Lessons from Super Tuesday

Opinion by Haney Hong

With the state’s primary still fresh on the minds of many Californians, it may seem much too early to already be looking down the road to the general election.  It’s not. The political parties are doing that right now, trying to strategize about how to put their best foot forward to voters in November.

Earlier this month, California taxpayers took a stand, rejecting tax increases and school bonds all across the state.

This should be a warning for anyone who is even thinking about placing a proposed tax increase or public bond on the ballot in the Fall. Getting sufficient public support for these sorts of measures has never been easy. From this point on, it’ll be even more difficult. 

It’s not common knowledge, but leaders of public agencies in the state know that the chances of getting us taxpayers to approve a tax increase at the ballot box has traditionally been much higher in a presidential election year. Politicos have many explanations for this, and those of us who watch these kinds of things can see it in the numbers. There has historically been a step-jump increase in taxpayer approval of levies when there is a presidential race happening.

This is why it’s so surprising that the confusingly-named Proposition 13, a $15 billion general obligation bond for educational facilities, and a sizable majority of school bonds failed in San Diego and across the state. It’s a presidential year, and even in my short tenure as the president and CEO of San Diego’s most trusted taxpayer watchdog, I anticipated that there would be nary a tax increase not ironically loved by the taxpayers.

We at the San Diego County Taxpayers Association were opposed to Proposition 13 (we supported about half of the local school bonds – more on that later), but candidly, didn’t do much to communicate our opposition. Facing a campaign that turned out to spend $10 million across the state, I decided we would focus our limited time and resources trying to stop the ballot box land use planning that would have been enacted through Measure A in San Diego County.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association fought the March 2020 Proposition 13 with only $250K, about 2.5%, of what the supporters spent to communicate to voters on Proposition 13, and they won. Congratulations to them -- and to taxpayers across the state.

Now I want to be clear: they’re a group with whom we are often associated, but that’s a mistake as we are often on different pages. For the record, my organization opposed the original Proposition 13 in 1978 because we anticipated – correctly, if I may be so bold -- that property tax caps would create a mess of public finance in the state. Nowadays, no one can tell where their tax monies are all going, and waste of taxpayer dollars just get hidden in plain sight because of the public finance spaghetti we have today.

And because people cannot tell what they’re getting out of the public treasury, taxpayers were rightfully doubtful about the recent swath of proposals in March. I can tell you story after story of someone asking me why the schools need more -- and again. I’d hear: didn’t we already give them some money? How can schools be in such bad shape when the economy is in such good shape?

To be fair, we at the San Diego County Taxpayers Association work hard to be thoughtful about analyzing significant tax proposals on the ballot, and we recognize not every public agency is the same. That’s why half of the school bonds in our region got our endorsement. Controversially, we even supported Poway Unified – the issuer of the infamous capital appreciation bonds where taxpayers paid $9 of interest for every $1 borrowed to the tune of $1 billion dollars – because their new administration put together a well-designed program.

That said, even with our endorsement, the three bonds we supported did not pass. And with the exception of San Ysidro, the bonds we opposed failed harder than they have in the past. What’s that tell us, especially since we deliberately didn’t carry the water for any bond we endorsed so we could focus on opposing San Diego’s Measure A?

The lesson is clear and simple: The public purse strings are tightening. Going forward, those of us at the Taxpayers Association are going to be even more stringent on our criteria for what makes a good and well-designed program worthy of public funding.

Any civic leaders or elected officials who want to get a tax increase passed at the ballot box need to be mindful of the fact that it’s more important than ever to restore and preserve the public's trust.  Not sure how to do that?  Independent, non-partisan watchdogs like us can help.