Proposition 25
Proposition 25 is a simple change to the state constitution. Currently, any bill which appropriates money (unless the bill only appropriates money for the public schools) must be passed by a two-thirds majority rollclal vote in each house of the state legislature; Prop. 25 would change this to exempt a budget bill (and any other bill providing for appropriations related to the budget bill). “Other bills providing for appropriations related to the budget bill” is specifically circumscribed to only include bills called out in the budget bill.
The measure also provides a punishment to the Legislature: if it doesn’t pass a budget on time, it doesn’t get paid for travel or living expenses for the time between the budget deadline and the date a budget is submitted to the Governor.
(Interjection: why are appropriations for the public schools treated differently?)
Proponents of the measure point out that right now, we have a 2/3 majority requirement for raising taxes, and a seperate 2/3 majority requirement for passing a budget, and that this is absurd. No other state has both requirements, and having both means that even if we aren’t going to raise taxes at all, the majority party has to kowtow to the minority party for months in order to get a budget deal, as the minority ends up using the budget as a means to blackmail the majority into doing what it wants.
Opponents of the measure say that this will inevitably lead to higher spending and will force tax increases.
Opponents also claim that the bill will prevent referendums on the budget bill. Leaving aside the fact that there has never been such a referendum, and that there is unlikely to be one because of the practical difficulties, their reasoning is suspect; the actual text of the law is: Notwithstanding any other provision of law or of this Constitution, the budget bill and other bills providing for appropriations related to the budget bill may be passed in each house by rollcall vote entered in the journal, a majority of the membership concurring, to take effect immediately upon being signed by the Governor or upon a date specified in the legislation. Nothing in this subdivision shall affect the vote requirement for appropriations for the public schools contained in subdivision (d) of this section and in subdivision (b) of Section 8 of this article. This language does not on its face override the referendum power, and courts have been zealous in their protection of it. The referendum power would have to be explicitly overridden, which this clause does not do. (Indeed, this looks to me like an argument based in a misunderstanding of standard boilerplate language, which is perhaps a reason why such boilerplate should be abolished).
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Unusually, perhaps, it’s completely clear to me how I should vote on this one. Supermajority requirements are something which should be saved to protect vital interests – like, say, the supermajority needed to amend the US constitution, or the supermajority needed to approve bonded indebtedness. The regular annual budget isn’t something deserving of that kind of protection, and it’s particularly absurd that the current rules allow spending on education to be passed by a majority of votes while not allowing spending on anything else to be passed by a majority.
Ideally, we’d abolish the supermajority for tax increases, too; allowing a majority budget without allowing majority control over taxation is still going to leave the budget process lost in a quagmire. But any improvement is better than none. (And, honestly, if the minority can force no tax increases, allowing the majority to figure out on its own how to spend the money we have is going to lead to a less contentious, more productive process than what we have currently.)
Every year for many years, coming to a budget agreement in California has been extremely difficult: there’s a huge gap between revenue and expenses, we need a 2/3 majority of both houses to pass a budget or to raise taxes, and the Republicans (who have slightly more than 1/3) are adamantly opposed to new taxes, while the Democrats insist that we need a mix of cuts and taxes.
One of the few Republicans willing to compromise on the no-tax-increase position has been Abel Maldonado, who is currently the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor.
His Democrat opponent has apparently taken out an ad attacking him for voting for a tax increase.
Leaving aside the absurdity of attacking him for both cutting money for public schools and raising taxes (I mean, really, if you can’t do either, how are you going to balance the budget?), it seems totally improper for a Democrat to attack one of the few Republicans willing to compromise with Democrats on the budget … for making that very compromise.
Mayor Newsom isn’t in the state legislature, so it’s not quite as underhanded and unethical as it might be. But it’s still something of a jackass move. And, worse yet, it’s very likely to reduce the willingness of Republicans to compromise … making getting budget deals more difficult than they already are.
He should be ashamed of himself.
Proposition 24 is a voter-initiated attempt to repeal four changes that the Legislature made to corporate tax law in 2008. Those changes had the effect of reducing corporate tax liability by an amount which the Legislative Analyst estimates is about $1.3 billion a year. Generally speaking, the proponents of the measure are in favor of it because either (a) they dislike corporations and think they were getting an unfairly positive deal from the state prior to the passage of the changes the measure would repeal, or (b) they think that cutting taxes in the middle of a budget crisis was a bad idea. Generally speaking, opponents of the measure are of the opinion that (a) raising taxes in the middle of a recession is a terrible idea, and (b) even if it weren’t these changes were good fo rbusiness and therefore good for job creation and the economy as a whole.
The four changes made in 2008 were:
- Businesses losses made in the current tax year can now be applied retroactively to previous tax years, allowing a refund of taxes previously paid.
- Businesses losses made in the current tax year can be applied prospectively for 20 years rather than 10 years.
- Tax credits given to a particular business entity can now be shared with other entities in a group of related businesses.
- Multistate businesses can decide which of two formulas to use to determine the amount of their income which is taxable in California.
The first two of these are fairly straightforward. In general, businesses which lose money in a given year are allowed to apply that loss to future years, reducing their taxable income in those years, and thereby reducing their overall taxes. (The theory is, more or less, that since they don’t get a tax refund for a negative income in a given year, they must be able to apply the loss to other years in order to have a fair outcome over a range of years). These two provisions increased the number of years to which the offset can be applied, thereby reducing the tax burden for those businesses which lost a lot of money in one year and didn’t make enough money in other years to offset it.
The third is somewhat arcane. Apparently entities which the average person thinks of as a single business are organized as multiple businesses working together. (As a simple example of this, the company I work for also has overseas subsidiaries which are organized for financial and legal reasons as seperate “companies”, but which operates internally as a single organization and which makes no intelligible distinction between the formal “corporations” of which the company is comprised). Prior to 2008, California law does not allow tax credits (such as the research & development credit) to be transferred between these entities-which-are-different-on-paper-but-not-in-fact.
The fourth is also somewhat arcane. Businesses operating both in California and elsewhere are taxed on their income, but not on all of it; a formula is used to determine what percentage is taxed. (That formula is defined in Revenue and Taxation Code Section 25128, and I’m not sure I understand it.) The law was changed in 2008 to allow businesses to choose between that formula and a simpler one based just on the percentage of the company’s sales which happen in California.
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I’m torn on this initiative.
I think the first change is absurd: allowing companies to retroactively change their returns for previous years based on a loss in this year simply undermines the stability of the system; it makes it impossible for anyone to have a firm grasp on what the state’s income was in a given year, because it’s always subject to subsequent change. It creates an accounting difficulty which makes it even more difficult for regular citizens to understand what is going on, and which undermines the credibility of the system.
It might be justifiable on the grounds that it simply synchronizes state law with federal law; even if federal law on the subject is ridiculous, there’s a positive benefit to be had in synchronizing the two (because it makes the job of corporate accounting substantially simpler). But the ‘no’ side isn’t arguing that, and I don’t have the patience to try to figure out the federal rules on the subject.
On the other hand, I have no real problem with the other changes. Extending the period of future application of losses helps companies which have had really bad years and run a long-term struggle to recover; all things considered, helping such companies is a feature. Allowing tax credits to be passed around within companies which are in practice the same simplifies the life of everyone involved; and the new method of determining how to tax multistate businesses is a more plausible, easily understandable method. Both of these latter two simplify the tax code, which is in the interest of everyone that needs to interact with it.
And yet.
In 2008, before the depth of the economic crisis was visible, in the middle of a budget crisis, the Legislature changed the rules to reduce the amount of money the state takes in in taxes. This change must be looked at as part of the whole, not in isolation; and things which seem good in isolation take on the tinge of insanity when considered as part of a system.
It’s more or less impossible for the state legislature to raise taxes. These cuts, which haven’t fully gone into effect yet, will have to be balanced by a similar amount in spending reductions. But the legislature can’t seem to manage to agree on a budget without the effect of these cuts.
That suggests that I should vote ‘yes’: even if these ideas were good in isolation, now is the wrong time for them, and they have to be paid for … probably by people who are in a less good position to pay for them than the people who benefitted from them.
And yet.
Voting yes ties the legislature’s hand and makes it impossible for anyone to change these provisions again, unless there’s another ballot measure.
Lack of flexibility is one of the primary contributing factors to the state’s budget nightmares.
That suggests I should vote ‘no’: depriving the state legislature of flexibility is breaking the state government, and if I want the state government to function, I shouldn’t add to it except in extraordinary cases.
And yet.
The state legislature already doesn’t have the flexibility to repeal these provisions: such a repeal would increase taxes and therefore could only be done with a 2/3 vote of the legislature (even though it could be aodpted with a 50% vote of the legislature). There’s a one-way ratchet in the legislature, in favor of lower taxes; the legislature has the theoretical power to change this, but no practical power.
Meaning there’s no actual harm to flexibility which comes out of voting ‘yes’.
And yet: that’s a problem in this era. But it wasn’t always a problem, and it need not always be a problem. Is it right to break flexibility indefinitely on the grounds that it doesn’t matter today, even though it may matter in thirty years?
Welcome to voting, California style.
Propositions 20 and 27
In 2008, the California voters narrowly passed (by a margin of 1.8%) Proposition 11, a sweeping reform measure which denied the state Legislature the power to draw state legislative district boundaries, vesting it instead in a commission comprised of citizen volunteers randomly drawn from a pool created by staffers of the state auditor. (Disclaimer: I was an early applicant for the commission, but failed to make it past the first round).
The proposition was designed to apply only to state legislative offices in order to not draw the ire (and opposition) of the national Democratic party.
Districts created by the Commission would have to respect pre-existing communities of interest, a term which was not defined.
Dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, activists have qualified two ballot measures to change it: Proposition 20, which would give the Commission the added responsibility of drawing Congressional districts; and Proposition 27, which would abolish it.
Proposition 20 would:
(a) take the power to redraw the borders of Congressional districts away from the state legislature and hand it off to the Redistricting Commission;
(b) subject Congressional districts to a higher standard for minimal population deviation than other districts are held to (Congressional districts “shall achieve population equality as nearly as is practicable”, while other districts “shall have reasonably equal population with other districts for the same office”);
(c) define ‘community of interest’ as ‘a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation’;
(d) allow any registered voter to petition and stay implementation of districts if the district map is subject to a referendum;
and
(e) make a bunch of minor, substanceless wording changes.
Proposition 27 would:
(a) abolish the redistricting commission;
(b) vest the power to draw districts back in the state legislature;
(c) explicitly allow referenda for laws changing district boundary lines;
(d) require districts to be precisely equal in size unless that is mathematically impossible, in which case a variation of no more than plus or minus one person would be allowed;
(e) require districts to minimize the division of cities and counties and prohibiting cities and counties with population smaller than the ideal population of a district from being split (except to achieve population equality or contiguity, or to comply with federal law)
(f) require a broad public hearing process for the legislature to ask for citizen input on district boundaries;
and
(g) limit the amount of money spent on redistricting to $2.5 million
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I voted for Proposition 11 not because I thought it was an ideal solution to the problem of redistricting, but because there is something fundamentally problematic, in my mind, about legislators drawing their own districts. The 2000 redistricting was abominable, a plan whose entire purpose was to protect the incumbents of both parties by drawing districts which were more partisan and therefore more likely to re-elect; preventing a repeat performance is in the interests of everyone in the state.
But the plan itself was problematic, and I understood why many voted against it: in particular, it had conflicting goals – it wanted both to increase the competitiveness of elections and to require that districts be compact and represent definable communities of interest. These are incompatible goals; no electoral district drawn as a subset of San Francisco and the peninsula will be competitive (nor will a district drawn out of the northeast corner of the state), and yet a system which ensures that districts respect communities of interest will draw such districts.
Still, I will be voting against Proposition 20 and Proposition 27.
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The case against Proposition 27 is easier to explain.
For one thing, it would jettison the current system without ever giving it a chance to operate; that might be necessary and good if the system in place were clearly a disaster, but it’s really difficult to say that about a system which draws random volunteers, screened for conflicts of interest, and hands them the power to do their best. What we enacted two years ago is as close as it’s possible to get to enpaneling a disinterested jury; until and unless it produces flawed results, it seems worthwhile to give it a try.
But even if the current system were problematic, this proposed system is absurd.
In a world with apartment buildings, drawing district lines with a maximum variance of one person is a statistical improbability. It is a virtual guarantee that all new district plans will be tied up in court, and that the lines will ultimately be drawn by a special master appointed by the Supreme Court – because the state Constitution will be demanding the effectively impossible, and the legislature will be unable to comply. (Similarly, requiring a broad system of public hearings but then limiting expenditures to $2.5 million creates an inherent conflict: holding hearings up and down the state will be expensive).
Worse yet, the measure is fundamentally dishonest. “Our political leadership has failed us”, the findings and purpose section of the initiative says – and it proposes to fix that problem by taking power away from randomly selected citizens and handing it back to the political leadership of the state Legislature. The Findings & Purpose declaration also claims that the current law will enable the creation of severely underpopulated districts reminiscent of the ‘rotten boroughs’ of the past – never mind that the districts created under the current system must comply with Supreme Court rulings on the relative sizes of districts. It also claims that the reason state Assemblymen have a home field advantage when running for the Senate is that current law requires that each Senator represent two Assembly seats – while ignoring the fact that the current districts were drawn under a different law which didn’t require that, which makes it clear that any home-field advantage currently held cannot possibly be the result of that law, which has never yet been acted on or carried into effect.
So: Proposition 27 tries to replace the current (not-yet-used) system with a return to gerrymandering by the legislature, helped along by an all-but-impossible absolute equality provision, and misleading and dishonest justifications.
The previous system was broken; Proposition 27 doesn’t address the things which made it broken.
The current system is untested and worth a try.
And the findings & purpose section of Proposition 27 is so dishonest that its authors shouldn’t be trusted to run a lemonade stand.
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My problem with Proposition 20 is subtler, and it boils down to two things:
(a) The Proposition 11 system is untested and, while I believe we should give it a shot, I’m hesitant to give it more power while I’m not yet sure how well it will work. Experimenting can be good; but rushing headlong into adopting the new way of doing things before we even find out the results of the experiment seems unwise.
(b) I think it’s an error for California to voluntarily abdicate its power to effect the composition of the national legislature without other powerful states doing so. It’s tantamount to voluntary disarmament in an arms race; it can only hurt California’s political interests.
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I usually find the arguments for and against propositions in the state voter information pamphlet to be useless and unconvincing at best and misleading at worst.
While I’m not going to vote for Proposition 20, I find the argument against it in the ballot pamphlet to be a great example of this: it tells me that Proposition 20 will cost millions of dollars and that I should vote against it for that reason. But this is silly; for one thing, a few million dollars is worth it to get a reasonable redistricting process in place; for another thing, most of the costs of the redistricting commission are fixed, up-front costs; assigning them more responsibility may trigger an incremental cost increase, but that will be tiny compared with the fixed costs already being spent.
Worse yet, it claims that the proposition requires that districts “must be segregated by income level.” But that’s not true; it requires that district lines be drawn to “minimize the division” of “a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation.” The proposition then goes on to cite as examples “those common to an urban area, a rural area, an industrial area, or an agricultural area, and those common to areas in which the people share similar living standards, use the same transportation facilities, have similar work opportunities, or have access to the same media of communiation relevant to the election process.” This isn’t an attempt to segregate by income; it’s an attempt to say, hey, districts should be drawn in a way which maximizes the similarity of social and economic outlook of the voters of that district.
This does seem to me to be inconsistent with one of the premises of Proposition 11 – that the districts should be more competitive. But since Proposition 11 had internally conflicting premises, weakening one of them is probably a good thing overall … and even if it isn’t, the argument against seriously mischaracterizes it.
What a terrible idea.
In the wake of last week’s explosion and fire in San Bruno, PG&E is seeking a change to the rules for utility regulation.
Under current rules, if the costs of a disaster exceed a utility’s insurance, the utility can ask the PUC to approve a rate increase, but the PUC can deny the request.
PG&E is seeking a change which would require that a rate increase be approved in such cases.
[Demonstrating yet again why PG&E is one of the most hated companies in California.]
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/14/MN261FDDD8.DTL
The Fresno Bee tries, and fails, to predict how Prop. 14 would change things
The Fresno Bee is running an article today which claims to examine how the general election might be different if the open primary rules had been in effect in June.
Unfortunately, it’s doing it wrong.
The Bee appears to be looking at the actual number of votes cast per candidate and saying, hey, the second-place Republican got more votes than the Democrat, so under Prop. 14, the general election would be between two Republicans.
That’s a ridiculous approach to the issue, for two reasons: (a) it fails to account for the number of crossover votes which would have been cast by members of one party for candidates of another party, and (b) it fails to account for how turnout would be different under Prop. 14.
Both of those are probably impossible to predict with the data we currently have, meaning they’re impossible to account for. But without accounting for them, the ‘analysis’ is worthless; there’s no good reason to assume that the numbers are zero. Moreover, to be intellectually honest, the Bee should at least address the issue … which they haven’t, instead choosing to invest themselves in a facile analysis rather than a robust one.
The Fresno Bee is running an article today which claims to examine how the general election might be different if the open primary rules had been in effect in June.
Unfortunately, it’s doing it wrong.
The Bee appears to be looking at the actual number of votes cast per candidate and saying, hey, the second-place Republican got more votes than the Democrat, so under Prop. 14, the general election would be between two Republicans.
That’s a ridiculous approach to the issue, for two reasons: (a) it fails to account for the number of crossover votes which would have been cast by members of one party for candidates of another party, and (b) it fails to account for how turnout would be different under Prop. 14.
Both of those are probably impossible to predict with the data we currently have, meaning they’re impossible to account for. But without accounting for them, the ‘analysis’ is worthless; there’s no good reason to assume that the numbers are zero. Moreover, to be intellectually honest, the Bee should at least address the issue … which they haven’t, instead choosing to invest themselves in a facile analysis rather than a robust one.
Apparently 20,000 absentee ballots in Riverside County weren’t counted because the post office lost them.
This is a result of a bug in the state elections code: the law places the responsibility on the voter to make sure that the ballot is received by 8pm on election day, putting voters who mail their ballots late at the mercy of the post office. Since many people procrastinate, this leads to people mailing their ballots too late to be received.
According to the article, Sacramento County’s elections office has implemented a partial fix: they contact the post offices on election day and send runners to retrieve any ballots still in local post offices. That’s a good thing; it reduces the number of lost ballots (although it won’t catch things mailed from out of county). If the legislature isn’t going to change the law, other counties should follow suit.
But really, the Legislature should just change the law – a rule requiring the ballots to be postmarked by the closing of the polls and received within one week of poll closure would dramatically reduce the number of uncounted ballots while still ensuring that all ballots are received in time to be counted before the final canvass.
Surprise!
There’s been a lot of talk in the political press and blogsphere about the wierd result in South Carolina: an unknown candidate who didn’t bother campaigning won a primary election, and there are allegations that somehow the opposing party was responsible.
Apparently something similar happened in California: an unknown candidate for Insurance Commissioner, whose campaign expenses consisted of paying the filing fee, paying for his statement in the voter guide, and flying to an endorsement meeting, appears to have won the Republican party primary.
Perhaps, in a year with a strong anti-incumbent backlash, this shouldn’t be surprising. But the fact that it is happening makes the similar occurance in South Carolina seem less bizarre.
I had intended to write up full-scale analyses of each of the propositions prior to the election, but my morale got shattered, and my willingness to devote energy to anything other than rank avoidance dwindled away.
But someone expressed interest, so even though it’s too late to sway anyone’s votes, here are the short versions:
Proposition 13:
As I explained here, Prop. 13 is a minor technical revision to the Constitution which I have a hard time caring about in any way. It’s almost certainly harmless. It’s probably pointless – I just don’t believe there are a substantial number of unreinforced masonry buildings owned by people who aren’t retrofitting them but would if they were given a reassessment exclusion which lasted until their next sale instead of fifteen years. It’s on the ballot because the only way to change it is via a ballot measure, and the people I think should be deciding this unanimously placed it on the ballot, so I voted yes … but I would have preferred not to have to care about it.
Proposition 14:
This measure would change the way elections are conducted in California. Currently we have partisan primaries (run by the state and paid for by the state) to select partisan nominees who automatically qualify for the general election. The new system would be to have jungle primaries in which all candidates of all parties are on the same ballot; the top two vote getters would advance to the general election but would not be the nominees of their parties. (Presidential elections would be handled differently).
Activists of all parties hate it.
I like it: I think the single biggest problem with California politics is that the election structure requires candidates to appeal to the most extreme members of their respective parties. To win the primary, Democrats must appeal to Democratic activists, and Republicans must appeal to Republican activists … resulting in candidates who are forced to the extreme and then are punished for comprmising, and resulting in the 30% of the state who are nonpartisan (plus the liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats) being frozen out of the legislative process.
Part of the fix to this is to fix redistricting, which is why I voted for Prop. 11 in 2008. (DISCLAIMER: I am currently an applicant to be a member of the state redistricting commission). Another part of the solution is to change the incentive structure for elections. Proposition 14 should do that: it should encourage candidates to run to the middle in all races, and in lopsided districts it should allow the centrist members of the dominant party to combine with the other party’s members to elect a centrist partisan rather than a radical partisan.
It’s not a cure-all. But it’s worth trying.
Proposition 15:
I really like the idea: take one race and see if public financing works. It’s great to have an experiment limited to one race rather than experimenting with the entire system; and it’s particularly appropriate to use the Secretary of State as a test bed for this kind of reform.
I really dislike the fact that the implementation discriminates between candidates based on the party in which they are registered.
So did Prop. 11, but in that case the initiative was fixing a critical problem. In this case, it isn’t. So I’d rather wait for a measure which doesn’t have this flaw.
Proposition 16:
Proposition 16 is a measure to change the state constitution to require a particular type of government action – and only that particular type of government action – be approved by a 2/3 majority vote of the voters.
I don’t like supermajority requirements unless there’s a compelling public policy reason for them.
I don’t like singling out particular kinds of action unless there’s some compelling public policy reason for it.
There isn’t in this case. Public provision of electric power is no different than public provision of garbage collection (or of sewage collection) or, to be honest, of water. Why should the state constitution carve out a particular hurdle for this type of public provision of utility service and not for others?
It shouldn’t.
The measure is being advertised as a way to protect the taxpayers’ money and allow people to vote on how their money is spent. But the advertising ignores what I think of as the key questions: what makes public power provision different, so that it should be subject to a public vote when other things aren’t; and what makes public power provision so special as to require a 2/3 majority vote?
As far as I can tell the answer is: nothing except the fact that the primary sponsor wants the state to write into the constitution an effective way to prevent competition.
In short: the proposition is a scam perpetrated by PG&E. It deserves defeat.
Proposition 17:
I don’t understand this initiative.
I know it has something to do with changes to the rules for auto insurance to allow a particular type of discount to be portable when you change insurance providers, and that the trade-off for it is a barrier to entry to the insurance market for people who don’t already have insurance.
I see no particular reason to prefer that trade-off.
Moreover, I don’t understand the ramifications – which consumers win by this? Which don’t? What are the long-term second-order effects on the industry?
I don’t have the time, skills, or interest to figure this out. Figuring this out is why we have an Insurance Commissioner.
so I resent being asked, I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, and I don’t want to spend the time figuring it out.
I feel somewhat bad for reflexively voting ‘no’ without taking the time to understand it. But … unless someone can make a case that it’s worth my time, why should I?
Measure G:
This is a San Mateo County measure involving a short-term (4 years) parcel tax whose revenue would be used to plug a hole in the local community college district’s budget caused by state budget cutbacks.
To start with: community colleges are a fantastic resource which are, I think, more important to the well-being of the state’s working class population than CSU and UC, and are a vital service which should not be cut back. I would support cuts to CSU and UC before I’d support cuts to the community colleges.
And yet … a temporary tax to plug a long-term budget hole?
This might make sense if there were any reason to believe the state’s budget crisis would end in the next four years.
There isn’t.
And so it doesn’t.
The measure calls out for another election in four years to plug the exact same hole we’re plugging now.
So … we should buckle down and either pass a permanent tax now or figure out how to balance the books without the increase now. But we shouldn’t be trying to use a short-term temporary fix to the problem.
That way lies continuing crisis.
And wouldn’t it be better not to renew the crisis?
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