Ballot May Be a Puzzle

At a Fresno town hall discussion of the $15-billion state deficit-reduction bond that will appear on the March ballot, Controller Steve Westly announced that he and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stood together in supporting “the budget accountability initiative.”

Whoops.

The controller didn’t mean to say that. The Budget Accountability Act is a different ballot measure that would make it easier for lawmakers to raise taxes. Westly supports it, Schwarzenegger opposes it, and the two have agreed not to discuss it at events like the one in Fresno.

Westly meant to say “balanced budget act” -- a prohibition against future borrowing, linked on the ballot to the governor’s $15-billion bond plan.

Confusion has become a familiar theme as campaigning for the March measures kicks into high gear. Even the sponsors of some of the measures can find themselves tripped up when trying to differentiate the “balanced budget act” and the “budget accountability act” from the “economic recovery bond act.”

Voters will have to decide on four measures with overlapping themes and titles but sharply conflicting policy implications. Many people involved in trying to sell -- or stop -- something on the ballot acknowledge that confusion stands a good chance of affecting the ultimate outcome.

That has some organizers working overtime to help voters sort out the propositions so they have a clear idea of what’s what come election day, and are able to differentiate between measures.

“Californians have seen more crowded ballots in the past,” said a newsletter sent out by Californians Against Higher Taxes -- No on 56. “But this year might take the cake for potential to confuse.... You can’t tell them apart, the different propositions, without a program.”

That newsletter’s focus was on defeating Proposition 56, the Budget Accountability Act, which would make it easier for lawmakers to pass a spending plan and try to raise taxes. But it would also dock their pay when a budget is late and require that they set aside a rainy-day reserve. The group fears voters will confuse it with Proposition 58 -- the Balanced Budget Act that Westly meant to endorse at the Fresno rally. That, too, has a provision to set aside a rainy-day budget reserve.

The governor has been out stumping for Proposition 58, reminding voters they must pass it along with Proposition 57 -- the $15 billion in borrowing -- for either to take effect. So the message to voters is: Approve two of the budget measures on the ballot to restore the state’s fiscal health. The problem for Schwarzenegger is that, when voters get to the ballot, they will see three budget measures -- and while the governor says two of them are crucial to keep the state from running out of money, he wants the third defeated.

The message isn’t always coming across clearly to even the administration’s staunchest supporters.

After the governor gave a speech promoting 57 and 58 at the World Ag Expo in Tulare on Wednesday, 24-year-old cotton farmer Henry McGowan said, “I’m supporting whatever Schwarzenegger is for.” But he left the event saying, “I’m for 57 and 56.” Casting a ballot in such a way would actually be damaging to the governor.

Scott MacDonald, a spokesman for the campaign against 56, said he was recently introduced on the “Ken and Company” radio show on KABC-AM (790) as “being opposed to Proposition 56, the governor’s $15-billion bond issue.” He had to explain that Proposition 56 has nothing to do with the borrowing plan.

“I said, ‘Thank you very much for saying that, because this is exactly the problem we face,’ ” MacDonald said.

Trying to interpret some of the propositions on their own is confusing enough, without competing proposals to cloud things further.

After a speech in which Schwarzenegger asked for support for his “economic recovery” package, R.J. Brinkman, a landscaper from Visalia, said he would oblige -- but he didn’t understand what it was about. Brinkman said he did not realize that Proposition 57 involved a deficit bond. “He said he was for agriculture, so I thought they were about helping agriculture,” Brinkman said.

Proponents of Proposition 56 have been running ads that suggest their measure is about anything other than tax increases, even though its key provision would be lowering the legislative threshold for a spending plan or a tax increase from a two-thirds vote of both houses to a 55% vote. They have even managed to persuade local television news reporters to run long stories on their effort without ever mentioning the word “taxes.”

Opponents, meanwhile, have waged a counteroffensive with an ad that leaves voters with the impression that passing Proposition 56 would dismantle California’s constitutional property-tax formulas, which limit local increases to 2% a year. It would do no such thing.

Then there is the fourth measure on the ballot, a $12.3-billion school construction bond that will be listed as Proposition 55. The Legislature put it there before any of the others qualified. Now it is in danger of getting lost in the shuffle.

Schwarzenegger has decided there is too much risk of confusing voters if he stumps for anything other than his bond package.

“If we don’t pass this, we will really be in a huge financial crisis unlike anything else the state has ever faced,” Schwarzenegger said at a Sacramento Press Club event last month. “This is why I am so adamant and focused just on those two issues right now. Those two propositions, Proposition 57 and Proposition 58.”

He added: “We cannot talk about 20 different issues at one time because people don’t like that. People like when you focus in on specific things, and give them a specific job to do.”

Kam Kuwata, a consultant for Proposition 55, said that media coverage of Schwarzenegger’s bond package had made it more difficult to attract attention to the school bond. Meanwhile, in the city of Los Angeles, school groups face that problem plus the difficulty of getting voters to focus on an additional local measure: another $3.87-billion construction bond for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“The total amount of debt is quite significant,” said Democratic political consultant Darry Sragow, who is working on both the campaign to pass the governor’s bond package and the Los Angeles school bond.

“All of these things are needed,” Sragow said. “The voters are going to have to be discriminating ... but I’m very comfortable with all this because I believe we need the school bonds, we need 57. We need the money.”