Experts Expound

“Going under the radar: What about Proposition 25, which cuts the necessary vote for a budget to a simple majority, instead of the current two-thirds? Early polls showed it way ahead. Is it really going to pass?”

Proponents spending pretty lavishly, although the Chamber crowd smartly combined it with their Proposition 26 in a no/yes campaign. Yes ads sound right message: Punish the legislative bastards if they don’t do their job on time.

Tough one to assess. Do the voters choose to reward the Legislature for incompetence, or throw in the towel? Will the public employee unions turn out and vote in overwhelming numbers for the measure? Will Republicans “smell a rat?” or be seduced by provision that docks legislators pay for being late with a budget?  My gut tells me in this political environment, they will be pissed off in sufficient numbers to not give the Legislature anything it desires. Prop 25 goes down.

Yes. Narrowly. Voters are fed up with the budget fiasco and will try anything to fix it.

I’d bet against it. The “It’s a trick to raise your taxes” line may be factually debatable but it’s politically persuasive – especially in an electorate that’s likely to skew older, more affluent, and more Republican than in a presidential year.

Prop 25 is a sham, but the sound bites for it are simplistic and effective. Unless the opponents can muster some TV against it, it will likely pass, making the public employees’ unions very happy.

It’s the Potemkin Village of budget fixes. Going to a simple majority vote will speed up budget approvals, but the budgets will be empty shells, because Prop. 25 does nothing about tax increases which, of course, are the whole enchilada. In the end, we’ll have a budget every year on time with nothing in it.

Absolutely it will pass. Voters will do anything to fix what they perceive as a broken system.

Gawd, it’d be wonderful if it did. The biggest fear: Instead of a few GOP holdouts on the budget, the swing votes instead would be among a couple moderate Dems. Could Correa be our next Lieutenant Guv?

Probably. My sense is that regular people are finally starting to grasp that the two-thirds vote leaves no one accountable, and that with a majority budget you’ll at least know whose budget it is, and whom to credit or blame for it. The lack of accountability is the huge problem that 25 will fix. If people get that, it’ll pass.

It will pass. But only because voters misunderstand that its intent is to put the Democrats in charge of the budget with no real input needed from the minority. This is not a bad outcome because as the Dems take the state down into the depths of default and chase businesses out of the state with taxes and fees, what’s left (no pun) of the people will revolt and we’ll get financial conservatives in.

You would think the Republicans would abandon just about everything else to fight against it.

Andrew Acosta, A.G. Block, Mark Bogetich, Barry Brokaw, Morgan Crinklaw, J Dale Debber, Peter DeMarco, Mike Donovan, Jim Evans, Kathy Fairbanks, Jeff Fuller, Rex Frazier, Ken Gibson, Evan Goldberg, Deborah Gonzalez, Sandy Harrison, Bob Hertzberg, Jason Kinney, Greg Lucas, Mike Madrid, Nicole Mahrt, Steve Maviglio,  Adam Mendelsohn, Barbara O’Connor, Bill Packer, Kassy Perry, Jack Pitney, Adam Probolsky, Tony Quinn, Matt Rexroad, Matt Ross, Roger Salazar, Dan Schnur, Will Shuck, Ralph Simoni, Sam Sorich, Ray Sotero, and Garry South.