At first it looked as if Jerry Brown had devised a no-fault way to cover California's expected $26.6 billion deficit. He would ask the legislature to mount a special election in June so the voters could agree to a five-year extension of several taxes about to expire. If they didn't, draconian program cuts would ensue, but they would know in advance what these would be (the usual suspects such as home health care for the indisposed; child welfare; education).
Special elections require approval of two-thirds of the legislature. This means he would need a few Republican votes. Most balked. They said the voters turned down tax increases on the 2008 ballot. Nevertheless, a few began to negotiate with the governor's staff, thinking they could wring out of him a concession to reform the state's wildly generous public employee pension scheme. This hasn't happened and the deadline for a June ballot is fast approaching.
Brown has options, none of them quite what he wanted. He can get the Democratic majority in the legislature to use some fancy footwork to circumvent the two-thirds rule and activate the election without any Republican votes. This would probably face legal challenges and, thus, delays.
Alternatively, he can ask his organized labor friends to mount a signature drive to get an initiative proposal on the November ballot. They have the money and person-power to do it, but it also would give opponents six months in which to mount a campaign. Historically, California initiatives involving tax increases decline in support the closer they come to election day.
The Dems in the legislature claim they have already made about $14 billion worth of cuts in Brown's proposed budget. No one has seen the fine print, so it's impossible to know how many of these are bait to popularize the special election idea, how many are illusory, and how many are real. If all are in the last category, there would still need to be about $12 billion to be made up by way of voter approval in the special election.
Joining the muddied waters are two new statewide polls. The Field Poll reports that 56 percent of Californians favor extension of the taxes to avoid the big cuts. The Public Policy Institute of California, on the other hand, reports that only 46 percent of Californians favor it, down eight percent from January. Two polls can, of course, get different results depending upon how their questions are framed. Also, both polls in the past have sometimes oversampled Democrats.
Whichever route the issue takes, Brown hopes the voters will approve the tax extension and thus he could take the credit for "saving" all those programs, each of which has a large constituency. If they turn down the extension, all he needs to do is blame the Republicans for causing the deep cuts that would follow.
It's all part the Democrats' Grand Plan in action: Steadily increase the number of people dependent upon government largesse, then announce cuts if need be and watch the demonstrations begun until the cuts are rescinded and government grows yet again. One way or another, taxpayers will pay for all this. In California at least they regularly tell pollsters they want balanced budgets, but don't want programs cut.
As the saying goes, go figure.
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Jerry Brown's Dilemma
Peter Hannaford
Peter was closely associated with the late President Ronald Reagan for a number of years, beginning in the 1970s. He was vice chairman of the Governor’s Consumer Fraud Task Force, then the governor’s sole public appointee to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s governing board, then Assistant to the Governor and Director of Public Affairs in the Governor’s Office, Sacramento.
When Mr. Reagan’s second term expired, Peter and another senioir aide, Michael Deaver, founded a public affairs/public relations firm in Los Angeles (Deaver & Hannaford, Inc.) and Mr. Reagan became their lead client. They managed his public program until his election as president. In his 1976 campaign for the presidential nomination, Peter was his co-director of issues and research. In the 1980 campaign he was senior communications consultant to Mr. Reagan.
With the Reagan victory in November 1980, both men could not go into the White House. Mike Deaver did, as deputy chief of staff, while Peter continued with the company to manage it. He movedits headquarters to Washington, D.C. During the Reagan years he was involved in a number of volunteer activities including membership on the United States Information Agency’s Public Relations Advisory Committee, the board of trustees of the White House Preservation Fund, consultant to the President’s Privatization Commission and active in the President’s Private Sector Initiatives program.
After nearly three decades in Washington, Peter returned to his native state of California in 2006.
He remains a member of the board of directors of the Washington-based Committee on the Present Danger and a senior counselor of APCO Worldwide, a Washington-based public affairs/strategic communications firm. Currently, he is chairman of the Humboldt County Republican Party and lives in Eureka.
He is the author of 11 books (most of them about U.S. presidents) and a frequent contributor to opinion magazines and their online editions.
