Have you ever heard that expression, "politics makes for strange bed fellows?"
Yesterday an organization called Taxpayers for Protecting Public Safety held a press conference in the State Capitol to announce that they have filed litigation to stop the State of California from issuing billions of dollars in bonds for prison construction. A perusal of this organization’s website shows that their preferred route of dealing with the state’s prison overcrowding issues are not those to which I would subscribe (new sentencing commission, paroling those on life sentences, yadda yadda).
But looking past the poor public policy direction that this group would like to take in the area of having a penal system that is tough on criminals and protects Californians, I will say that the legal proceedings in which they have engaged seem to be quite meritorious.
Specifically, this organization has filed suit saying that the massive Prison Bond package that the legislature passed earlier this year was illegal because they were not approved by a vote of the people. We agree, and the FlashReport strenuously opposed the approval of Prison Bonds at the time, and our reasoning was simple — bonded indebtedness should be approved by the people, not by their elected representatives.
The justification for not going to the voters was that these were not "general obligation" bonds that need to be paid back out of the state’s general fund, but rather "lease revenue" bonds — meaning that an income stream separate from the state’s general fund would be ‘responsible’ for the payments. So, you have to ask yourself what kind of income is generated by state prisons that could pay for the principle and interest on massive borrowing? The answer is that it is a shell game. Read on…
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, California’s premiere taxpayer protection organization, came out strongly against the bonds, and its President, Jon Coupal, penned a column entitled Voters Shut Out Of Prison Bond Decision right here on this site, in which he criticizes the dubious use of "revenue" bonds:
And for those lawyers out there who want to try to make some technical case on how this end-run on the voters was somehow compliant with the state constitution, we’re more than happy to also bring up the spirit of the law, and re-emphasize the absurdity of a ‘revenue bond’ for something that so clearly generates no revenue to pay the lease. Taxpayers are on the hook, and taxpayers should get to decide if they want to borrow the money.
I spoke with Coupal about this legal action by the Taxpayers for Protecting Public Safety, and he told me that attorneys and policy experts with HJTA have reviewed the complaint and concluded that, not only does the suit have merit, there is a likelihood of success by the plaintiffs. Coupal told me, "We rarely find ourselves in agreement with Carol Migden, but believe she is right on this one. We will seriously consider submitting an amicus curiae brief in support of Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety at the appropriate stage of the legal proceedings.”
We believe now, as we did at the time, that an end-run around the Constitution’s taxpayer protections, that ensure the people themselves have to vote on indebtedness, was illegal and poor public policy. We recommend that the legislature reverse its action, and then do the honest thing — which would be to place the prison construction bonds before voters next year (there’s not one, not two, but three different statewide elections from which to choose) and let Californians sign off on the borrowing.
Look, we understand that because of the meddling of judges, there is some urgency for the legislature to resolve the overcrowding in our state’s prisons. But subordinating taxpayer rights was not the way to solve the problem, and we hope that ultimately this legal action nullifies this illegal bond authorization by the legislature, and can give California taxpayers faith that they are in the drivers seat on making borrowing decisions for state government, not Sacramento politicians.
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