Happy Birthday, Prop. 13

Well, I guess Prop. 13 has the same divisive effect as always, and the reactions here seem particularly knee-jerked, enough so that people are agreeing/disagreeing with Cody White based solely on their opinions of Prop. 13. While I am pretty sure I can infer White’s opinion of Prop. 13 from his article, it strikes me that he has written an articulate piece on two important questions: how did Prop. 13 effect the funding of public libraries? And, what role did the public’s opinion of public libraries influence their consideration of anti-tax efforts? It seems to me that those are interesting and maybe for California librarians even important questions to try to answer, and I commend White for posing them, and giving us the first provisional answers.

Furthermore, for those who seem to have some ire for White and Goldberg for even raising the issue, White seems to anticipate the arguments: “anecdotal stories of the hardship caused by tax increases and shedding the use of hard data” and the decoupling of the consideration of paying taxes and receiving public benefits.

I agree with the above comment that ALA is so liberal that one could damage their career by disagreeing with them publicly. That is why I think it’s such a joke when ALA publishes all these articles regarding censorship then proceeds to only show one sided views in their columns.

And regarding public sector unions. They shouldn’t exist period. No one who elects their “bosses” should be allowed to collectively bargain. Because their “bosses” are beholden to them. By their very nature public sector services/unions cannot go “out of business” if they demand too much. Their excesses are eventually passed on to tax payers as increased burdens for services that are needed (firemen, policemen). By threatening to strike they can hold cities or people’s children hostage till demands are met (teachers unions).

Even FDR doubted whether public sector employees should be allowed to unionize.

“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”

Unbelievable that that a senior editor from a professional journal would espouse this backward view. Keep wishing for the good old days, back when the public had no say in the budgets of municipal entities. Next you will be bemoaning union losses in the public sector, and the reduction of public sector pensions. Librarians need to be open minded to the “new normal” ( long periods of slow growth due to global balance sheet deficits). Once that revelation is achieved we can begin advocating for libraries in a a more reasonable fashion. To continue to tow the old line will only marginalize us even more in the eyes of those who pay for our services.

I lived in California during the Prop 13 vote. What you and Cody White fail to note is that at the time of Prop 13, local governments in California were raising property taxes constantly and revaluing people’s homes annually in some communities - to values that no one could have actually gotten for their houses. What resonated with California voters was that we looked at our tax bills and saw that we were paying more in taxes than our mortgage payments and home insurance combined. People were literally losing their homes because their property taxes were so high they couldn’t keep up the payments. 34 years ago I was paying over $400 a month in property taxes on a modest 3-bedroom tract house. Things were out of control and people had to step in because the politicians wouldn’t. Oh, and as for library services - my local librarian who was paid with that $400 a month tax bill refused to check a book out to my daughter for her science fair project “because some other person might need it and it was the only one in the system”. I will never forget that woman. I wrote down the ISBN, bought the book from the publisher, and voted for Prop 13, because who needs to pay that much for that kind of service? And I later got an MLS and became a librarian because libraries deserve better than that.

Thank goodness for balanced messures such as prop 13. If it were not for legislative measures such as prop 13 California would be in even more fiscal trouble. Libraries and all municipal entities need to re-prioritize to ensure they offer world class service while also not burdening local tax payers. This should be obvious based on the results of the Wisc recall results and the fact that state public pension funds are underfunded by tens of billions