The ballot and the bottom line

Re “Voters asked to think again,” April 20

While The Times’ article on Propositions 1D and 1E focuses on the problems inherent in ballot-box budgeting, it ignores the real issue, which is how to spend Californians’ tax dollars in the most responsible manner.

Providing comprehensive case management to mentally ill people -- helping them find housing, eat properly, get to their doctor’s appointments and so on -- reduces emergency room visits and incarcerations. Because emergency room visits and jail time are extraordinarily expensive, Proposition 1E’s cuts to mental healthcare funding (and thus comprehensive care) will end up costing us dearly.

The reason Californians keep trying to budget via the ballot box is because our legislators have done such an incredibly poor job of making rational budget decisions themselves.

Kathryn Campbell

Redondo Beach

--

The voters have recently “combined to straitjacket the state’s budgetary process”? How ludicrous!

Both Proposition 10 and Proposition 63 mandated not only spending but taxes to pay for them -- and them only. These two initiatives took nothing from the general fund. That is hardly spending like a drunken sailor, nor is it irresponsible.

If legislators on both sides of the aisle were as responsible as the electorate, we’d probably be in far better fiscal shape than we are.

The electorate did nothing to straitjacket the Legislature. Lawmakers are just jealous and envious of funds they cannot access. We’d be fools to let them strip the funds out of these programs to fund other programs.

Hardy Hayes

Camarillo

--

The headline on this article is a fallacy. It assumes that the voters did some thinking in the first place, which, if we had, would have resulted in most of the original ballot measures being defeated. Voters don’t think; we emote.

The initiative process is the equivalent of a loaded gun in the hand of an angry blind man. There are very sound arguments against this type of direct democracy; voters have neither the knowledge, time nor inclination to do the research and critical thinking it takes to reach sound decisions. It is why we put legislatures and administrations in place to do that for us.

It is urgent that the state of California convene a constitutional convention to rewrite the state charter.

Thomas Michael Kelley

Newbury Park