No On California's Proposition 1-D

With Prop 1-D, California taxpayers are again being asked to sign off on a multi-billion dollar bond issue. Guess what? It's for the kids.

Our local school district has been flirting dangerously close to tax-paid advocacy and may be over the line in principle, if not in fact, when it used tax dollars to promote this bond issue in two direct mailings.

My analysis of this bond issue appears in the San Diego Union Tribune today.

Only one of the six new schools scheduled to open this fall in San Diego actually met the deadline for the first day of school. San Diego voters approved a $1.51 billion local bond measure in 1998 and were promised 13 new schools and three rebuilt schools. Most of these schools are behind schedule and over budget.

San Diego's experience is representative of the overall school construction process in California. Children continue to languish in deteriorating or overcrowded classrooms, but not because of a lack of money. In the past decade, California voters have approved nearly $100 billion in school construction bonds at the state and local level. The state still has more than $3 billion in school construction funds that have not been spent from the last school bond initiative. Yet, with Proposition 1D, voters are being asked to approve another $10.4 billion (costing taxpayers $20.3 billion with interest) for school construction.

Whole thing here.