The Issue: California voters will be deciding on 12 ballot initiatives when they vote on November 4.  Of the 12 propositions, 6 require some sort of mandated spending or bond (not including measures that will require additional expense for agencies to enact them).  California lawmakers already have trouble balancing our budget at it’s current spending levels.  In light of the budget problems in our state, California voters should reject programs that mandate additional government spending.

The Budget Problem

In California, we have become used to a state budget that is habitually late.  This isn’t just a tradition, but really part of the process.  While the California Governor issues a proposed budget in January, most of the lawmakers and state agency administrators take little notice because the Governor will release a revised version of his budget in May (termed the “May Revise”).  This means that serious deliberations on the California Budget due on July 1st isn’t started until sometime around May 15th, over 4 months later.

The extreme partisanship in California doesn’t seem to make the situation any better.  Despite having a largely non-partisan state (1 in 5 registered voters in California decline to state a political party), the officials who are elected tend to be toward to the political extremes.  When your legislature is divided between fiscal conservatives and tax-and-spend liberals with very little in between, finding compromise on the budget becomes difficult.  The supermajority required to pass a budget is also a obstacle to getting a budget completed (though it does provide stability in the budget, more on that another time).

Mandated Spending

These factors have probably led to the development of mandated spending in the state.  Proposition 98 was passed by the voters in 1988 mandating that 39% of the state’s budget be spent on K-14 education with annual increases based on enrollment.  Today Education accounts for a majority of the state’s budget.

The following propositions have bonds associated with them:

• Prop 1A – $19.4 Billion Bond
• Prop 3 – $2 Billion Bond
• Prop 10 – $10 Billion Bond
• Prop 12 – $1.2 Billion Bond

Additionally, these propositions have mandated spending:

• Prop 5 – $300 million increase in mandated spending annually
• Prop 6 – 965 million increase in mandated spending annually

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Analysis: Stop tying the hands of our elected officials!

The fiscal effects of passing voter initiatives with mandated spending is removing their ability to make decisions regarding the California budget.  The more decisions that we mandate by law, the less flexibility and discretion is given to our elected officials.  It doesn’t matter who you elect into office if the voters have made all of the decisions for them.  Our leaders don’t have the ability to negotiate or to move money to higher priority programs as needed when funding is mandated, and when crucial money is needed for projects, it is taken away from other, arguable more important needs, like higher education and infrastructure.  The reason California has a 1960s infrastructure is because we strip all of the infrastructure money out of the budget, while K-14 education receives the lion’s share.

Don’t support bonds or mandated spending.  They tighten the already paper-thin California budget.