The CA Legislature's budgetary sleight of hand is phenomenal

The mid-term elections are on November 6, 2018.  In addition to the key issue of Democrats trying to take control of the U.S. House and Senate, there are other issues facing voters.  There are 11 propositions on the ballot, numbered 1 through 12 (there is no Prop 9 on the ballot).

The most important and controversial of these is undoubtedly Proposition 6, which would repeal the gas tax increase signed into law by Governor Brown in April of 2017.  It raised a number of taxes involving transportation, most notably increasing the state's tax on gasoline sales by 12 cents per gallon.

The Los Angeles Times published an editorial calling for a "No" vote on Prop 6.  Interestingly, Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times wrote about the subject this past March.  Here is an excerpt:

"Critics of SB1 rely on generic suspicion of public officials' motivations and hostility to taxes to carry the day.  "We've suffered through three decades of diversion of transportation dollars," says Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. "Having been told repeatedly that transportation dollars would be spent for transportation and not seeing that coming about, obviously we're very skeptical." He asserts that even without the SB1 levies, California would still be in the top five of states in gas and vehicle taxes. "It's not like we'd be starving the state for revenue."

When we were sold this gas tax back in 2017, we were told the money would be going to fix problems with the highways and city streets.  The fact that the word "rail" can be found no less than 30 times in the text of the bill is indicative that we weren't paying attention.  The Brown Boondoggle known as the High Speed Rail project is too expensive.  It doesn't deal with potholes, broken highway infrastructure and so on.  It also doesn't deal with the problems one experiences trying to get around metropolitan areas during rush hour, when there are too many vehicles and not enough traffic lanes.

But our state's government is very good at performing sleight of hand magic with our tax dollars.  So good in fact, they should be appearing at the famed Magic Castle here in L.A.  Witness what they did with the 34%.

What 34% do you ask?  Why the 34% of state lottery revenues that we were promised would go to state education expenses when we passed Prop 37 back on November 6, 1984.  34 years to the date that we will go to the polls to attempt to repeal this gas tax increase, we voted on a Proposition whose ballot summary read as follows:

"Amends Constitution to authorize establishment of a state lottery and to prohibit casinos. Adds statutes providing for establishment of a state-operated lottery. Of the total lottery revenues, requires that 50% be returned as prizes, not more than 16% be used for expenses, and at least 34% be used for public education. Requires that equal per capita amounts of the funds for education be distributed to kindergarten-through-12 districts, community college districts, State University and Colleges, and University of California. Contains numerous specific provisions concerning the operation and administration of lotteries and funds. Summary of Legislative Analyst's estimate of net state and local government fiscal impact: The effect of this measure on state revenues cannot be predicted with certainty. Once full range of games is operational, estimated yield would be about $500 million annually for public education. Yield for first two years would be less. Estimated 80% of yield would go to K-12 schools, 13% to community colleges, 5% to California State University, and 2% to University of California."

I wrote two blog entries on the topic of the 34% in January of 2016.  The first entry pointed out that while the percentage of lottery revenues going to education declined from 35.1% in 2006 to 26.38% in 2014.

I just checked the most recent annual financial report from the CA Lottery, which you can read here.  It brags about how the lottery revenue of $6.28 billion and $1.56 billion of that going to education are new records.  It fails to mention that those numbers represent a historic LOW of 24.8% of money spent on the lottery going to education.  We were promised 34 cents on the dollar and we're being severely shortchanged.  Why should we think the gasoline tax situation will be any different?

I'm voting YES on Proposition 6.