UCSD's
Instructional Television (ITV) presented viewers a fine first-night-of-Chanukah
gift late last night (Tuesday, Dec. 7)—a tape of a thought-provoking lecture
delivered in November by Robert Hertzberg, the former speaker of the California
Assembly who now is running for mayor of Los
Angeles.
That
Hertzberg was in San Diego, instead of campaigning in Los Angeles, bespeaks this
Democratic landsman's great interest in the subject of re-inventing
local government, not only in Los Angeles but throughout California.
Hertzberg suggested that local governments are programmed to fail, not by
design, but as the unintended consequence of a series of decisions made at other
levels of government. The federal government collects $60 billion in taxes from
Californians, he said. If the federal government took half, and shared the
other half with the state and local governments, there'd be more than
enough for California to solve its financial crisis and for local
governments to address their needs.
Howard Jarvis' famous Proposition 13 of 1978 tightened the strait jacket
on local government. Not only did it restrict property taxes to 1 percent of
assessed valuation, but it also paved the way for property tax revenues to be
diverted by the state from local governments to other causes, according to
Hertzberg. Cash-starved
cities therefore devise ways to generate more sales tax revenue—a portion of
which is returned by the state government to the localities where they are
generated. Thus building a Wal-Mart, shopping mall, and automobile mall
become priorities, whether or not they represent good planning.
Whereas local governments once competed with other cities across the United
States to attract or retain industry, today their competitors may be anywhere in
the world where lower wages prevail. Additionally, if port cities like Los
Angeles and San Diego fail to handle cargoes quickly, they may find that Pacific
Rim shipping companies are willing to spend 12 extra days at sea to take their
goods to East Coast cities like New York, and thereby eliminate the need to move
the goods overland by truck or rail.
California has 58 counties, but Hertzberg said he believes a commission set up
by former Gov. Pete Wilson was correct when, for conceptual purposes, it divided
California into nine separate regions—one of which is comprised by San Diego
and Imperial Counties, which sit on the international border with Mexico.
Another is Hertzberg's own Greater Los Angeles region including the urban areas
of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura Counties. Although
Hertzberg defined the problems for local governments, he did not have sufficient
time in the hour program to lay out solutions. On the one hand, problems are
regional, and revenue-sharing arrangements may be appropriate. Hertzberg
pointedly commented that a small city like Carlsbad, with its large "Car
Country" mall, sits on a surplus, while other cities in the San Diego
region struggle. On the other hand, Hertzberg—with an eye towards his
secessionist constituency in the San Fernando Valley—said citizens prefer to
interact local governments that are smaller and more geographically
accessible. —Donald
H. Harrison
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