Maybe you’ve experienced this: your nitwit kid uses your credit card to run up a staggering tab on stuff a nitwit kid wants. And, just your luck, the kid has a genius for splurging on things that can’t be returned: concert tickets, restaurant meals, etc. so you have no choice but to take the hit because murder is still illegal in California.
Most parents faced with an irresponsible, free-spending kid would take away his credit card, make him get a job to pay his debts, or rent his room out on Airbnb. Not California voters. Deficits, schmeficits! We want what we want when we want it.
On Election Day, voters in Los Angeles and California were the nitwit kids.
Despite enormous budget deficits at both the state and local levels, we went to the polls with the taxpayers’ credit card and said yes to Measure HLA– the bike and bus lane panacea supporters claim will make L.A.’s streets safer and prettier while stemming climate change as automobiles are abandoned in favor of pro-planet alternatives– and now the other shoe has dropped– Prop. 1, Governor Newsom’s homelessness panacea, dousing the taxpayers in another $6-billion of red ink.
In defense of the free-spenders, guys like me have been blubbering in newspapers and on talk radio for eons about the consequences of budget deficits, yet the sun continues to rise each morning. Somehow, we stumble through each fiscal year with the usual headlines about layoffs and cutbacks to programs that help paper-over the shortfalls. We’re already reading about school closures, hiring freezes and the inevitable layoffs resulting from HLA and previous spending binges, including Mayor Karen Bass’s homelessness initiatives and LAPD hiring plans. Those who lose their jobs or have their program cut will pay the price. But as long as it’s not our job in jeopardy, as long as somebody else’s taxes get raised… shampoo, rinse, repeat. We’ve seen this movie before. Fiscal “Groundhog Day.”
Bass is now worried the city will struggle to come up the $3.1 billion over the next 10-years required by Measure HLA. Now that it’s too late.
During the campaign, Bass and City Council President Paul Krekorian dodged the issue, neither endorsing nor opposing HLA, despite the City’s Administrative Officer Matt Szabo’s warning it was wildly expensive with no funding source. With furrowed brows, they now talk about vacant jobs remaining unfilled and the usual post-ballot box spending orgy belt-tightening and handwringing.
Frankly, we’ve been through this so many times, maybe the big spenders are right. With a city budget of $13.1 billion (which does not include the LAUSD’s additional $12.6 billion budget) what’s a few extra hundred million a year one way or the other?
Supporters of HLA claim Szabo’s numbers are inflated, that $200 million a year is targeted for sidewalk repairs, mandated by an Americans with Disability Act (ADA) lawsuit settlement and unrelated to HLA.
Who’s right? History tells us to take the over, not the under when it comes to city projects.
Meanwhile, Prop 1 adds another $6.4 billion of state spending on homeless programs on top of the billion-plus from Measure H and HHH. We have very pricey homeless, with more homeless to show for all that spending.
Are you still with me, or have you moved to Arizona?
Robert Moses, the great power broker of New York, perfected the art of funding pet projects. His formula? Dig a very big hole, wait for people to complain about the big hole, then demand more money to fill in the big hole. The bullet train people have worked this scheme to perfection, ballooning a project sold to voters at $38 billion to somewhere north of $100 billion and growing.
Nobody makes friends in politics by saying no. Votes and power come from spending not savings. As long as we punish fiscal responsibility and reward free-spending by peddling and pandering to voters we will continue to foster the fiction that “government” pays for things not people
Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. He can be reached at: Doug@DougMcIntyre.com.