SACRAMENTO — Around this time last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom toured the Southland —that is, Southern states such as Mississippi and Alabama, as opposed to communities in Southern California — as part of his Campaign for Democracy. It was a weird trip for a liberal California governor, as he lectured people thousands of miles from home about threats to democratic governance even as his own state attacked various freedoms, such as the right to earn a living as a contractor.
“The problem with our country right now is authoritarian leaders who are so hell-bent on gaining power and keeping it by whatever means necessary,” Newsom said at one of his not-a-campaign stops. I share some of his concerns about the increasingly authoritarian nature of the MAGA movement, but making that case took moxie for a governor who, you know, grabbed every unchecked power that he could during the state’s COVID-19 trauma.
All of that’s in the past, I suppose. This year, Newsom hasn’t ventured too far from home, where he is unusually fixated on stopping the People from having a say in the governor’s and Legislature’s tax and spending policies. The state’s usually milquetoast business community is so tired of California’s worsening business climate that it has qualified for the November ballot something called the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act.
The measure is the ultimate form of democracy. Ever since progressive Gov. Hiram Johnson in 1911 instituted three main reforms — the recall, initiative, and referendum — California has been on the cutting edge of direct democracy. That system has yielded some troubling results, such as the creation of the property-rights-eroding California Coastal Commission. It also created the wonderful property-tax-limiting Proposition 13 in 1978 that helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.
The proposed Taxpayer Protection Act is, by most accounts, the latest iteration of the Tax Revolt. It poses the most significant threat to the state’s Democratic establishment in decades by subjecting local tax hikes to a two-thirds local vote and requiring state voters to OK, by simple majority, any tax increases passed by our tax-happy Legislature. Democracy is great, I suppose, until pesky voters do stuff you don’t like. Despite their left-leaning voting habits for elected officials, California voters generally take more conservative stances with initiatives, so I understand why Newsom is afraid.
As the Orange County Register opined:
For a sense of the fear and trepidation it’s causing, consider that Newsom and the Legislature have filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court attempting keep the measure off the ballot. They claim it imposes such a broad change that it amounts to a constitutional revision rather than an amendment. That argument is hogwash.
The Register noted that Newsom doesn’t fear the latest pointless recall effort — but he is sweating this one.
It also noted that lawmakers passed two constitutional amendments for November that are designed to undermine the tax limitations included in the Taxpayer Protection Act. Assembly Constitutional Amendments 1 and 13 are cynical, but Newsom and Co. apparently don’t trust that the voters will see matters their way. Hence the all-hands-on-deck effort to scuttle the democratic process by trying to use the courts to put the kibosh on the Business Roundtable measure.
Facing a huge budget deficit ($73 billion, by some accounts), Newsom and the Legislature are caught flat-footed, as they’re running out of cash to fund their usual approach of taxing, spending, spending, and taxing. It doesn’t seem to bother them that the state’s much-publicized problems have only gotten worse with each new expenditure and that other problems — the rapid exodus of property insurers — remain largely unaddressed.
The only restraint that has ever yielded decent policy in California is tightening purse strings, but the thought of making tough choices always causes discomfort in Sacramento. Whatever one’s view of the current state of governance here, of tax restraints, or of this particular measure, it’s hard to make a pro-democracy case for asking judges to keep a properly qualified initiative off of the ballot because the state’s leadership doesn’t like its content.
Given how bad the business climate has become, businesses are facing an existential crisis and probably won’t back down in the face of Newsom’s ads that attempt to embarrass members of the Business Roundtable. Overall, this is a wild approach from a leader who ceaselessly campaigns for, er, democracy. In fact, Newsom sounds a lot like a leader who is, in his own words, “hell-bent on gaining power and keeping it by whatever means necessary.”
Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.
