Senate President Darrell Steinberg has been pushing the idea that as part of a retooling of our government.  Specifically, he would like to offload some current responsibilities of state government onto local governments — presumably counties and cities.  Needless to say, taxpayers should be very wary of Steinberg’s plan, because on its face it looks like a rather naked attempt to take more money out of your pocket to feed the always-hungry appetite of government. 

Hmmm.  It’s time to play a new game, "Are you smarter than a State Senate President?"

If the state offloads to local governments things for which it is currently responsible for paying, but does not also move revenue streams from state government to local governments to pay for them, who will pay that bill?  Well, the answer to this is pretty straightforward.  Part of Steinberg’s plan, as he will tell you, is to conjointly saddle local governments with new mandates, and also lower the vote threshold needed for local governments to raise taxes. 

Or to put it more simply, Steinberg would like to balance the state’s budget by raising your local taxes.

Of course never mind that there are some places in California where voters will still vote to tax themselves, but there are a great many places where voters have had enough, and you couldn’t pass a tax increase under virtually any circumstances.

I wonder which specific responsibilities of state government Steinberg would make a local responsibility?  And what happens if local taxpayers so no to funding these new responsibilities?  If local taxpayers say "no" does that absolve local governments their newfound "responsibilities" hoisted upon them?

If this is the case, then, of course, the devil is in the details.  If Steinberg wants to put county governments in charge of both funding and administering the state’s vast social welfare programs, but is comfortable with the idea that only in some parts of California, voters will actually raise their own taxes to pay for them, fine.  As long as their is an understanding that when some areas opt not to fund these programs, they will no longer be in place.  The idea here would be, "Hey, we’re out of money to pay for these things at the state level.  So either you can fund them locally, or else we’ll have to end the programs altogether."

However, if Steinberg wants to push down to local government paying for essential government services for which Californians are already heavily taxed (we could define these as those items that the most liberal Democrat and most conservative Republicans agree should be a government function), well that is just a shameless ploy to force more money out of taxpayers.  Asking voters in localities to raise taxes or else see roads no longer built, or see prison doors opened, is like holding a gun to the head of local taxpayers, and should not be tolerated.  If Republican votes are needed to blackmail the public this way, this tactic is DOA.

This recession has had quite a negative effect on state revenues, primarily due to the insatiable appetite for liberals to have continued to ratchet up spending without care that such spending would be unsustainable during difficult economic times. 

The time is  ripe to ask whether there are social programs or services of state government that should simply no longer be funded.  And asking local governments if they would like to continue these services at their own expense is a fair question.   But state politicians had better be prepared for the reality that in many parts of California, the answer will be no.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.