For more than 30 years California's budget has been a mess. That’s because Proposition 13, which voters thought was a way to just limit property taxes for homeowners, also had other, negative consequences: loopholes for giant corporate property owners and a law that requires a two-thirds supermajority vote by elected officials to increase taxes.
Because a small number of legislators are willing to block tax increases regardless of the cost to our families and neighborhoods, we're now laying off thousands of teachers at overcrowded schools, our roads and highways are crumbling, and a lack of health care funding means thousands will get sick and stay sick from preventable diseases.
Our state government is stuck in gridlock while our state constitution prevents local governments from raising taxes, no matter how dire the need. Ballot initiative campaigns have become the only way Sacramento makes funding decisions. But the campaigns are dominated by powerful interest groups that spend tens of millions of dollars only to have voters reject confusing proposals.
And so the state government is forced to rely on brutal cuts to services to stay afloat. People across the country say that California is “ungovernable.”
We can make our schools the best in the nation, protect our stateʼs natural beauty and create a strong and vibrant economy. It will require big changes to the way our state is run. Big changes. This means passing laws that generate more income for our state and make California easier and more efficient to operate. We have a plan to break through the gridlock and achieve lasting reform of our tax system:
CHANGE ATTITUDES. It's easy to be cynical about government and elected officials. But, at California Calls, we know that there is strength in numbers, and that addressing problems together - from putting families first, to our environment, to our state itself, is the smartest way to bring safety and prosperity to our neighborhoods and our lives. We’ll tell a new story about shared responsibility and restoring faith in government. Together with people from around the state, we're working with a hopeful attitude to spread a different story about government, one that emphasizes what we can accomplish if elected officials are held accountable to everyday people, bound together by common aspirations.
INSPIRE OUR NEIGHBORS. We will inspire 528,000 of our neighbors, who only vote occasionally, to support fair tax reform and become regular, not once-in-a-while voters.We've studied all the elections over the past fifteen years and realized that 500,000 voters can make the difference in a close race in California. In 2008, five million more of us voted than in previous years because we had hope for a change. We saw the extraordinary power of ordinary people standing up together. If just a fraction of us continue to stand together, we can pave a way out of the gridlock and renew the dream.
WORK TOGETHER. We know we can't restore the California dream alone. So we’ll bring together members of our alliance with members of other organizations that believe in our dream. We’ll bring together a network of like-minded community organizations in the business community to create a tax and budget system that will restore opportunity for everyone.
