It's Pink Slip Time!

These days, every spring, it seems teachers in public schools face the possibility of losing their jobs. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, a "record number" of teachers will be laid off in the face of budget challenges that schools districts are facing. Perhaps one of the problems is a nearly 40 year old system used to calculate funding for schools. That system, implemented it seems after California voters passed (what I think was) the seriously flawed Prop 13 anti-tax initiative which, as some analysts insist is one of the root causes of our current financial melt-down and needs to be reconsidered, producing what one researcher calls the "roller coaster" budgeting process we see today. Since this system limited the ability of local governments to raise revenue using property taxes, it made education funding more susceptible to the roller coaster of the state's budget process. Here's a short history of Prop 13 from a San Diego PBS Station:

And, Prop 13 continues to enjoy support among California voters, though some polls suggest that support is declining as public services crumble (like cuts to schools).

Here's the rub, however. Why is it that California's want all their public services but don't want to pay for them? They want good schools but don't want to pay taxes to support them. They want the state to be responsive to their particular needs (fire, police, public parks, libraries) but don't seem to make a connection between access and financing them. Perhaps, as the news about the continued attacks on public sector unions continues, voters just think there is a lot of fat to go around and all we need do is cut it out (that of course, would include pensions, affordable health care for state workers and their families etc.). I think there is a deeper cause as well.

It seems to me that this is all part of a wider restructuring of the relationship of government to citizens that has been happening since the 1970s in fits and starts. As historian Julian Zelizer has suggested recently, these specific attacks on public sector unions are symptomatic of a wider assault on the liberal tradition represented by the New Deal (social security, unemployment insurance, collective bargaining among others) that promotes the idea that government does have a role in making our lives better. Zelizer suggests that Franklin D. Roosevelt and others, on the heels of the Great Depression, believed that government "was needed to provide a floor of security to all Americans and to reduce some of the extreme risks that citizens faced in a market-based economy."

So I ask you. What do you think the role of government should be in your life? What services and support do you expect? Do you want excellent schools? Access to affordable public colleges and universities? Fire and police protections when you need them? Books and other resources that a public library can provide? State parks?

And what are you willing to pay? Or, to put it another way, are you willing to support all of these things to ensure that all Californians--especially those with limited means--can enjoy them too?