CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : Budgets With No Room for Debate

A series of voter and government actions over the last dozen years has left so few “flexible” dollars on the bargaining table that government has become a captive of the state’s own constitutional and statutory mandates.

Backers of initiative measures figure out what special programs they want to fund, then go to those beneficiary groups to fund a signature drive. Presto, they’re on the ballot, with their own home-written law. If they win, their programs get funded. Other programs, no matter how meritorious, don’t get funded because the budget is riddled with such special mandates.

Proposition 134, for example, asks the voters to approve new state alcohol beverage taxes with the proceeds to fund specified programs. This particular measure, though, has an added twist. To make certain no set of political circumstances can ever change the formula, the programs are to be maintained at 1989-90 levels. Over time, that would increase costs many millions, some say billions, of dollars. Other programs could be shorted or have to be funded from future tax increases.

The inevitable result is increased cost and the further erosion of representative government. It is simply the wrong way to correct what is already a badly deteriorated fiscal and political situation.

In years past, the budget process allowed for healthy disagreements over policy and, ultimately, a solution based on current needs. If senior citizen support services needed more funding that year, money could be squeezed from other less pressing programs. But now, due largely to initiatives, there’s little squeeze room remaining and Proposition 134 would worsen that situation. By creating special cubbyholes stoked with dollars that are not necessarily directed at current need, California government would be further handcuffed.

If government is to meet its potential for functioning effectively it must have both the tools and flexibility to deal with changing conditions. Proposition 134 looms as yet another twist of the ropes strangling state government.