If the economy shrinks, government should shrink with it. If a budget continually drowns in the red, it should signal a need for significant change.
California’s tax-happy, wasteful legislators haven’t gotten that point in recent years. Instead, they have continued veering citizens in precisely the wrong direction. Their fiscal ineptitude hit a culminating sour note with the national recession and the state’s $42 billion deficit – along with the middle school cafeteria politics that came with it.
Taxpayers, party affiliations aside, are fed up. That was clear in last week’s election statewide and in San Benito County. Local voters agreed with statewide counterparts on all six propositions, voting down 1A-E and approving of 1F.
The first five props were yet another attempt by legislators to place a future burden on taxpayers’ backs so they could balance the blank check they call the budget and, in the meantime, cater to all of their favorite special interests, namely the all-powerful teachers union.
The sixth was to punish legislators in years they do not do their jobs. It seemed fair, and that’s why it was the only measure to pass.
Legislators were trying to pull another fast one, hoping taxpayers would hear their pitiful pleas and see their pathetic paradigms. Voters revolted. The quiet May election turned into a historic landslide.
The question remaining now is whether legislators actually got the message this time. Not surprisingly, some have shown they still do not understand by supporting suspension of a proposition protecting local governments’ tax revenues – insanely, another attempt to steal more from citizens even though voters just ordered them to make cuts instead.
Businesses have been cutting overhead for months. Now it is time for state government to follow suit.
The last time California taxpayers revolted five years ago, legislators didn’t hear when voters resoundingly recalled former Gov. Gray Davis, when the economy was quite healthy.
We hope the majority of them finally hear the collective plea from their constituents, whom they are supposed to represent, who are fed up and ready to clean house.
