Yesterday I was polled by a research center on behalf of a group that may call itself the Contract with California (shades of Newt Gingrich!). A group with sufficient money to commission a poll is testing messages. I'm passing it on to fellow Kalifornia Kossacks so you can see where the battle lines are being drawn for 2010.
General questions:
- screeners for likely voters
- is Cal on right track or wrong direction?
- is Cal ungovernable?
- is the ungovernable problem caused by legislators who are corrupt and beholden to special interests, or incompetent?
After that I was read a series of statements and asked whether I strongly/not so strongly approved/disapproved. Please forgive me for the casual wording, caused by my faulty memory and handwriting. I've also left out all prefatory comments, which in my opinion verged on push polling.
On Cal politics:
- Part time legislature -- legislators would spend less time in Sac'to, more listening to their constituents [horrible idea]
- Sunshine for budget process [presumably a reaction to last Feb.]
- Sunshine for bills -- post on internet within 24 hours of introduction for public comment
- Spending cap -- spending increases limited to inflation + population growth, e.g., if pop grows by 2% and inflation 1%, spending this year can only be 3% above last year's
- Abolish 2/3 supermajority requirement along with spending cap as above [I told them that I strongly approved of the first part and strongly disapproved of the second]
- State boards and commissions should be required to prove their relevance each year.
On Cal budgeting:
- Abolish state income tax, replace with flat tax. [Yikes!!!]
- Abolish state income tax, replace with VAT.
- All propositions have to identify their funding source. [Falme me if you will, but that's actually a good idea, before we continue start voting ponies for ourselves.]
- "Zero-based" budget: all automatic spending increases abolished and budgeting starts with zero each year.
- Performance-based budget, i.e., allocate funds based on an agency's efficiency. [What are we, Ebay?]
- Abolish Prop 13 for commercial property and go to a split roll system. [Yes!!! Finally, something I can strongly and unconditionally approve!]
- No automatic spending increases.
- More contracts with private businesses. [Which, so far, has gotten us a prison-industrial complex...thanks but no thanks.]
On public employees' pensions:
- Move from fixed sum to 401k type system.
- Move retirement age up from 52. [I am not sure of the details, but I believe that this question was worded very deceptively -- can a firefighter get full benefits if s/he retires at 52 or are the benefits phased in?]
- Cap all salary + overtime + benefits at governor's salary. [Prison guards are the biggest collectors of overtime, correct? I have no problem with limiting their OT.]
On California's allegedly anti-business climate:
- Cut corporate tax rates so that they are at the median of nearby states.
- Cut back/abolish California's burdensome environmental regulations. [Heck no!!!]
On education:
- Require that certain percent of all education spending be spent in the classroom -- teacher salaries, materials, etc -- and not on administration; currently, says the pollster, it's 54% inside class, 46% outside. [This one sounds really appealing on its face. Thoughts from education experts, y'all?]
- Give more authority and control to local school boards instead of Sac'to. [I decided not to lecture the pollster on Serrano v. Priest.]
- Public school choice -- any kid can go to any nearby public school.
- Give a tax credit to any charitable foundation that donates money to middle/lower income kids to attend private school (forgive my grammar). [Sounds tailor-made for Catholics?]
- Now that we've discussed automatic spending increases, would you be willing to modify/abolish/repeal (I am not sure which word was used) Prop 98? [I've mangled the wording of the question and a particularly long prefatory statement, but the overall sense was that this group is on the warpath against Prop 98.]
On new group's name: Compact with California, Contract with California, Road Map to California's Future, or California Compact?
Hmmm, since a compact holds make-up, I'd say that this group needs a better foundation; it might have some good ideas at first blush, but it's likely to be concealing the true problems -- just lipstick on a pig!
For your listening pleasure, my favorite song about whatever happened to the California dream: