California has an unusual system of direct democracy: the ballot proposition, a form of popular initiative. In any given election, the state's voters may directly enact a law through a simple majority vote.
In order to place an initiative on the ballot, the organizers must collect (as of 2006) 373,816 signatures of California citizens, or 598,105 signatures if the initiative is an amendment to the state constitution. Those signatures must be collected within 150 days, and at least 131 days before the election. Well, there is also a whole lot of bureaucracy and delay involved, but the signatures are ostensibly the major hurdle.
This system is both good and bad. It does an end run around representative democracy, and thereby circumvents many of the benefits of that system (informed decision-making for instance). But it does allow for the citizens to create laws that their elected officials will, because of corruption or ineptitude, neither create nor pass.
On the whole I think that the ballot proposition system is a poor one, because such propositions remove large areas of government from the elected officials' power, and thus ossifying those areas when in susbsequent years change might be highly desirable. But it's the system as it stands.
At any rate, upon such time as we move back to California, I am planning to look into putting together two initiatives, both non-partisan attempts to improve the governance of the state. The first one being an attempt to tackle California's rampant (though no more than in most other states) gerrymandering, and the second an important alteration of the sainted Proposition 13.
Firstly, gerrymandering. Here's the guts of the initiative:
No legislative district shall be created for any office, where the mathematical square of the circumference of said district is more than twenty-four times the area of said district.
That's it. Have a look at the referenced column if you'd like more detail about the math; I am still happy with the way in which I laid it out there.
Basically, it's a huge step forward in eliminating locked-in and unrepresentative legislative seats. I think the biggest argument in favor is that this is not some new method of arguable merit, a la Schwarzenegger's panel of retired judges. It's the same method that we have now, only with tighter rules to eliminate the egregious excesses. It's purely an improvement.
I am aware that the initiative may, by virtue of reducing the power of the legislature to draw districts, result in more Republicans being elected than are elected under the current borders, and thus may be seen as partisan. I say, Nuts. I despise the Republican party and its moral bankruptcy more than even Howard Dean does. But honest elections and truly representative officials are more important than a majority achieved by skullduggery.
Note that most of the current elected officials would have no interest in this initiative passing. Thus we see the value of the ballot proposition system. And we can predict that, with the money and power and lies that will be thrown at it, the initiative will fail. But one should not do what's right only when it is easy to do so.
A similar situation exists for my second proposition, the gist of which is as follows:
Article 13A of the California state constitution shall apply only to those property owners capable of suffering a natural death.
I.e., property owners who are real people and not corporations and businesses. Since under Proposition 13 (which became Article 13A of the constitution) property values can only be reassessed at the time the property changes hands, and since all corporate owners created shell companies to hold their property, and those shell companies may "change hands" but the property never does, no non-human owner of property will ever pay more taxes on that property than they did in 1978. (Or whenever that company first bought it.) People die, and the property taxes get reassessed. Corporations never do.
Proposition 13 was a bad law addressing a worse problem: people were being driven out of their homes because the property value and thus the property taxes were increasing beyond their ability to pay them. Economic purists might see this as market efficiency, but I'm a liberal and no one who has paid off their own home and has saved enough for retirement should be thrown out of that home by forces they could not anticipate.
However, as usual, the huge corporate interests quickly perverted the issue so that they also would never have to pay higher taxes. And the real problem with that is: corporations are immortal. They will never have to pay more than the taxes they paid in 1978. And that's not adjusted for inflation.
That loophole needs to be closed. I don't really care what regimen is used to assess the property taxes for corporations - whatever was being used in 1978 is good enough for me. If it's not, the legislature can change it (and knowing their abject thralldom to their corporate masters, they will). But as it stands, Proposition 13 has gutted the state's tax revenues, and creates all kinds of gross economic distortions. Eventually, all property in the state would become owned by corporations because of the tax advantage they get.
Well, you can imagine the opposition that will line up against this one. Not the politicians so much, since they would like to have that tax money to actually fund things with. But I daresay the big money would all be on one side.
So it's also basically tilting at windmills. But sometimes that's a worthwhile thing to do. And sometimes, just sometimes, you may even beat one.
- Sun Ra
P.S. Yes, I know that Proposition 13 allows for some tiny amount of valuation increase. I have read the Amendment:
SEC. 2. (a) The "full cash value" means the county assessor's
valuation of real property as shown on the 1975-76 tax bill under
"full cash value" or, thereafter, the appraised value of real
property when purchased, newly constructed, or a change in ownership
has occurred after the 1975 assessment.
The full cash value base may reflect from year to year the inflationary rate not to exceed 2 percent for any given year or reduction as shown in the consumer price index or comparable data for the area under taxing jurisdiction, or may be reduced to reflect substantial damage, destruction, or other factors causing a decline in value.
In other words, it can increase by up to 2% but only if the inflation rate justifies that. And that 2% is a ceiling.