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"CA Forward" Legislative Proposals Seek
GOP Votes To Eliminate Taxpayer Protections

By Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick
 
This morning in a Capitol press conference, legislative Democrats and the political reform group California Forward announced bill proposals to weaken long-standing taxpayer protections. While there are parts of this proposal that might take legislative reforms a step forward, the package would send California taxpayers three steps back. 
 
One of the proposals would do away with the two-thirds vote requirement for passing budgets and replace it with a majority vote threshold.  My Assembly Republican colleagues and I responded immediately that we are extremely skeptical and oppose efforts to weaken or eliminate taxpayer protections requiring two-thirds votes for budgets, tax increases or trailer bills. 
 
Legislative proposals to change the vote threshold for budgets and taxes would require a Constitutional Amendment.  That means that in order for them to be placed on the ballot, it would take Republican support.  Our caucus opposes these measures. 
 
The California Forward proposal also includes a measure that would give counties authority to increase local sales taxes with a majority vote.  This would make it easier to raise local taxes, and at the same time require that half of the revenues go to schools. This flies in the face of local control for counties that might be more interested in investing in roads, fire or other priorities.  This proposal is also opposed by the Assembly Republican Caucus.
 
The broad bill package introduced today does include a number of legislative process suggestions that Republicans might be able to support.  For example, we agree that there should be limits on the number of bills each member can introduce each year, and that more time in committees should be devoted to oversight of agencies and performance reviews.  However, many of these changes could be adopted by leadership with a memo and wouldn’t require any legislation. 
 
Unfortunately, any worthy legislative process reform proposals or other items are vastly overshadowed by far-reaching proposals to do away with two-thirds budget votes and other long standing taxpayer protections.  The Speaker and the Pro-Tem have promised that all of these proposals will go through legislative hearings and committees.  While the end result may produce some reforms that we can support, the centerpieces of the plan that weaken taxpayer protections will continue to be opposed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.