North Park Street

Names and descriptions:
Proposition 30- Governor Jerry Brown’s Tax Increase for Education
Proposition 38-Molly Munger’s State Income Tax Increase for Education

Official Summaries:
Prop 30-
-Increases personal income tax on annual earnings over $250,000 for seven years.
-Increases sales and use tax by 1/4 cent for four years.
-Allocates temporary tax revenues 89% to K-12 schools and 11% to community colleges.
-Bars use of funds for administrative costs, but provides local school governing boards discretion to decide, in open meetings and subject to annual audit, how funds are to be spent.
-Guarantees funding for public safety services realigned from state to local governments.

Prop 38-
-Increases personal income tax rates on annual earnings over $7,316 using sliding scale from .4% for lowest individual earners to 2.2% for individuals earning over $2.5 million, for twelve years.
-During first four years, allocates 60% of revenues to K-12 schools, 30% to repaying state debt, and 10% to early childhood programs.
-Provides K-12 funds on school-specific, per-pupil bases, subject to local control, audits, and public input.
-Prohibits state from directing new funds.

Short History:
California has some of the worst budget problems in the nation. As with most other states, our budget issues have arguable hit public schools and universities the hardest. In order to maintain funding for education, Governor Jerry Brown proposed a tax increase initiative, and then merged it with a separate “Millionaire’s Tax” proposal to become the “California Sales and Income Tax Increase Initiative” filed on March 14^th 2012. Molly Munger, an attorney from Pasadena, wrote a separate tax increase for education plan that she says will give more money directly to schools instead of having it pass through the hands of state politicians. She called it the “Our Children, Our Future: Local Schools and Early Education Investment and Bond Debt Reduction Act” and filed it on November 30^th, 2011.

Both campaigns had trouble gathering signatures for the ballot, and hired firms to help with the effort. Molly Munger paid signature gatherers $1.50 per signature and gave away cars to those that gathered the most. The firm running Governor Brown’s tax hike effort paid people $3.00 per signature gathered. Despite this high payout, the Governor’s campaign couldn’t get enough signatures door-to-door and instead mailed the petition directly to a large amount of citizens and followed up with robocalls asking them to sign it and mail it back. Molly Munger’s campaign collected around 848,000 signatures and was approved for the ballot on June 20^th, and Governor Brown’s campaign, in the end, collected enough signatures to qualify and was approved for the ballot on the same day as Ms. Munger’s proposal.

Where it gets REALLY Dumb:
I’m choosing to skip over the support and opposition section, because the information really belongs in this one. As is expected, the major support behind both proposals are from the left who feel a tax increase is necessary to fix funding problems in education, and the major opposition of both proposals comes from the right where any tax hike is seen as coming from the devil himself. However, this is where is becomes stupid: Supporters of Prop 30 and Prop 38 are the major donors to advertisements attack ads AGAINST EACH OTHER.

With competing tax proposals for the same cause, this was bound to happen. California law states that if two or more ballot measures pass on the same topic, only the one receiving the most votes will be enacted into law. Because of this, Governor Brown and the California Legislature passed a measure requiring any Constitutional amendments to be numbered before any other propositions on the ballot. Since his proposal contains a constitutional amendment, Governor Brown’s Tax Hike was numbered as Prop 30, and all other ballot measures were numbered 31-40 in the order they were approved. Coming first on the ballot means that more people will research and vote on Prop 30 compared to the others, and means it has less chance of being lost among the 11 state-wide measures and any local ones added.

Trying to drag down the vote on 30, and increase awareness of their own proposal, the folks running the Prop 38 campaign started running ads attacking Prop 30, saying that half of the money raised from it could be used by the legislature for other programs. These ads are insinuating that politicians are behind Prop 30, not because they want to fund schools, but because they want the “Millionaire’s Tax Hike” so they can fund other pet projects. The media narrative has been based more on the “civil war” between the campaigns than providing a comparison of the plans.

To add more confusion into the mix, state unions have started running a large ad campaign to vote No on Prop 32 (a measure limiting corporate and union political contributions) and Yes on 30. Cal State Fullerton joined in this effort with this pretty lame flash mob. Conservative groups are pushing Yes on 32 and No on 30 and 38, and major state newspapers have taken a variety of stances in support or opposition to a combination of these three measures. It’s enough to forget that there’s actually serious policy and budget decisions behind the numbers 30, 32, and 38.

My Analysis:
California has MAJOR budget issues that are affecting education. It also has some of the highest taxes and highest costs of living in the nation. I’m firmly on the side of the conservative bloc against both Prop 30 and Prop 38 because raising income and sales taxes even more in this state is seriously going to hurt the middle class (especially Prop 38, which raises income taxes on everyone making over $7,000 a year).

My guess is that the “civil war” between supporters of both propositions will not achieve the goal of helping one pass with a larger margin over the other, but instead will be the downfall of both initiatives. Molly will sink Brown, and will take her own proposal down in the process. If both fail, education will face DRASTIC cuts, and if politicians are as serious about supporting education in the state as they say they are, it’s about time they take a larger look at the state budget and prioritize education over other programs and pet projects.

Name and description:
Proposition 34- End the Death Penalty

Official Summary:
-Repeals death penalty as maximum punishment for persons found guilty of murder and replaces it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
-Applies retroactively to persons already sentenced to death.
-States tat persons found guilty of murder must work while in prison as prescribed by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, with their wages subject to deductions to be applied to any victim restitution fines or orders against them.
-Directs $100 million to law enforcement agencies for investigations of homicide and rape cases.

Short History:
On August 29th, 2011 Jeanne Woodford, a former Director of California’s Department of Corrections turned anti-death penalty advocate filed the language for “The Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act”. Needing 504,760 citizen signatures, supporters collected around 800,000 signatures and were approved for the November ballot on March 1st of this year.

Those in favor and their arguments:
Supporters of Prop 34 include the ACLU, Amnesty International, The Catholic Church, The California Democratic Party and political office holders such as the mayor of Los Angeles, the former DA of Los Angeles County, and a former Attorney General of California.

Their main argument is that ending the Death Penalty will save the state millions of dollars in legal fees and maintenance of a large death row prison block. They also argue that the system is broken and innocent people could and have been executed.

Those against and their arguments:
The group funding the Vote No on 34 campaign consists of the state Sherriff’s Association, the California District Attorneys Association, The Republican Party of California, and the families of some murder victims, among others.

Their main arguments are that California voters have approved the death penalty already by vote, that the crimes of the people on death row warrant the death penalty, and that state budget problems should not have an effect on the punishment of criminals.

Where it gets kinda dumb:
California currently has 725 people on death row awaiting execution. Despite that, the State of California has not executed anyone since a 2006 ruling by a US District Court. That ruling said the lethal injections used by the state could result in much pain for the inmate and possibly constitute cruel and unusual punishment. A new process of execution hasn’t been put in place, so the size of death row continues to fluctuate as new people are convicted and others die, not of execution, but of illness in prison. California continues to pay to house death row inmates in their own private cells with amenities. Those inmates are also given full legal teams to help them through the many levels of appeals, usually on the tax payer dollar if they can’t afford the lawyers.

States that have abolished or not enacted the death penalty have done so because the people of the state have considered the death penalty to be intrinsically wrong. Leave it to California, however, to not stress the moral merits of the penalty, but instead to vote on it based on its fiscal impact. This advertisement from the Vote Yes on 34 campaign is a good example of how this proposition is being advocated for. Notice that almost the entire argument is about saving the government and taxpayers money, with only a brief mention of the possibility of executing an innocent person. Even though Amnesty International and the Catholic Church are advocating Vote Yes, the campaign in its advertisements does not argue that executions themselves are wrong.

My analysis:
I understand the arguments both for and against the death penalty. If one of my family members were killed, my first reaction would be to want the killer to die as well. However, as a pro-life-from-conception-to-natural-death Catholic, I believe that all life has worth and that forgiveness and redemption are more powerful that eye-for-an-eye justice. I agree with all of the fiscal arguments that the Vote Yes organization is making, I just wish that they focused more on why the death penalty is wrong instead of why we can’t afford it. Ignoring those arguments leaves room for voters to be okay with bringing back capital punishment once the state budget issues are fixed.

States that have abolished or not enacted the death penalty have done so because the people of the state have considered the death penalty to be intrinsically wrong. Leave it to California, however, to not stress the moral merits of the penalty, but instead to vote on it based on its fiscal impact. This advertisement from the Vote Yes on 34 campaign is a good example of how this proposition is being advocated for. Notice that almost the entire argument is about saving the government and taxpayers money, with only a brief mention of the possibility of executing an innocent person. Even though Amnesty International and the Catholic Church are advocating Vote Yes, the campaign in its advertisements does not argue that executions themselves are wrong.