Wherefore the California Legislature?
Posted: November 10th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
- By Averel Wilson
Tell me again what the California legislature DOES. When I voted by absentee ballot again this year, it gave me hours and hours (about what it takes to read through all the materials and try to make informed decisions) to chew on this mystery. Clearly, among the things they do NOT have to do are:
- Decide for what purposes our gasoline sales taxes can be used;
- Decide whether to issue $20 billion in bonds to shore up highways and public transport;
- Decide whether to issue $2.85 billion in bonds for low-income families and seniors;
- Decide whether to issue $10.4 billion in bonds to modernize and rehabilitate our public schools;
- Decide whether or not to issue a $5.4 billion bond for water, land conservation and habitat preservation projects;
- Decide whether to issue a $4.1 billion bond to help strengthen aging levees (remember Katrina?);
- Decide whether to pass a $50-a-parcel property tax to help fund the public schools;
- In San Francisco, decide whether to make it policy to “urge” the mayor to attend monthly Board of Supervisors meetings - could they not simply urge him without a policy to do so?
- Decide whether to increase the sales tax on cigarettes in order to fund prevention and health programs;
- Oh, and then there was the very special proposal in San Francisco, just to be sure we are broadly accepted as nuts everywhere outside the Bay area, to make it policy to impeach President Bush and Dick Cheney. Not that I’m a big fan of either of them (see all parts of this website), but what kind of a ballot measure is that? Who writes these things?
I mean, really, I should not be the one to decide how many billions of dollars in bonds California should be issuing - not least of all because I have no idea of what other bonds are already out there, probably being serviced with these very bonds I am tempted to approve. With every single matter being decided by referendum by the people, I am stumped at what our elected officials do. Given how easy it must be to put a measure on the ballot, I am itching to propose in 2008 that we do away with the state legislature - because clearly we’re doing all their work for them.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:09 pm
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