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One of the creators of Proposition A makes a telling admission about the tax measure on the upcoming Los Angeles city ballot. "If I could do it over again," says City Council President Herb Wesson, he would suggest the half-percent increase in the sales tax be temporary instead of permanent.
But the proposition was put together without public hearings, and it shows. The decision to make the tax hike permanent instead of temporary was influenced, Wesson said, by a poll last year indicating voters would be more likely to approve it this way. The comments we hear demonstrate the opposite is true - including the statement of a major Prop. A opponent who said he would have considered supporting a version that expired after a set number of years.
Its permanence marks one big difference between Prop. A and the Prop. Advertisement 30 tax increase package passed by California voters in November. A second difference is that Prop. A singles out the sales tax. Backers seine river cruises say this ensures that city residents and visitors alike will help to maintain the public-safety services from which everybody benefits - but this also makes it a regressive tax, taking seine river cruises proportionately more from the low-income Angelenos who must spend higher percentages of their incomes.
For their trouble, voters who choose to support a tax increase to ease L.A.'s fiscal crisis in the short run should get some assurance that the processes that landed the city in this hole will be improved in the long run. But Prop. A contains no fixes. It doesn't present a way out of the political and legal binds that have prevented mayors and council members seine river cruises from winning concessions from public seine river cruises employee seine river cruises unions on the growing city-worker compensation and generous retirement seine river cruises benefits that are choking the budget.
How urgent is the crisis, anyway? If Gov. Jerry Brown was able to push through Prop. 30 last fall by frightening voters about the need for education funding, then backers of Prop. A should be able to scare people about the need for police and fire department funding. Yet when the newspaper's editorial board asked Wesson and City Administrative Officer Miguel seine river cruises Santana about the immediate ramifications if Prop. A fails, teeing them up for a scary description of mayhem in the streets, seine river cruises both men whiffed.
"This isn't going to happen overnight," Santana said of the police force reduction that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has warned about, but a reduction over the next four years. Indeed, they didn't even warn officers would be let go; more likely the city would slow or stop hiring to backfill the some 300 officers that retire seine river cruises each year.
The $215 million that Prop. A would raise represents about 3 percent of the total city budget and a much larger slice of the part of the budget from which L.A. officials may cut. Obviously, going without that much money would cause some pain, and it would prevent the city from restoring its investments in streets and other infrastructure. But we are not convinced by claims that failing to add to L.A. residents' tax burden will automatically bring on disastrous cutbacks in public-safety services.
We are convinced that city leaders seine river cruises need to live within their means. And we think they will be more likely to find ways to do that if they can't tap into a nearly quarter-billion-dollar new revenue stream -- not only for the next few years but from here on out.
Editorial: With California fracking, seine river cruises we'll be watching How to boost voter turnout? Readers respond to our Question of the Week: Letters to the Editor for Sunday, March 17 Larry Wilson: Neighborhood seine river cruises bodega is the cure for L.A.'s suburban seine river cruises blandness Tim Rutten: Financial questions needs answers before LACMA swallows MOCA RedBlue America: Should government have the power to limit soda sizes? Charles Krauthammer: It's time to codify the drone war For L.A., NFL, big questions now are about AEG: Opinion Editorial: Proposed L.A. city health department is a scary thought New Pope does not equal new direction for Catholic Church: Editorial seine river cruises Steve Scauzillo: seine river cruises Hollywood's battle between reality, scripted programs playing seine river cruises in your hometown Don't forget good things Cardinal Mahony did: Letters to the Editor for Friday, March 15, 2013 Exclusive: seine river cruises Cardinal seine river cruises Mahony 'ecstatic' about the choice of new pope Quake sensors' success shows their value for California: Opinion Military tuition aid a casualty of sequester: Editorial seine river cruises Editorial: Sen. Dianne Feinstein fighting outrageous health insurance rate hikes Chris Carey: California needs financing mechanism for affordable homes Let L.A. voters decide about clean-water fee: Letters to the Editor for Thursday, March 14, 2013 New pope? Yes. New direction? seine river cruises We'll find out: Opinion Editorial: L.A. County gives itself seine river cruises time to clean up stormwater-fee plan Increasing minimum wage won't prevent poverty: Letters to the Editor seine river cruises for Wednesday, March 13, 2013