State's newest political game: Initiative chicken

By Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee Columnist, March 9, 2005

Most of those 80-some voter initiatives that are either pending at the attorney general's office or already cleared for signature collection will never make it to the ballot. There's not enough money. Some are near-duplicate versions of the same measure; others are just gleams in the eye of wannabes with the $200 needed to file - initiative versions of the 135 people who ran for governor in the 2003 recall. But some are chess pieces in what may be the biggest and most complicated game of political chicken in California history. If Hiram Johnson and the California Progressives who wrote the initiative, referendum and recall into the state constitution had ever been suspected of planning anything as goofy as this, they would have been run out of Sacramento on a rail. This is the initiative process on steroids.

None of these measures originated with "the people" in whose name Arnold Schwarzenegger has been Hummering around. Few would qualify, much less pass, without the big bucks that deep-pockets interest groups pony up. And that's what initiative chicken is all about. The governor is flying around the country to raise the $50 million he promises (or threatens) to get to run his reform campaign. He's hoping to raise it all from big business interests - a lot of them, in the words of a staffer working for a Sacramento Democrat, eager to join "Brand Arnold." On the other side are the teachers, cops, firefighters and other public employee unions targeted by the governor's proposed pension overhaul and spending caps and the politicians who don't want to give up their safe legislative and congressional seats.

In the coming days, the unions and their allies will decide whether to launch their proposals to raise the minimum wage, create buyers' pools to drive down drug prices, repeal electricity deregulation and toughen the state's auto lemon laws.

The proponents of those initiatives, all ready or nearly ready for signature collection, insist that they're inherently meritorious. Several passed the Legislature but were vetoed by the governor. All, the proponents say, have polled well among voters, many of whom were surprised that Schwarzenegger had vetoed them.

But the initiatives have another purpose as well, and that's to cool out some of the governor's biggest fiscal supporters - the pharmaceutical industry, the car dealers, the energy industry and business generally.

Also pending is a measure that would prohibit California corporations from contributing political money without shareholders' consent. That one is the mirror image of an initiative proposal being run by longtime right-wing activist and ex-Bircher named Lewis K. Uhler, once a member of the Reagan administration in Sacramento, that would require public employee unions to get specific approval of members before they could spend dues money for political campaigns.

A similar union-dues measure, Proposition 226, went to the ballot in 1998. Opponents succeeded in keeping most big business money out after they threatened to run their own corporate contribution measure.

At this point it's hardly clear what initiatives the governor really will support. His reform campaign has already shrunk. The proclaimed move to impose merit pay on teachers seems to have been forgotten, and the proposal to lengthen the time for teachers to get tenure has been reduced from 10 years to five. (It's now an unrealistic two years.)

The initiative overhauling the state's public employee pension system is stuck in a wording mess that, in the attorney general's analysis (denied by the backers), denies death benefits to the survivors of cops and firefighters killed on the job, a great example of how, in the absence of a deliberative process, initiatives go awry.

In the course of his Hummer happening last week, the governor endorsed Ted Costa's convoluted reapportionment reform, not the proposal by Assembly Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (now revised from its unworkable first version) that was supposed to reflect the governor's wishes.

In addition, the governor's loudly proclaimed intention to "blow up the boxes" of state government by abolishing some 88 boards and commissions as recommended by a team of state bureaucrats has been quietly abandoned.

It's been reliably reported that even as the governor has been excoriating the Legislature for inaction, negotiations have been going on with the leaders of the Senate and Assembly.

Those talks, like the governor's threats to go to the ballot, are also part of the game. A lot of his initiative proposals may be bargaining chips to be traded for the things he really cares about - reform of the state's dysfunctional budget process particularly.

But driven by the governor's huge political campaign operation, the game itself has escalated in complexity and in its unpredictable potential costs, political and financial - a new, more grotesque level in the megabucks initiative system. Who'll blink first?

However Schwarzenegger may have first imagined it, deal making in politics isn't like muscling and manipulating people in Hollywood. It's far more complicated and involves many more competing interests. It may even be more honorable.

Education petitions circulate

By Jackie Burrell, Contra Costa Times, March 14, 2005

Petition gatherers have begun fanning out across the state to seek support for five measures they hope to put on a special statewide ballot.

One aims to relax teacher tenure, another to expand charter school authorization and a third to alter school spending patterns.

Potential supporters would be wise to page past the summaries and read the full text before uncapping a pen.

One initiative, sponsored by California Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, seeks to restrict school administrative expenses to 25 percent of a school's total operating expenditures, while reserving 75 percent of its spending for "direct classroom instruction."

"Too much money is wasted on bureaucracy. School districts have too much administrative staff," Garcia's proposed constitutional amendment states. "As much as one-third of every taxpayer dollar for education is diverted from the classroom."

Judging the viability of these initiatives this early in the game is difficult. But Garcia's chief of staff, Richard Harmon, gave the best odds to the tenure measure because Citizens to Save California had already stepped forward to support it.

This well-funded, business-backed group is closely allied with the governor. Two members, Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association president Jon Coupal and California Business Roundtable president Bill Hauck, are currently working on ballot initiatives that echo financial reforms proposed in the governor's State of the State speech in January.

"They have enormous implications for school districts. That's what we're trying to anticipate," said San Leandro attorney Robin Johansen, whose client list includes the California Teachers Association, California School Boards Association and state Department of Education.

Johansen and fellow attorney James Harrison have launched two very similar education initiatives designed to protect school funding by prohibiting increases in any other state spending until California's per-pupil expenditures meet the average spending in the top 10 highest-spending states.

Both are constitutional amendment proposals, which require 598,105 signatures each. The aim is to get just one on the ballot, but that may be enough to deflect the effects of the finance reform proposals from schools, said Robert Manwaring, education director for the state's Legislative Analyst.

The Legislative Analyst Office said Garcia's proposed amendment on "classroom instruction" spending could redirect billions of dollars, but no one has defined what "direct classroom instruction" means.

"That's where it really gets gray," said Acalanes assistant superintendent Chris Learned. "Obviously the teacher, but cleaning the classroom? Nurses? Librarians?"

California schools spend about 13 percent of their operating funds on administrative expenses, according to the Association of California School Administrators, and the bulk of those dollars are spent on school principals and vice principals, as opposed to administrators in the central district office. About 94 cents of every education dollar goes directly to school sites.

"The devil's going to be in the details," said Rick Pratt, assistant director of governmental relations for the California School Boards Association.

Administrative expenses are run up by legislative mandate, not bureaucratic inefficiency, Pratt said. Last year's settlement in the Williams lawsuit over school conditions in California, for example, requires county superintendents and their staff to inspect schools personally, a procedure estimated to take 12 hours per site.

"That's a lot of administrative time and money," Pratt said.

The constitutional amendment needs 598,105 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Garcia will need 373,816 signatures for each of her other initiatives, which aim to relax tenure protection for teachers and ease the way for charter schools.

The tenure proposal echoes ideas Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pitched in his State of the State speech in January.

Teachers now are declared permanent employees after two school years. Garcia's initiative, which covers teachers hired in 2003-04 or later, would grant tenure only after five years' service.

The charter school measure broadens laws governing who can authorize a charter. The California Charter Schools Association for years has eyed the possibility of partnerships with California colleges and universities. But current law allows only school districts and county and state education boards to authorize charter schools.

"(This is) very much in line with what the charter community has been pushing for years, to get our public colleges and universities more involved in our K through 12 public schools," said association spokesman Gary Larson. "It makes sense all the way around."

The measure also would increase state funding for charter school leases and triple the amount of time between charter renewals.