Homeowners Beware

I think I mentioned before that California is busted... flat broke and defunct! And so is the City of Los Angeles. Part of it is because of the economic mess of the state and the nation at large. But much of it has to do with the incompetence of the city council and voter ignorance. I heard about this latest ruse and went hunting for the story. It appeared in Saturday's LA Times August 15th. "Hundreds of thousands" homeowners will have their property taxes increased because LA Unified School district can't pay the interest on bonds issued to build more schools.

In California, to the dismay of every politician who love to spend other people's money, homeowners benefit from proposition 13 passed in the 70's which limits the percentage of property taxes paid to local & state governments. They look for every which way to get around and/or supplement this cap and bilk more money out of homeowners to pay for their pet projects and welfare programs. Thankfully, rescinding this law requires a 2/3 majority and with any luck they'll never get it from the voters. Ironically, the impetus of Prop 13 was born of the inequitable distribution of property tax revenue to support public schools. Schools in affluent areas had more money to spend on schools than did those in inner cities. In the meanwhile, there's no money to pay for schools half built and reimburse bondholders for the capital - new schools or drastic overhauls to schools primarily in inner cities where the high schools graduation rate is roughly 50% anyway.

As my favorite talk show host points out...ballot buzz words are children and green. If either of these words are mentioned we tend to blindly authorize dollars that we don't have without consideration for the consequenes. Heaven forbid we actually inform ourselves before casting a vote that assigns additional liablity to tax payers. It seems that within the language of the bond measures that La Unified can raise tax rates even if they rise above projections if property tax revenue can't repay bondholders. And this is exactly the position we face now. As property values have declined, hence assessment values to which the rate of 1% is tied, there isn't enough money in the coffers to meet the commitment so once again taxpayers are asked to open their wallet in a time where it's already running lean and fork over more.

As pissed off as I am, especially since I don't even have kids and if I did I probably wouldn't send them to a LA Unified school, I feel as though the voters deserve it for not paying attention. They just sign off on millions of dollars as though someone else is paying for it.