One-Third Rule Doesn’t Add Up for School Bonds

It always has seemed un-American to me that one-third of the voters can block a local school bond issue. A minority can stop the majority from fixing leaky roofs, defective wiring and water fountains that spit up rust--from building new classrooms so the kids don’t have to be packed in like produce.

It’s undemocratic. We’re supposed to be about majority rule.

Then again, it’s probably no more un-American than what the original states did: require all voters to be white, male and property owners.

It’s all part of the same bag. The purpose of the two-thirds vote requirement for local bonds is to protect property owners from renter tyranny. This is rooted in the dubious notion that renters don’t pay property taxes, which finance the bonds, because landlords never pass on the taxes as part of the rent. Therefore, it follows, renters lack any incentive to vote against tax hikes and the vulnerable property owners need special protection.

California’s two-thirds vote requirement is a relic of the 1800s when an anti-tax revolt swept the nation. Today, only three other states demand a two-thirds vote for school bonds--Idaho, Montana and Oklahoma. A handful require some other “super majority,” usually 60%. The bulk--38--ask simply for a majority vote. A few just leave it up to the local school board.

There surely is a correlation between California’s archaic vote requirement and its embarrassing national rankings. Among all the states, our school buildings are in the worst shape, the federal General Accounting Office recently reported. We’re 50th in libraries, 50th in class size past the third grade, 45th in computers.

“We have the oldest computers in America, here in the home of Silicon Valley,” notes state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin. “Kids aren’t taking laboratory science, because they don’t have laboratories. . . . It’s ludicrous.”

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To put this in perspective, a 60% vote in America is a landslide; 66.7% almost unheard of in a competitive contest. Ronald Reagan never got 60% in California. If a two-thirds vote were needed for state ballot measures, California never would have passed Proposition 13 (64.8%), the property tax-cutting icon of conservatives.

Proposition 13 in 1978 actually eliminated local school bonds, but voters restored them in 1986 with the old two-thirds mandate. Since then, according to School Services, an education lobby, there has been a 51% passage rate--287 bonds approved, 276 rejected. If you can call getting, say, 60% of the vote a “rejection.”

Last Tuesday, Californians voted on a record 45 school bonds, and the passage rate was a predictable 51% (23-22). Of the “failures,” 13 received at least 60% of the vote. Only two didn’t get a majority.

“It’s disappointing. Discouraging. The system shouldn’t be doing this to us,” says Torrance schools Supt. Arnold Plank. His schools have drinking fountains spewing brown water, old wiring that can’t handle computers, sandbags and buckets for rainy days . . . and no intercoms. “If a criminal walked into a classroom, there would be no way to notify the front office unless the teacher sent a messenger,” the superintendent notes.

But Torrance’s $80.5-million bond proposal failed because it received “only” a 62.6% vote.

“It’s very disappointing that some people can’t see a direct line between excellent schools and an excellent community and excellent property values,” Plank laments. “That seems a no-brainer. People don’t want to buy property in communities where the schools are lousy.”

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Republicans preach local control. Some demagogically even advocate abolishing the federal and state departments of education. But their subservience to two-thirds vote extremism denies school boards the power needed for real local control.

One GOP exception is Gov. Pete Wilson. It doesn’t make sense, he contends, to require a two-thirds vote locally while permitting majority approval of state school bonds. Other Republicans argue that state bonds are financed by all taxpayers, not just property owners.

Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Santa Barbara) is pushing a state constitutional amendment to reduce the local vote requirement to a majority. But it needs a two-thirds legislative vote and doesn’t have one GOP supporter in the Assembly. Besides, Californians overwhelmingly rejected a similar proposal four years ago.

Assembly GOP Leader Bill Leonard of San Bernardino, who once searched in vain for a majority vote compromise, predicts that school facilities will continue to be funded by a tenuous combo of developer fees and state and local bonds. “We’ll continue to muddle through,” he says.

And kids will continue to muddle through California’s schools.