Proposition 13 and the O.C. Bankruptcy

Re “Blame It All on Prop. 13,” by Mark Baldassare, Commentary, Dec. 28.

To blame Prop. 13 for Orange Country’s bankruptcy is absurd. This is like blaming your employer when you spend more than you earn. Orange County went bankrupt because the political leadership, aided and abetted by former Treasurer Robert Citron, were the ones “in denial,” who consistently refused to live within the spending limits imposed by the taxpaying voters through Prop. 13.

Baldassare appears to have forgotten why Prop. 13 passed overwhelmingly in the first place--to curb local governments’ increasingly voracious appetites for more and more of the taxpayers’ money.

For Baldassare and those who share his apparent belief that we are under-taxed, there is always the option of going back to the voters and asking them to cancel Prop. 13. Go ahead, Mr. Baldassare, make my day.

JIM FITZGERALD

La Jolla

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Baldassare has got it only half-right: Yes, falling property-tax revenues have put county governments in a difficult position. But Prop. 13, which limits property taxes to about 1% of a property’s value, is not the culprit; the real demon is the abrupt fall in the value of real estate. The math is easy: 1% of an abrupt decline in real estate values equals an abrupt decline in revenues.

Hundreds of thousands of homes only appear to be happily occupied by their owners. In reality, these homes are in foreclosure. The financial institutions that hold the mortgages on these properties allow individuals who have defaulted on their loans to live rent-free in them for the simple reason that hundreds of thousands of unoccupied homes would drive their values down still further. The real issue is why folks can no longer afford to make the payments on their homes. For the answer to that question, we must turn to the federal government.

In the last 10 years the federal government has caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in aerospace and related high-paying industries. Simultaneously, its immigration laws have given Southern California huge numbers of low-skilled but often high-fertility immigrants, whose incomes consign them and their families to lives of quiet desperation.

GEORGE RAYMOND TYNDALL

Los Angeles

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Twenty years ago, California’s voters grew weary of politicians and government officials taxing and spending them to near bankruptcy; we reared back and passed Prop. 13.

Baldassare misplaces the blame: Politicians and government officials overspent, not the voters.

It is interesting to ponder how many thousands of businesses and individuals would have been forced into bankruptcy had these same politicians and officials not been stopped by Prop. 13.

Maybe the voters are wiser than these folks, and Baldassare.

NICHOLAS C. QUACKENBOS

Claremont