Tag Archive for: local tax measures

Did Ballot Harvesting Impact March 3 Bond and Tax Proposals?

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Next day returns on the special election for California’s 25th congressional district indicate that a Republican, Mike Garcia, is holding a 56 percent to 44 percent lead over Democrat Christy Smith. That looks awfully good for Garcia. And while in this case Garcia’s lead does look insurmountable, in California, early returns don’t always equal final results.

According to California’s current elections code, mailed in ballots are counted as long as they are postmarked by election day, and arrive up to three days later. In practice, this translates into final results in close elections being delayed for several weeks.

California’s election code also permits so-called “ballot harvesting,” which is alleged to swing the results of close elections. And unless, at the very least, both candidates and parties have equally effective voter harvesting operations, why wouldn’t it?

The process works this way: A campaign operative canvasses a neighborhood in the days prior to an election. Armed with a cell phone app that identifies which households have voters that are registered with the candidate’s party, they only knock on those doors.

“Hello, have you voted? No? You have not? Well do you have your ballot? Why don’t you fill it in and I’ll take it and submit it for you?” Or, if the person has already filled out their ballot, but haven’t gotten around to mailing it, “here, let me take that and get it mailed for you.”

Depending on who you ask, ballot harvesting in California was a major factor in flipping seven congressional seats from Democrat to Republican in November 2018. One thing is certain; in that election the GOP had almost no ballot harvesting operation, whereas the Democrats had thousands of paid operatives knocking on the door of every Democratic household in every battleground district.

Did Ballot Harvesting Affect the Outcome of Tax and Bond Proposals?

Plenty of controversy has been generated by the new statewide mandate to send mail-in ballots to every voter in California, along with ballot harvesting. But the focus has been on how this impacts elections to U.S. Congress or the State Legislature. Less evaluated but also impacted are votes on state and local tax and bond proposals. As part of every election, without fail, hundreds of localities put proposals in front of voters. And every election, several billion in new taxes and borrowing are at stake.

Historically, for several election cycles up to and including November 2018, California’s voters have overwhelmingly approved new local taxes and bonds. Typically over 70 percent of local tax proposals and over 90 percent of local bond proposals are approved by voters. But something happened in the primary election of March 3, 2020. Voters decided they’d had enough.

By tabulating data compiled by CalTax on local tax and bond proposals immediately after the March 3 election, the following preliminary voting results were reported:
This is a stunning result. Instead of 70 percent of local tax increases passing, only 31 percent of them were showing, so far, as approved. Instead of 90 percent of local bond proposals passing, 42 percent were showing as approved. But then what happened?

The next chart shows final results, which California’s dazzlingly efficient voting bureaucracy was able to deliver on April 21, only 49 days later. So what was the impact of late voting? How was the final outcome affected by the efforts of paid political operatives to knock on the doors of every Democrat and harvest the ballots they’d received in the mail?

As can be seen, for whatever reason, late vote counts did make a difference. The number of approved new taxes jumped from 42 percent to 44 percent. The number of approved bonds jumped from 31 percent to 36 percent. Don’t laugh. That’s another $171 million in additional annual taxes, and an additional $1.1 billion in new borrowing.

It’s worth wondering exactly how the percentages changed. For example, next day results showed 39 bonds passing, and final results showed 44 of them passing. But that’s a net number. What really happened?

The analysis performed to answer that question (an Excel file) can be downloaded here. It shows every tax and bond measure that appeared on a local ballot in California on March 3, comparing next day results to final results. In reality, eight bond measures that were losing a day after the election ended up passing, and two bond measures that were passing in the next day results ended up losing. With respect to the local tax measures, it was a bit closer: five tax measures flipped from fail to pass, and three flipped from pass to fail.

What Does It All Mean?

A New York Times journalist, Jennifer Medina, citing tracking data in California, reported that “roughly 56% of voters 65 and older returned a mail ballot. Just 19% of those younger than 35 did so.” Medina was reporting data from the May 12 special election in California, but it’s interesting to wonder if it holds true for the state at large.

Most of the analysis published in mainstream media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, claim vote-by-mail does not help either party. Mainstream media also promotes a consensus that vote-by-mail does not increase the risk of fraud, as this typical analysis from NPR helpfully attests. But the NPR report also reinforces the argument that older voters tend to be far more likely than young voters to submit mail-in ballots.

With two elections already behind us in California in 2020, a few observations may be useful. First, voter sentiment has changed significantly. The level of support for new taxes and bonds has nearly inverted, a shift far too big to dismiss as a blip. With the pandemic shutdown having crashed public sector tax revenue, this should be a worrisome development for anyone who wants more taxes and more borrowing. Will the pandemic crisis exacerbate voter disillusion with new tax proposals, or offer them a new motivation to approve new taxes?

The other observation that might come out of these 2020 California elections is that vote-by-mail, notwithstanding possible concerns about fraud, may actually help Republicans. Voter harvesting, on the other hand, will harm Republicans. They will be harmed because it is unlikely that in California, where Democrats have far more money to spend (public sector unions, left wing billionaires), the GOP cannot hope to match the Democrat voter harvesting operation. And even if they do, come November, they will knock on GOP households that are far more likely to have already mailed in their ballots, whereas the Democrat households will be more likely to still be holding on to theirs.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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How AB 195 May Help Restore “Impartiality” to Local Ballot Language

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Every two years in November, California’s local agencies ask the voters to approve hundreds of new taxes and bonds. California’s primary ballot every other June also features dozens, if not hundreds of new requests for local tax increases and borrowing. And in times of dire urgency, special elections are called. For example, this coming Tuesday, 6/04, in an off year, Los Angeles residents will vote on a new parcel tax that, if passed, will raise a half-billion dollars per year to help bail out LA Unified School District’s pension and retirement health benefits.

Oops. Apparently that characterization of the reason for this proposed tax increase is incorrect. Measure EE’s ballot question is as follows:

“To retain/attract quality teachers; reduce class sizes; provide counseling/nursing/library services, arts, music, science, math, preschool, vocational/career education, safe/well-maintained schools, adequate instructional materials/supplies; support disadvantaged/homeless students; shall Los Angeles Unified School District levy $0.16 per square foot of building improvements annually, exempting seniors/certain disability recipients, providing approximately $500,000,000 annually for 12 years, requiring annual audits, oversight, and funding local schools?”

Never mind the fact that LAUSD’s cost of employee benefits increased from $1.54 billion in 2015-16 to $1.92 billion in 2016-17, an increase of 25 percent, when the total employee headcount only increased by six-tenths of one percent. Never mind that this shortfall, $1.92 billion less $1.54 billion, is $380 million.

Ignore the cost of pension and retirement health benefits. This tax is “to retain/attract quality teachers.”

LAUSD now carries an unfunded pension liability of $6.8 billion. Just paying down that debt over twenty years should be costing LAUSD over $600 million per year, not including the normal contribution they have to pay each year as their active employees earn additional pension benefits. As it is, including the normal contribution, in 2018 LAUSD “only” paid $584 million to CalSTRS and CalPERS.

Pay no attention to this fact: that just the “catch up” payments on LAUSD’s unfunded pension liability should be $600 million per year. This new tax is to “reduce class sizes; provide counseling/nursing/library services, arts, music, science, math, preschool.”

CalSTRS, the pension system that collects and funds pension benefits for LAUSD teachers, as of June 30, 2017, was only 62 percent funded. Sixty-two percent. CalPERS, the pension system that collects and funds pension benefits for LAUSD support personnel, is only slightly better off financially than CalSTRS. It has already announced it will roughly double the required employer contributions between now and 2025. CalSTRS, if it wants to survive, will likely follow suit.

Deny the reality that CalSTRS and CalPERS require massive increases to their required annual payments. This new tax is to “provide vocational/career education, safe/well-maintained schools, adequate instructional materials/supplies.”

The financial challenges surrounding LAUSD’s other primary retirement obligation, retiree health benefits, are even more daunting. LAUSD’s OPEB unfunded liability (OPEB stands for “other post employment benefits,” primarily retirement health insurance) has now reached a staggering $14.9 billion. In 2018, retiree healthcare cost the district nearly $400 million. A 2016 study prepared for LAUSD estimated that cost to double in the next ten years, and to nearly quadruple within the next twenty years.

But forget about all this financial gobbledegook. This new tax is to “support disadvantaged / homeless students.”

Given the low turnout in off-year special elections, combined with the ballot harvesting machine that was perfected in 2018, it is likely that Los Angeles residents are about to be paying another half-billion in taxes. That sum of money only begins to cover the out-of-control costs for retirement benefits. It is fair to wonder why, instead of a new tax, retirement benefits reform isn’t on the ballot in this special election?

Is it even legal for a ballot to describe a new tax in the way Measure EE is written?

Maybe not. AB 195, law passed in 2017 by the California State Assembly in 2017 and signed into law by then Governor Jerry Brown, fine tunes California’s election code. Among other things, it includes this: “The statement of the measure shall be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure, and shall be in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

Exactly how, when LAUSD’s primary budget challenge finding another billion or so per year to pay for retirement pensions and health benefits, is it “impartial” to characterize this tax as necessary to reduce class sizes, maintain school programs, safe schools, adequate instructional supplies, and help the disadvantaged? Money is fungible, so the language is technically accurate. But is it impartial? Is it prejudicial?

If a challenge to the legitimacy of Measure EE is raised based on the language of AB 195, LAUSD could find themselves on thin ice.

Somebody who has tracked local tax and bond measures for the last few years is Richard Michael, an LA resident who operates the website BigBadBonds.com. In one of his posts, entitled “Dishonest Ballots = Corrupt Government,” Michaels provides examples of ballot language that complies with AB 195 vs ballot language that doesn’t. Here, directly from Michael’s website, is that segment:

“To demonstrate that conforming the ballot statement to the law can be done, the City of Fort Bragg (Mendocino, Measure H) placed a sales tax on the ballot using this ballot statement.

Shall the measure to enact a three-eights (3/8th) of a cent general purpose transactions and use tax to provide the City with an estimated $623,000 per year for a limited period of fifteen years be adopted?

It conforms to subsection (a). It provides the rate of the tax, its duration, and the expected annual yield as required by subsection (b). It also gives the true purpose in an impartial manner using no argumentative language or language designed to create prejudice in favor of the measure as required by subsection (c). Bravo!

Compare that to the City of Roseville (Placer, Measure B) that creates a PERMANENT sales tax by the oblique and deceptive language, ‘until ended by voters.’ Of course, the voters would need to mount a huge campaign to gather enough signatures to end it, no doubt fought every step of the way by the city. The city threw in all the hot buttons that it learned from the taxpayer-funded political survey. At the end of the list it threw in ‘unrestricted general revenue.’ That’s the key to make it a general tax (majority vote to pass) versus a special tax (two-thirds vote to pass).

Shall the measure to ensure essential City services including neighborhood police patrols, fire protection, 9-1-1 emergency response; crime suppression/investigation; street and pothole repair; libraries, parks and recreation; job creation and economic improvement programs; and unrestricted general revenue purposes by establishing a 1/2¢ Transaction and Use (“sales”) tax, providing an estimated $18.4M annually, until ended by voters, with independent citizens’ oversight, regular audits, no money for the state, and all funds spent locally, be adopted?

Will the city government use the money for any of that list of ‘essential’ services? Absolutely not! It’s going to pay for the salary increases and soaring pension costs that the city government has hung like an albatross around the necks of its taxpayers.”

Michaels is right. Money is fungible. And compliance with AB 195 does make a difference. To verify that, we don’t have to rely only on Michael’s analysis. We can turn to an analysis published by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates. This firm, also known as FM3 Research, is an opinion research and strategy firm with a tagline on their website that reads “synthesizing public opinion to help achieve your goals.” On their list of “Ballot Measure Campaigns” an astonishing 534 local tax or bond campaigns are named, all of them with California cities, counties, special districts, and school districts as clients.

With that kind of credibility, consider this excerpt from FM3 Research’s “Guest Analysis and Commentary,” published on an analysis of the November 2018 election by the California Local Government Finance Almanac:

“A COMPLICATING FACTOR: AB-195 IMPACT ON LOCAL SCHOOL BOND MEASURES
State legislation passed in 2017 (AB-195) changed California law regarding ballot label language for local bond measures (including school bonds) by required detailed disclosure of the financial and property tax implications of the bond. This increase in finance-related language was confusing for voters, and also left fewer words in the 75-word ballot label to describe the uses of funds from the measure. In FM3’s surveys, this change led to substantially lower support for many bond measures – in some cases 10-15 points [italics added]. Several agencies that had been considering General Obligation bond measures chose not to place them on the ballot this cycle because their voter opinion research showed the measures were not viable using ballot label language that complied with AB-195. However, for those that placed bond measures on the ballot, the success rate was high and consistent with opinion research.”

A “complicating factor” indeed. Should citizen activists wish to challenge the legitimacy of the hundreds upon hundreds of tax increases that are almost always passed by voters, they might consider trying to enforce AB 195.

Who knows, maybe if ballot language was indisputably impartial, voters would force politicians to confront the real reason for the insatiable public appetite for more tax revenue, which is out-of-control pension costs and benefits.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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