My Dinner With Opher

Opher Banarie ordered the chicken breast sandwich. I went for the ortega chili burger. Red meat. I had seized the psychological edge.

We had met at Abe’s Deli in Northridge to settle our differences, mano a mano.

Opher Banarie had responded to my Election Day column in The Times’ Valley Edition with an in-your-face fax. He wanted to let me know I was wrong to support the measure to add 1,000 officers to the LAPD via a property tax increase. He chided me for naively suggesting that Proposition 1 might get pushed over the hump this time by crime-weary voters. Prop. 1 was an exact copy of a measure that last November had received 64% of the vote, falling just short of the required two-thirds.

“I wish I had had a chance to read your Tuesday column before last night,” Opher wrote. “. . . It would have been possible to time-stamp a note to you that Proposition 1 was bound to fail.”

Your basic nyah, nyah, nyah.

What is it with these people who get a paltry 36% of the vote in November and then 42% in April and proclaim “victory”? Why do some ballot measures require a two-thirds vote and others a simple majority, anyway?

Is this any way to run a democracy?

*

“Is it fair? I can’t answer that,” Opher Banarie said. The two-thirds threshold is “a high standard to meet. But at the same time, it should be a high standard.”

Opher was good company. Curious, opinionated. We agreed a lot about L.A.’s problems, less so about solutions.

His is the perspective of one 34-year-old family man who lives in Reseda and commutes by MetroLink to his white-collar job downtown. He’s volunteered long hours in the public schools but doesn’t think those schools are good enough for his children. He worries about graffiti. His believes that City Hall should spend more money on police and less on the arts. (This from a man who plays the cello.)

“There’s no point in spending money on ancillary services if people are afraid to leave their homes,” he declared.

The old “ancillary services” complaint. I wanted to talk about Democracy Itself.

*

The burger tasted good as Opher acknowledged that, mathematically, his “no” vote on Prop. 1 was worth twice as much as my “yes” vote. Even so, he noted, several measures have surpassed the two-thirds threshold.

True enough. That’s why L.A. taxpayers, though thwarted in their bid for more police, are financing millions of dollars in new library construction, even as the library system cuts staff and hours. (What was that about ancillary services?)

I showed Opher a page from a recent Fresno Bee. “Arts to Zoo Tax Passes Easily,” says one headline. “Fresno School Bond Fails to Pass,” says another. A sales tax increase, requiring a simple majority, received 57.4%. The money will be used to support an A-to-Z of ancillary services. The school measure received even more support 61.7%--yet failed. The zoo wins, the schools lose.

I also wanted Opher to read a speech that state Treasurer Kathleen Brown delivered Jan. 6 calling for a repeal of the two-thirds “super majority” required for local general obligation bonds. The standard, she said, is a “barrier” to California’s economic competitiveness.

“The requirement is an anachronism,” Brown said. “It was drafted as part of the state Constitution in 1879 in response to widespread municipal bond defaults resulting from the Depression of 1873.”

Politicians, Brown argues, have devised other financing schemes that are riskier and don’t require voter approval. Today, only three other states require a two-thirds vote--and Idaho, Missouri and Oklahoma don’t exactly have California’s problems.

The other day, Brown told me she also favors a repeal of the two-thirds standard for direct property tax increases, as established in 1978 by Proposition 13.

The Great Tax Revolt of 1978, however, was inspired by hard taxes, not hard times. Property values were escalating; so were the tax assessments. Homeowners pondered their tax bills and a huge state surplus and quite reasonably said to heck with this.

So now it’s the California Depression of ’93 and home values are going down. No surprise there. Here’s the big surprise: Property taxes are going down too. Last month, the county assessor’s office announced that, for the first time ever, taxes will be lowered for some 240,000 homeowners. Amazing, isn’t it? Taxes are going south at a time when crime-conscious L.A. voters are willing to pay more.

Not Opher. But at least he was wondering whether two-thirds was really fair. Me, I’d happily compromise at a nice, round 60%. That way, we’d have authorized 1,000 more cops back in November.

And best of all, Opher’s vote wouldn’t have mattered twice as much as mine.