Proposition 1A - Yes


Is protecting the gas tax funds worth putting more of the CA budget on autopilot? My opinion on Prop 1A

This is part of my ongoing series of posts on each of the Propositions we'll be voting on. Here is the original post, with my ground rules for evaluating propositions, my scorecard and links to each of my arguments.

Proposition 1A - Yes

Summary - CA collects a ton of tax revenue off of gas taxes that is supposed to be used only for transportation projects. This proposition would attempt to enforce that more strictly by prohibiting the use of that tax money for anything other than transportation and traffic de-congestion.

Commentary - For a long time now, governors on both side of the political aisle (if you count Glass Jaw Ahnold as being on a side other than Davis) have raided the transportation funds. The budgets have been tight in CA, and we've had a lot of debt, so they made a pretty nice target. It's even somewhat understandable if you overlook the monetary silliness that got us in trouble in the first place - imagine running up a ton of credit card debt, and then looking over and seeing a nice savings account that you swore you'd only use for your next car; wouldn't you smash that piggy bank to save yourself some serious debt problems?

As it turns out, the voters of CA have not been too happy with this. Rising gas prices have only underscored the amount of money we pay at the pump, supposedly for transportation projects. When you jump on the freeway after having refueled and find its moving at about 5 mph, it doesn't sit well. So this proposition comes in promising to save the weary driver of CA - but does it do the trick?

I'm a bit torn on this one. CA voters approved proposition 42, which supposedly already protected gas taxes, and that has proved to be easily circumvented by the legislature. In addition, CA's traffic problems are bad and getting worse. We seem to be destined to watch commute times grow and grow with little or no real effort towards fixing the problem. Furthermore, it just gets under my skin when I'm being taxed (rather heavily) for a specific reason, and yet that money isn't going to that reason. If the gas tax worked as its supposed to, those who drive more and put more strain on our freeways, would be forced to pay more of their own share.

On the other hand, we have a real problem with ballot measures controlling the budget. In the past, we've had financial crises hit, and we're stuck being forced to allocate a fix percentage of our revenue to education because of propositional restraints. On a related note, allocating money to a problem doesn't actually fix it. Most of the time it just means some special interest gets fat by sucking lucrative contracts off of legislators with well concealed bribes.

Ultimately, I think this one comes down to keeping the legislature honest. If you're going to justify some tax by appealing to something we all agree on (less traffic), then you don't get to divert it to some pet project of yours (lavish pensions for unions and buddies). It also irks me that the legislature has been thumbing their nose at the people's decision on prop 42. So I'm voting yes in order to protect against future shell games with taxes. Ultimately, its not the people putting CA's budget on autopilot (like other props were), it is the people insisting that they get what they pay for.

Posted: Tue - October 24, 2006 at 07:17 PM | | | | | | |

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