Last week, as I was reading through the editorials in the Wall Street Journal, I found one article that caught my eye. It was titled “The Blue Men Group” and was about how three of the most liberal (i.e. blue) states — California, Illinois and New York — now find themselves in desperate fiscal situations due to their bloated public services, lending credit to the notion that the welfare state is invariably a financially unsound endeavor. This, however, does not tell the whole story.
I cannot speak for Illinois or New York, but California is not bogged down in the mire of a bloated welfare state. Our problems stem from our infatuation with the idea of direct democracy.
Surely California has one of the most generous welfare apparatuses in the nation, but being part of a nation that has the weakest welfare state of the industrialized countries is no big victory. California’s well-funded public services is what originally brought people to California — the beautiful national and state parks, the great highways, the best public school system in the nation — but California’s intoxicating experiment with direct democracy has left the state bankrupt as the voters want everything for nothing and pass the blame on to the “real” legislators.
Direct democracy in California was originally thought to be a route around corrupt public officials and vested private interests so the state would be truly governed in the people’s interest. Today, however, it has become a tool for vested interests to court the voter with misinformation and scare tactics.
Consider the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act” on this past election’s ballot. Although it sounds enticing, it is actually a proposition largely supported by PG&E to preserve their own monopoly over electricity in California. It was in response to Marin County’s efforts to buy electricity on behalf of their residents from the cheapest provider and then set their own rates they deem appropriate. Rather than seeing their market diminish, PG&E backed this proposition that would have required local governments to secure a two-thirds supermajority of voters’ approval in order to set up any new public power network.
Or look at propositions 25 and 26. The former allows budget and related legislation to be passed with simple majority, rather than the two-thirds requirement established in the 1930s, while the latter requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in the legislature to pass certain state and local fees. Taken separately, the votes might make sense; taken together, they seem to be doing the opposite of what the other aspires to, one easing restrictions on legislative votes while the other increases restrictions.
And therein lies the problem of direct democracy. People vote based on their self-interest (i.e. pay less taxes) and their conscience (i.e. provide public services, especially for those less fortunate), often resulting in conflicting aims. California’s experiment with direct democracy has allowed our public services to expand while gutting the funding for many vital programs. Voters now legislate, and leave the legislators to pick up the pieces, which usually comes in the form of appeasing voters and borrowing to fill the holes left by decreased revenue.
The pinnacle of the failure of direct democracy is Proposition 13. Passed in 1978, it decreased property taxes by 57 percent by assessing property values at their 1975 levels and allowing an annual increase in the assessed value of real property to exceed no more than 2 percent regardless of the actual increase in value of the property itself. Furthermore, it prohibited reassessment at a new base year except for a change in ownership or the completion of new construction. Most importantly, however, it required a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature to approve an increase in any other state taxes. This initiative is largely to blame for the dire state of our public services (including the reason why each year we, as Cal Poly students, pay higher tuition as state funding for CSUs continues to decrease) because it allows Republicans as a minority to prevent even the most reasonable tax increases. Property taxes traditionally support schools, parks, playground, libraries — many of the “public goods” everyone cherishes but few would support through private donations.
Unfortunately, many of the unforeseen consequences of this proposition favor the well-to-do over the less fortunate. Businesses benefit over homeowners because businesses move much less frequently than families, allowing them to keep their property taxes low. It also favors long-term homeowners over new homeowners. Nearly identical houses could have property tax disparities of $1,000 or more based on when the house was last sold. Furthermore, no one really wants to move — more often they are forced to by employment opportunities in other areas, once again making it more difficult for those without strong job security.
The Congressional filibuster requires a supermajority vote to end debate to protect minority interests. The supermajority required in Proposition 13 was not intended to protect minority interests. It was intended to make it tremendously difficult to ever raise taxes again (although a simple majority can lower taxes) except in cases of near unanimity.
It is time to let majority rule, the crux of democracy, once again serve the purpose it was supposed to and end the tyranny of the minority. It is also time to end our experiment of direct democracy and let our legislators, who we hire and pay to legislate, actually do their jobs.
As Peter Schrag wrote in the September 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine, “At bottom lies the paradox implicit in the hyper-democracy of an initiative process beloved by the voters and the antidemocratic constitutional restrictions that they have voted in.”