Panel Backs Easier Path for School Bond Plans

In a partisan vote, an Assembly committee approved a measure Monday that would allow passage of local school bonds by a simple majority vote rather than the two-thirds majority now required.

The 11-3 vote by the Democratic-controlled Assembly Education Committee on the approach to repairing and expanding public school campuses was the first volley in what is shaping up as the Capitol’s major battle over education reform.

The bill by Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) next goes to the Assembly Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee and from there to the Assembly floor. The Senate passed the bill last year.

Republicans generally agree with taxpayer groups that school bonds should require a two-thirds majority for passage.

Democrats contend that unless bond funds can be raised by a simple majority vote, aging school buildings will continue to fall into disrepair and new campuses will not be built.

Gov. Pete Wilson has said the vote requirement should be reduced to “a prudent but less stringent majority.” But the governor hasn’t spelled out what he means.

So pressing is the need for new construction, O’Connell told the Education Committee, that “we could build a new classroom every hour into the next millennium and still not meet the capacity needs of this century, let alone the 21st century.”

O’Connell said he has built “accountability” to the public into his measure, including the restriction that bond funds could be used only for construction, not for administrative costs.

But committee Republicans were unimpressed. Several simply left the hearing room before the vote, knowing the Democratic majority would approve the bill.

In testimony opposing the O’Connell bill, Wendy Zaucha Nelson of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. said that 63% of local school bonds on the ballot last year were approved by the two-thirds majority. With the simple majority in effect, “100% would have passed, and that’s just too much,” she said.

She noted also that Proposition 170, the 1993 statewide ballot measure that would have lowered the threshold to a simple majority, failed at the polls.