[SllX]

Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.

[Eridrus]

I dug into this a bit since these comments were just confusing, but apparently Prop 13 required tax increases to get a 2/3 majority of the legislature.

So it seems like Prop 13 just fucked California.

[SllX]

Correct. What is the point of having a representative government with a legislature if you just forcibly remove the lynchpin of power for that type of government?

[inferiorhuman]

That's the point. Props 13 and 8 were part of the republican anti-government movement often memorialized by Norquist's remark about making government small enough to drown.

[SllX]

The motivations and rhetoric are before my time. What’s leftover is just this stupid counterproductive set of laws undermining the legislature’s ability to legislate.

[pests]

What does California do with all its income?

[inferiorhuman]

Props 13 and 8.

Highly recommend Paradise Lost by Peter Schrag. Raising revenue requires supermajority voter approval in most cases. A huge chunk of the budget is already allocated by voter mandates and the legislature fights over the scraps.

[SllX]

Same shit. Different State. Maybe a little extra compared to a Red State or a smaller State, and on a larger scale. You can dig into it here: https://ebudget.ca.gov/