Tonight the Anaheim City Council will take up three proposed amendments to the City Charter. One falls squarely within the conservative tradition of representative self-government. The other two are expressions of the folly of the progressive belief in direct democracy as superior to representative government.
Councilwoman Kris Murray first proposed the “Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act” when she was sworn in to a second term last December. At present, Anaheim voters have the right to vote on proposals to increase existing taxes or impose new ones. Like any other ballot measure, these can be placed before voters either by a simple majority of the city council or the collection of enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Murray’s proposal would increase the necessary city council vote threshold to a two-thirds majority. That super-majority requirement builds on and amplifies existing protections possessed by Anaheim taxpayers against the inherent tendency of government to seek more of the people’s money. The tradition of requiring of super-majority consent to matters of acute importance goes back to the Founders.
Councilwoman Murray isn’t proposing super-majority council approval to place only certain kinds of tax increases before the voters, or only for taxes increases that would be used to certain purposes. Her amendment pertains to any and all new or increases taxes.
On the other hand, the two charter amendments proposed by Mayor Tom Tait emanate from the progressive political tradition that for more than a century has deeply undermined the republican idea and practice of limited, representative government.
Anaheim citizens govern themselves through the City Council, whose members they elect at regular elections. These elected representatives make the decisions about how much and in what way to spend city tax revenues. Voters, in turn, can hold them accountable by the voters for those decisions at regular elections. Citizens, engaging in politics, can reward or punish their elected officials for clearly identifiable votes. This is representative self-government in the spirit of the Founders; as conservative scholar of progressivism Prof. Ronald Pestritto puts it, “the expression of popular will through the medium of representative institutions (in other words, republicanism instead of direct democracy)”
Mayor Tait’s two charter amendments are dubbed the “Let the People Vote” and “Protect Taxpayers From Debt” acts. The former is a merely a re-naming of the abortive “Take Back Anaheim” initiative that was launched by liberal activists and funded by the Orange County Employees Association back in 2012. After losing the council vote on the GardenWalk Hotels agreement, opponents responded by saying all such agreements must henceforth be approved by the voters. The “Protect Taxpayers From Debt” act and would “require voter approval of City actions to authorize bonds issued by other government agencies in cases where City funds are used to pay for the bonds issued by the other government agency.” Like its twin, this is a response to being on the losing end of the approval the bond package financing the expansion of the Anaheim Convention Center. [Seeing the pattern here?]
Both amendments are arbitrary exercises in ballot-box budgeting that dilute the direct accountability that is integral to representative government. They’re attempts to slough the council’s governing responsibilities directly onto the shoulders of voters who elected the council to govern.
Arbitrary, Ballot-Box Budgeting
The “Take Back Anaheim/Let the People Vote” charter amendment cherry picks a single potential way in which the city council can exercise its legitimate powers and sets it aside for plebiscitary approval. What if the city council used non-TOT revenues to support hotel development? Or used TOT revenue to assist non-hotel development? Nothing – no voter approval necessary. So exactly what principle is being defended here? It cannot be that city use of tax revenues to assist or subsidize economic development must be approved directly by the voters; if that were so, proponents wouldn’t have surgically targeted one particular use of one particular tax revenue stream.
These two charter amendments are reactions to being on the losing end of two council votes – political illustrations of the axiom that “hard cases make for bad law.” If the GardenWalk and Convention Center expansion votes had gone the other way, does anyone believe these amendments would have been brought forward?
Why stop with bond issues and TOT subsidies for hotel development? It’s not as if there is any consistency or any limiting principle operating here. If these particular uses of city revenue merit direct voter approval, then why not other, larger, expenditures? Why not require voter approval of every expenditure exceeding $5 million or $10 million or $20 million? The city’s annual budget of $1.6 billion dwarfs the Convention Center expansion and the GardenWalk Hotels agreement. Why not put it to the voters? Or city-subsidized enterprises like the Anaheim Packing District? Or agreements on public employee pensions that encumber city taxpayers for generations?
Is using a tax on hotel guests to spur the development luxury hotels that generate more tax revenue and enhance Anaheim’s convention and tourism economy more evil than other uses of tax dollars?
Dilution of Accountability in Governance
Direct democracy dilutes the accountability of representative government. To the extent policy decisions are palmed off directly onto voters, the city council becomes less a governing body and more an advisory one. The mayor’s bet is his “Let The People Vote” amendment would effectively kill any more economic assistance agreements for a hotel development because they could be demagogued as “crony capitalism” and “taxpayers giveaways.” But what if voters approved such an agreement and it actually did turn out badly? Who is accountable? It’s not as if the voters can fire themselves.
If pacts like the GardenWalk Hotels agreement or bond packages like the one financing the Anaheim Convention Center expansion are such a dire threats to Anaheim’s public fisc, why do these twin ballot-box budgeting amendments allow their approval by a simple majority vote? Why are proponents satisfied to allow 50.1% of Anaheim voters to burden the other 49.9% with what they believe to be debt and tax giveaways that undermine the city’s solvency? If the threat is that grave, why didn’t they set the voter approval threshold at a two-thirds majority? Their proposed remedy doesn’t match the seriousness of their diagnosis.
The people advocating for these two amendments routinely claim the council majority votes on items, projects and policies the consequences of which they do not understand. These councilmembers spend a huge chunk of their time studying, learning, asking questions about and informing themselves about issues like the GardenWalk Hotels project and the Convention Center expansion. Yet, at the same time, proponents of this progressive amendments believe a better way is to have such matters decided by a voters who have neither the time nor the inclination to invest a fraction of that time and effort?
Proponents of these two ballot-box budgeting amendments want to expand the scope of government policy-making that is directly decided by an electorate that is increasingly less engaged with government — as is demonstrated by declining voter turnout. They would make the City Charter more of a patchwork of double-standards. Property owners can change their zoning with the approval of the Planning Commission and the City Council – unless it is in the Resort District, in which case it is subject to a city-wide vote. The City Council can use TOT revenue to assist economic development projects – unless it’s a hotel, in which case it is subject to a city-wide vote.
While not talking about this particular matter, Professor Pestritto’s summary of the difference between the traditional republican and progressive ideas of governance are applicable:
For the authors of The Federalist, the essential character of American government was that it would be not only “wholly popular,” but also entirely representative. It was by channeling popular will through representative institutions that self-government could be made consistent with safeguarding man’s natural liberties. As Madison famously explained in Federalist 10, it was a purpose of the Constitution “to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens” so that “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”
The Progressives believed, by contrast, that this filtering of public opinion through political institutions had resulted in a stifling of the public will altogether. They believed that human nature had progressed to the point where democratic majorities could be trusted with more direct control of government and that the time had come to get the institutions out of the way.
Mayor Tait’s amendments are about getting the institution of the city council out of the way in two areas of city governance that have been carved out for political reasons. If successful, they would diminish the extent to which the “essential character of American government” is present in how Anaheim governs itself. They’re not taxpayer protections so much as admissions that the individuals Anaheim citizens have elected to govern the city cannot be trusted to do so on the big stuff – which begs the question of why have an elected city council in the first place? If the mayor and city council aren’t competent to make these decisions and then be held to account by voters, then abolish those offices and let the city manager put these matters directly to the citizenry in regular plebiscites. That would at least be consistent.
