CaliforniaCityFinance.com
Title
California Local Government Finance Almanac
Description
For twenty years, California has been coping with the unintended consequences of changes in its fiscal policy that destroyed home rule in government. When the electorate voted in 1978 to reduce property taxes, it also shifted control of those revenues from local government to the State. I firmly believe that those voters did not consciously support this shift. But they approved it anyway because they were responding to what was then a genuine crisis in the impact of property taxes on individual homeowners up and down the state.
Now we are suffering the impacts of topsy-turvy fiscal policy on governance and quality of life in California. Local and county governments operate hand-to-mouth, each year waiting for the Governor and the Legislature to decide how much moeny they will get to provide vital services to their communities. They form special district after special district to pay for these services and facilities that used to be what taxpayers expected to get for their tax dollars. And they engage in cutthroat competition for sales tax revenues while their constituents complain, rightfully, that land use priorities are distorted and good jobs and affordable housing have disappeared in favor of minimum wage service jobs, endless auto malls and gridlocked traffic.
Everybody suffers in this crisis: communities, businesses, the environment, the economy and the performance and credibility of government. I believe there is a direct relationship between our fiscal imbalance and the public's increasing cynicism regarding the public sector over the last two decades. And I believe it is long past time to do something about it.
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