Tour of L.A. Shows Tax Game Is Played on an Uneven Field

If students of the financial priorities of Greater Los Angeles were arranging a tour, they might start it downtown at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s headquarters.

This 26-story edifice, with its Italian granite and $300,000 aquarium, is so grand that critics have dubbed it the “Taj Mahal.” This is the same MTA that recently conceded that dreams of a subway linking distant reaches of L.A. will remain dreams due to the expense.

Nearby, the Twin Towers Jail is worth a stop. Although construction of this $337-million state-of-the-art hoosegow was completed 16 months ago, it stood empty until today because of budget problems. At least the jail, unlike L.A.’s subway, promises to have high occupancy.

Now let’s drive to a public school.

Hundreds are fixer-uppers, but money is tight. Many need new roofs, but perhaps the best example is Charles Maclay Middle School in Pacoima, one place where roofers are already at work, thanks to emergency funding.

Nature started the job weeks ago when powerful winds ripped the old patched and re-patched tar paper from Maclay’s rooftops and flung heavy shards about the campus. Fortunately, this happened overnight. Later, the rains came. Nineteen of 50 classrooms had to be abandoned.

“If you had been here two days ago,” said Assistant Principal Dan Rodriguez, “you could have seen it raining inside the classroom.”

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It isn’t that L.A.’s grown-ups don’t care about L.A.’s children. Of course they do. A vast majority of people who went to the polls cared enough last November to vote yes on a $2.4-billion bond measure to improve L.A.’s schools. On a day when President Clinton won reelection with a plurality of 49%, when the anti-affirmative action measure Proposition 209 was passed with 54%, the L.A. school bond measure received a resounding 65.5% of the vote.

And lost.

It came heartbreakingly close, but lost because of a provision in the state Constitution that requires a two-thirds super-majority vote for the passage of school bonds financed by property tax increases. One justification for a super-majority is that the vote imposes a long-term financial commitment on taxpayers.

How tough is it to get two-thirds? Consider the last time the L.A. school district got a bond measure passed. It happened in 1971, not long after the Sylmar earthquake closed many schools and raised serious safety questions about others.

Under state law, this special bond required only a majority vote because it would pertain to buildings deemed structurally unsafe. This proved fortuitous, because this bond measure received a vote totaling 66.5%, still shy of two-thirds.

Critics have long complained that a no vote has twice the value of a yes vote. With schools falling into disrepair throughout California--and school bond issues narrowly failing--Gov. Pete Wilson recently called for the state Constitution to be amended so that only a simple majority is required to pass local school construction bonds.

Wilson wants to put the proposed amendment on the ballot in 1998, but ardent opposition can be expected from those who regard Proposition 13 as sacrosanct. Proposition 13 (which passed with a simple majority) extended the two-thirds super-majority already required for school construction to other property tax increases.

One of the unintended effects of Proposition 13 was a great transfer of authority from local school boards to Sacramento.

Wilson’s power is now evident in grants designed to reduce elementary class sizes. Eliminating the super-majority, Wilson’s aides say, would help achieve the practical goal of improving classroom facilities and the political goal of restoring a measure of local control.

It would also reduce some of the bedeviling confusion over how the public imposes taxes on itself. The dichotomy between the MTA’s handsome headquarters and the conditions of the school can be traced to the wildly inconsistent way tax dollars were raised.

Remember Proposition C? That was the half-cent county sales tax in 1990 that helped make the MTA what it is today. It barely got more than 50%--and passed.

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Our tour of Maclay includes the screening of a video that shows tree branches on rooftops and torn tar paper. “Had it been during the school day,” the narrator intones, “the results would have been tragic.”

Now walk around some yellow caution tape and find Room 2. Inside, a blue tarp covers desks that are pushed to the center. Warped blackboards have been taken down and lean against a wall near soaked newspapers. There’s already a new roof overhead, but here’s a puddle where a teacher should be standing--residual leakage through ceiling panels that must be replaced. Elsewhere, students have returned to a classroom where damage was lighter. There’s still a damp, musty smell.

On April 8, voters will be asked again to approve the $2.4-billion bond measure. The money goes beyond new roofs and other basic maintenance to the construction of new classrooms and modernization of old ones, portable classrooms to relieve overcrowding, security and alarm systems, computer technology, locker replacement, and bleacher repairs. It would bring air conditioning to more schools. On hot days in the San Fernando Valley, room temperatures often exceed 100 degrees. Does air conditioning seem extravagant?

The Twin Towers Jail has it.