California Proposition 31

[jpmassar]

This is designed to restructure government somewhat, requiring a two-year budget process, giving more power to the Governor in times of "fiscal emergencies", requires various oversight processes and provides even more inflexibility for changing things that affect financials than are already in place. And other stuff that isn't very clear

Comments

[dmorr]

Here's one data point: the group that wrote the proposition, California Forward, is one I know and really like. They are genuinely committed to good governance in a remarkably non-partisan way.

I think this makes analysis of their ideas hard for the usual crowd who identifies winners and losers in politics or money. CA Forward is trying to actually change the incentives in the game in a more fundamental way.

So, without understanding the bill, I support it because it was written by smart people who think hard about these issues towards the right goal. You can say that about essentially no propositions or for that matter pieces of legislation in modern politics.

[songmonk]

I can't remember how I got to "Pete Rates the Propositions" (it might have been one of you guys), but his assessment is here:

http://www.peterates.com/props-1112.shtml#prop31

Basically, he's saying what both of you are saying: California Forward is generally an organization to like and support, but Proposition 31 is too confusing and is a mishmash of different things.

I was leaning no, but it's one of the last propositions for me to make a definite decision on.

[jpmassar]

It seems like it was designed by a committee. And even a smart committee can come up with a mediocre product that satisfies a lot of constraints and has lots of vague language because that's the only way everyone will agree.

I can't even figure out how it passes constitutional muster in that initiatives are supposed to be about one topic. It's not, unless you define a topic so broadly that the restriction loses any meaning. This probably means a long court battle just on that point.

[sabyl]

My first thought when I was reading the voter pamphlet was "if this passes there's going to be a whole lot of lawsuits" - it is just too ambiguous. The rebuttal to the argument for this measure in the voter pamphlet pretty much says what I thought about the measure - would be good if it did what it purports to do, but it doesn't; lots of lawsuits, etc. Besides - when in doubt, I just vote no on ballot measures these days.