I’m still reflecting back on last week’s Prison "Deal" and the fact that it included over six BILLION dollars in additional indebtedness for California taxpayers.  Especially heinous about this mega-debt is that it has been completely authorized by Sacramento politicians and apparently requires no vote of the people.  Why wouldn’t they bring this amount of prolific spending to the voters?  After all, lately, the electorate has been pretty accepting of big borrowing — having approved all of the Governor’s "big bang bonds" package last year.
 
I am not an expert on intricate and arcane state laws when it comes to borrowing, but I can tell you that using "lease revenue bonds" just smells awful.  The name implies that the bonds are issued against specific revenue returns from leasing the property that is built.  But who leases state prisons?  It’s the state, right?  So if the state is responsible for paying itself for these bonds, I don’t see how that is any different from general obligation bonds. 
 
Clearly politicians will come up with any way to increase government spending, and last week’s "deal" was another example of political hubris.  After all, even if "technically" using this obscure kind of bond, such a vote to authorize (without a subsequent vote by the people) is all it takes to issue the bonds, you would think that fiscally conservative legislators would refuse to participate in this kind of sham.
 
Look, I understand that there was a lot of pressure to resolve the overcrowding problem in the jails quickly — with the specter of a federal judge releasing inmates early.  But I would be shocked if the judge would have released any violent inmates onto the streets.  It seems more likely to me that he would have used his ‘omnipotent’ powers to simply force the state do to what Democrats refuse to do — spend billions in general fund revenues to build prison space.
 
Either way, it is unfortunate that so many in the legislature felt it appropriate to indebt California families by so much more money given that the tax burden in the Golden State is already high enough to support plenty of prison construction.  It is not how much money goes to Sacramento, how that money is spent that is the culprit in the Democrat-created overcrowding crisis.
 
The reality is that the Democrats refuse to this day to make prison spending a priority in the state budget.  And now, thanks to the ‘deal’ they won’t have to — we’ll be using the California credit card once again. 
 
We can add prisons to the growing list of items that Democrats never have to spend budget money on — this list includes roads, highways, transit and everyone else that was in last year’s cornucopia of bond spending.
 
As long as Republicans in Sacramento continue to make borrowing money through bonds a real option for the liberal majority, they will always use it.
 
Last year, I spoke on a panel with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.  The topic was the infrastructure bonds.  It came as no surprise that during that discussion, Nunez made it clear that if the bonds were to pass, that would make available state resources for his universal health care proposal.  This, in a nutshell, makes the point…

I wish I could say that this pattern of borrowing money when Californian’s are overtaxed is over.  There are a lot more bonds being proposed.  Right now, many Republicans are talking about letting the Democrats off the hook on above-ground water storage.  Yes, we need it, but Californians ALREADY PAY ENOUGH to fund it. 

As long as the GOP is willing to borrow, borrow, borrow — we will never have the urgency needed from the public to truly reform budget spending priorities.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.