For Recovery’s Sake, Air Sales Tax Issues : Debates Can Be Far More Educational Than Mailers

With less than two months before election day, supporters and opponents of a sales tax increase to help Orange County recover from bankruptcy have been on the hustings, trying to persuade voters of the merits of their positions. To no one’s surprise, the results have been mixed.

Orange County has long been a difficult place to campaign, for individual office-seekers or for causes. It is spread out, has no major commercial TV stations of its own, and does not lend itself to door-to-door campaigning except in rare instances. That has meant that mailers to the voters take on greater importance than in many other counties or big cities across the country. And the high cost of political mailers has meant enormous costs for serious candidates for countywide offices, or those backing measures like sales taxes for transportation or new jails.

It has been refreshing to see activists on both sides take their arguments to groups before flooding the mails. Several weeks ago, the Orange County Auto Dealers Assn. sponsored a panel discussion. Then it was the turn of the Health Care Council of Orange County. Such debates can be far more educational than a one-sided political mailer and fit with democracy’s traditional method of competition in the marketplace of ideas.

Given the recent Times Orange County Poll showing that 57% of the county’s registered voters were opposed to the proposed half-cent tax increase for 10 years, proponents of the measure are wise to campaign as hard as they can. They correctly recognized the need to inform the public of the need for the increase, since no one wants to pay more taxes. This increase is necessary and is but a part of the county’s recovery plan, along with layoffs of hundreds of county workers, asset sales and privatization.

Measure R, the formal designation for the increase on the June 27 ballot, has splintered the usual political organizations. The Central Committee of the county’s Republican Party unanimously opposed the tax increase. But a number of the highest visibility proponents of the increase, such as Sheriff Brad Gates and Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, are Republicans.

Two prominent Democrats, Richard J. O’Neill, the former state party chairman, and Howard Adler, the former county chairman, also backed the measure. But the current party chairman, Jim Toledano, has opposed it, and the party itself has yet to take a position.

Joining Gates, Capizzi and other Republicans are labor groups and teachers, who realize that school districts lost large sums of money when the county’s investment pool lost nearly $1.7 billion, forcing the county to declare bankruptcy last December.

Sales tax proponents said they are running into resistance from people who blame the supervisors for letting Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron make overly risky investments that led to the bankruptcy. But Measure R is not a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the county’s leadership. It is a viable way to preserve the quality of life in Orange County, to ensure the county can continue to borrow money for roads and buildings, to let schools continue to operate with some semblance of normality. There will be other elections to let disgruntled voters vent their anger at the supervisors.

In the months since the county filed for bankruptcy, a host of off-the-cuff suggestions have been made to raise money, but most have proved unworkable. Only the combination that includes a sales tax appears to have merit, as the campaigners for Measure R have correctly been pointing out.