Take the effects Mr. Fulton describes, raise it to a national level and multiply by 50, and you've got the essence of
"Compassionate Conservatism®".
Umbilical Cord That Bleeds Instead of Nourishing
By William Fulton
William Fulton is president of Solimar Research Group and a senior scholar at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at USC. He was elected to the Ventura City Council in November.
January 18, 2004
VENTURA — Usually it takes a governor of California six months or even a year to break financial promises to local governments. But Arnold Schwarzenegger, by his own account, is on a fast track.
He's been in office just two months, and already he's done it twice. The day he was inaugurated, he took $4 billion away from local government by cutting the car tax, money he has promised to restore through an emergency-payment scheme that has angered legislative leaders. And this month, he proposed taking about $1.3 billion in property taxes — a revenue source controlled by local governments in most states — to help balance his 2004-05 budget.
As a commentator, I understand why Schwarzenegger keeps trying to take money away from local governments. But as an elected city official, I'm mad. Every time there's a financial crisis in Sacramento, we feel the squeeze here in Ventura. The streets don't get paved. The libraries can't stay open. We fall further behind in our struggle to pay our police officers and firefighters enough money so that they can live in the community they serve.
However badly we get whacked, counties get hit twice as hard. Of the $1.3-billion cut in Schwarzenegger's budget proposal, counties would suffer $1 billion of the damage. That reduction would make it more difficult for local officials to keep jails open and deliver the health and welfare services that function as the principal safety net in most communities.
The truth is, the whole pattern is beginning to feel a little old. Former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson first bludgeoned local governments more than a decade ago, when he balanced the budget by taking one-quarter of the property taxes away from local governments — a move that has cost cities, counties and special districts tens of billions of dollars.
Wilson characterized the shift as temporary, but he never returned the funds. Democratic former Gov. Gray Davis promised to restore the property taxes to their pre-Wilson levels, but he never did, in spite of huge budget surpluses.
Now Schwarzenegger is following the same path.
Posted by P6 at January 19, 2004 11:19 AM
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