Politics & Government

What If YOU could Vote On The State Budget?

Instant polling devices help constituents make decisions to restore some programs, raise some taxes.

Written by L.A. Chung

Enough of the armchair grumbling about our state budget, which got its latest revision last week. How would you do it?

In less than two hours, more than 100 residents armed with "personal response clickers" at Foothill College rebuilt the $98 billion state budget more to their liking Wednesday night—and enjoyed doing it. 
Participants came from San Bruno and Sunnyvale, Los Altos and East Palo Alto, San Mateo and Half Moon Bay, to Foothill College to try their hand at the California Budget Challenge, hosted by state Sen. Jerry Hill, and Assembly members Kevin Mullin and Rich Gordon

"That's amazing," Sen. Hill told the audience, afterwards, applauding the group's efforts to restore services but to also find the money to do it—which is not always the case. "You were willing to tax yourselves."

The exercise of whether to cut here, restore there, and how to find the money, was led by Sarah Henry, program director of co-sponsor Next 10, a non-profit organization that started the budget challenge in 2005 to help Californians understand how the budget is put together and the how priorities might be balanced.

Gordon and Mullen were stuck in Sacramento with business, but Henry briskly led the crowd of students, community leaders and just folks through a fast-paced introduction of the budget parts and possible actions, with a Hill answering questions that came along the way.

The latest version of the proposed budget was actually $1.4 billion less than what participants were working with. Just the day before the Foothill event, Gov. Jerry Brown released the May budget revision that was $96.4 billion.

Tackling education, health care services, criminal justice, retiree health insurance, income tax, sales tax, and others, participants clicked their responses on devices that looked like mini-remote controls, and that flashed results within seconds on the screen at the front.

The real-time budgeting exercise, relies on "clickers" that have become  popular in college lecture halls to assess understanding, probe interest and feed off of the dynamism that instant polling creates. 

After each response they could see how their choices would affect the proposed state budget, which must be passed June 15, in time for the July 1 fiscal year.

"I was quite delighted with the interactive tool," said Corrin Rankin, who came with Patrick Brock and three other members of the East Palo Alto & Belle Haven Chamber of Commerce. "It gave us a chance to see what it's like to make decisions on the state budget."

The clickers work like a television remote, sending infrared signals to a receiver at the front of the classroom. The receiver is connected to a computer, which tabulates the responses. Responses are anonymous.

One question had to do with the Vehicle License Fee (VLF). In keeping with the non-partisan nature of the organization, Henry dispassionately ran through the extraordinary background of the VLF, which had remained stable at 2 percent until the fizzy dot-com days when legislators decided to cut it—and that efforts to restore it when budget woes became greater felled a governor (Gray Davis) and paved the pathway for the election of actor Arnold Schwarzeneggar.  

A small majority of the participants—30 percent—voted to keep it the same at 0.65 percent. A greater majority split between the raising it a 1/2 percent and restoring it to 2 percent, but the time constraints precluded re-polling on a different increase figure.

The Foothill DeAnza Community College District and Next 10 were also co-sponsors, ad there was a wide-ranging group of co-hosts from the League of Women Voters to the East Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce.

Sue Graham, a member of the Los Altos-Mountain View League of Women Voters said she found the exercise interesting, but "it quickly got complicated at the end." She noted that some decisions—such as whether to try to increase revenues through more frequent property assessments—may seem logical, but carry costs that people may not realize. Reassessing business property, she knows from hearing presentations from the county tax assessor, is expensive to do.

Sen. Hill, too, acknowledged other realities. "Chances are fairly slim that those taxes you voted for would take place," he said, noting that they would have to be passed by two-thirds of the legislature before being put to a vote by the public. 

Nonetheless, the experience—and coming together—was valuable, many agreed. 

"People here had concern about balancing the budget and restoring services," said Chester Prince, another member of the East Palo Alto - Belle Haven Chamber of Commerce, which was a co-host. 

"I thought it was a good interaction."


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