Some Guidance for Voters in This Special Election: Just Say No

It was finally time to perform my civic duty. So I reached for the official voter guide and absentee ballot that had been staring at me for days.

First rule: Read carefully each proposition’s explanation by the nonpartisan legislative analyst. It’s the most credible, detailed information a voter can find.

Second rule: Ignore all those arguments and rebuttals at the end of each analysis. They’re intellectually insulting, composed of childish spin and can be mind-muddling. Odds are, if you read that drivel, you’ll think much less of anyone signing it.

Let’s go down the list:

Prop. 73: Requires parental notification before a girl under 18 can obtain an abortion.

A tough one. If one of my teen daughters had gotten pregnant, I’d certainly have wanted her to tell me or her mom so we could offer counsel and support.

But what if she’d been too embarrassed or scared? And how about some girl with an abusive parent? She could ask a judge for a waiver. But how many teens understand the judicial process and would bother?

This looks like an opportunity for back-alley, unsafe abortion mills. Voting no.

Prop. 74: Extends the new teacher probationary period from two to five years.

It takes too long to fire bad teachers, no question. And this streamlines the process for dismissing inept permanent teachers. That’s good.

But what other profession requires a five-year probationary period, during which an employee can be fired without cause? This is bad. These are teachers with five years of college, plus a half-year of unpaid student teaching, whose starting pay in L.A. is roughly $45,000. Salaries crawl up to around $52,000 after five years. California needs to hire 100,000 new teachers in the next decade. This proposal is hardly a recruiting tool.

Let the governor and Legislature rework probation and tenure as part of a comprehensive education reform package. Another no vote.

Prop. 75: Requires public employee unions to obtain annual, written permission from members before spending their dues on politics.

Yes, public employee unions have too much influence over Democrats. But so do insurance companies over Republicans. And corporations generally over the whole lot.

The answer is campaign finance reform.

This isn’t about “paycheck protection.” It’s about Republican political protection from public employee unions. Ask for my vote again when there’s also a corporate “shareholders protection” measure on the ballot.

Prop. 76: Creates a state spending limit, reduces school funding guarantees, gives the governor more budgeting power.

Very complicated. A lot here. Some of it good: The spending cap. A ban on raiding the transportation fund. A provision allowing Sacramento to give schools extra money in boom times without it being guaranteed every year ad infinitum.

But there’s plenty bad: A provision that allows Sacramento to deny schools their Prop. 98 minimum without ever restoring the money to the guaranteed base. Thus, a permanent, lower base would be created. Also unsettling: Handing the governor unilateral power to cut an unbalanced budget without legislative approval. California’s governor already has more budgeting power than the president.

This proposal overreaches. No again.

Prop. 77: Seizes political redistricting from the Legislature and hands it to retired judges.

The current system is indefensible. If legislators had any shame, they’d have ended this conflict of interest long ago.

But this plan is nuts. Leaving aside whether it should be judges or citizens drawing the lines, these map-drawers would be selected through some overly complex, Rube Goldberg-type process. The measure requires redistricting for next year’s elections, a logistical impossibility. There shouldn’t be a disruptive, mid-decade redistricting anyway. And worse: Each new redistricting plan would need to be ratified by a statewide vote. It’s a full employment act for political consultants.

Democrats have pledged to pass a sane, bipartisan plan next year. Hold them to it. No on this.

Props. 78-79: Prescription drug discounts. Prop. 80: Electricity re-regulation.

Huh? What does this trio have in common? Political games.

The unions qualified Props. 79 and 80 in hopes of scaring off the governor’s corporate bankrollers so they wouldn’t finance a special election. But if there were an election, the unions theorized, these measures might lure liberal voters to the polls.

The pharmaceutical industry sponsored Prop. 78 because it feared Prop. 79. It ran an $80-million campaign promoting 78 and attacking 79, hoping to confuse us. The drug companies wouldn’t really mind if we voted against both measures. Fine with me.

Forget all three props. Some things are best left to our elected representatives.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

But admittedly, while thumbing through the voter guide, I’m increasingly motivated by another agenda: Send a message. A message to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and all successors that special elections are losers -- for us and for them.

Don’t saddle us with needless, polarizing elections. Especially one that costs $54 million in state tax money when we’re facing a $6-billion budget deficit and the governor keeps shouting outrageously that “we must live within our means.”

There’s not one measure on Tuesday’s ballot that could not have waited seven months until the June primary election.

Such wasteful acts should be discouraged.

I need a bumper sticker that reads: “Vote -- Vote No.”

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Reach George Skelton at george.skelton@latimes.com.