little” has already totaled far too much.
On a good day, we anti-taxers are called ignorant. “If only they knew all the great transportation programs that will flow from Measure M tax monies, then they’d vote for it. We need to do a better job of educating them,” the pro-taxers tell themselves.
The rest of the time, words such as greedy, indifferent, stubborn, selfish and parochial are assigned to us majority holdouts, who have twice before defeated attempts to raise the sales tax.
And throw in for good measure the pro-taxers’ copycat argument: “The surrounding counties have all adopted sales tax increases for transportation.” (My mother’s lecture to me about jumping off a bridge if my friend did does quite nicely here.)
You would think by all this that it is only our pro-tax friends who are long-suffering freeway drivers. We “majoritarians” also curse the bumper-to-bumper traffic, also pound on our steering wheels, also design our schedules around peak freeway congestion times, also wake up extra early and also devise innumerable street and freeway route combinations to avoid that damnable traffic. In short, we don’t like it any more than they do. But what we dislike even more is paying for something we’ve already paid for and, on top of that, being told that this time they really mean it.
This year’s state budget is nearly $55 billion. A measly 0.3% of that money is spent on transportation-related projects. Let me repeat: 0.3%!
The problem is not a lack of money. The problem is that our Democrat-controlled Legislature in Sacramento will not allocate a fair share of that money to transportation, plain and simple.
Some legislators would rather continue spending it on out-of-control, static state welfare programs that restrict individual opportunity and create a permanent underclass. Other legislators and powerful regulatory bodies with influence over them--make no mistake about it--want us out of our cars and into buses or trains. The very last thing they want to do is build more freeways. This is the same crowd of self-appointed do-gooders who are busily drafting reams of bureaucratic regulations that are driving businesses, jobs and even outdoor barbecues out of California! Many of these same legislators have made the process infinitely more unmanageable by tacking on automatic budgetary increases to these self-perpetuating programs. The spending just goes on and on. No budgetary oversight, no accountability--and practically no money for transportation.
The fight is misplaced. The battleground ought to be in Sacramento, not Orange County. If we can’t persuade the Legislature to set new priorities in spending our tax dollars, then we must seek a less desirable but necessary alternative: a statewide ballot initiative, similar to the one for education, that permanently allocates a percentage of the state budget to transportation, with an appropriate sunset provision. Does anyone seriously doubt that the voters would approve a spending level greater than the paltry 0.3% bone the Legislature now throws us?
To my pro-tax friends I will concede that Mr. Reed’s $5 would no more bankrupt the average Orange County family than 20 shillings would have ruined Mr. Hampden. However, it is our underlying belief that we remain an overtaxed people rightly suspicious, if not now contemptuous, of those charged with spending our money.
As someone who spent 16 years in government, I derive absolutely no satisfaction from the destructive atmosphere of distrust that surrounds all government officials--many of whom do not deserve it. But it is government that has broken trust with the governed, and we are all suffering for it. I, frankly, do not know what it will take to restore some semblance of civility between the people and their politicians. Perhaps term limitations will satisfy the public’s desire for its pound of flesh. I do know that the constant drumbeat for higher taxes will only worsen the situation.
I would remind those disturbed by the fact that these sentiments are held more strongly by the electorate of Orange County than elsewhere in the state that it was these same sentiments that twice helped propel George Deukmejian to the Statehouse and Ronald Reagan to the White House--to the unending benefit of us all. Few were complaining about those ignorant, selfish, stubborn and indifferent Orange County voters then.
