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Sacramento, California -- With a new $8 billion deficit projected for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, fed-up Californians are planning to protest April 15 against high taxes and big government. Similar protests are planned nationwide.
In support of the Tax Day Tea Parties is SaveCalifornia.com, a leading California family values organization, which is warning state legislators not to even think of raising taxes or fees again.
"Even if the ruling Democrats don't recognize the folly of subsidizing laziness and illegal immigration, surely they can recognize billions in government waste from duplicative agencies, overpriced services, bloated salaries and outright fraud," said SaveCalifornia.com President Randy Thomasson.
"We're laying down the line," said Thomasson. "Raising taxes again on hard-working families is completely unacceptable. Families and businesses have to cut wasteful habits to survive; so must our bloated government. If Democrats or Republicans raise taxes again, 2010 is going to be a rough election year. Making California families pay $1,000 in new taxes is already punishment enough at the hands of our foolish, selfish, tax-and-spend politicians."
SaveCalifornia.com is helping fed-up citizens call and email Governor Schwarzenegger and their state legislators. The pro-family organization is especially urging Californians to attend the April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties.
At least 36 public protests against higher taxes and big government are scheduled for Atascadero, Bakersfield, Chico, El Cajon, Escondido, Eureka, Fresno, Glendale, Hollister, Los Angeles (two locations), Merced, Modesto, Napa, Norco, Oceanside, Palm Desert, Rancho Cucamonga, Redding, Redlands, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego (two locations), San Francisco, San Jose, San Mateo, Santa Ana, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Stockton, Temecula, Valencia, Ventura, Victorville and Yucaipa.
"Hard-working Californians are fed-up with our wasteful, tax-and-spend government that is hurting families and individuals," said Thomasson. "California state government has gotten so bad, it is punishing families that raise and feed their own children by levying a pseudo-tax of $210 per child. People who know that stealing is wrong will loudly protest oppressive taxes and big government at the April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties happening up and down California and across the nation."
For expert commentary on California's government waste, contact Tom Hudson, executive director of the California Taxpayer Protection Committee, at 916-445-3986.
Instead of raising taxes again, massive waste in California government must be eliminated:
1. Duplicative agencies: Instead of one agency handling taxes like in other states, California has four tax agencies that are duplicative, inefficient, confusing to taxpayers, competitive with each other and losing money. This is just one of many areas of state government where, collectively, billions of dollars and untold amounts of time are being wasted through poor organization, overlapping functions, outdated thinking, and bad financial stewardship.
2. Health care fraud and waste: Much of the state's waste comes from Health and Human Services, which amounts to one-third of the state budget. Fraud is rampant in Food Stamps, Medi-Cal and CalWORKS programs. In 2004, the California Performance Review noted, "The Legislative Analyst's Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion." In addition, duplicative agency functions are scattered among several departments, wasting precious funds.
3. Unemployment payments: The Unemployment Insurance Fund is going broke because it places too many people on unemployment, including those fired for misconduct, those not truly seeking work, seasonal workers, ineligible workers, those working other jobs, and deceitful claims. Fraud is definitely part of the $7 billion in annual payments, exacerbated by allowing people to file claims by phone or online and easily qualify rather than appearing in person to provide evidence and undergo examination. Unemployment checks are being mailed out of state to non-Californians and are going to illegal aliens in violation of federal law. Other crimes occur when a fraudster changes a recipients' mailing address online or by phone to his own address. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are being wasted each month on the Employment Development Department's dysfunctional phone system.
4. Government employees and commissions: Bloated salaries, pensions and benefits that vastly outweigh the private sector are weighing down the state budget. In tax year 2007, the State of California had more than 38,000 full-time employees with each being paid more than $100,000. In addition, the University of California had more than 17,000 employees with each being paid more than $100,000 in fiscal year 2006-2007. Very high salaries for state boards and commissions, which only meet once or twice a month, is another well-known example of government waste.
5. Prevailing wage: Conforming California's prevailing wage laws to the federal Davis-Bacon Act would save about $1 billion per year in state construction projects. California's inflated prevailing wage commonly adds 30% to costs.
6. Workers' compensation: Conforming California's workers' compensation laws to Arizona's laws, for example, would save state and local governments $2.5 billion per year. More savings would be realized by stepping up efforts to prevent fraud. Requiring physicians to verify claims should be the norm, not the exception. Unfortunately, California's workers' compensation system commonly allows 104 weeks -- two years -- of "temporary disability" benefits without requiring a medical professional to regularly validate whether the disability is real and the employer-paid benefits justified. What's more, the deceitful practice of allowing ex-cons to collect workers' compensation based on a premeditated "slip and fall" at a jail or prison must be eliminated.
7. Prisons: The average cost per inmate in California is about $49,000, twice the cost to run prisons in other states. For example, the average cost per inmate in Florida is under $20,000. A private prison in Oklahoma, which contracts with Arizona, cost only $47.65 a day per inmate, or $17,392.25 per year, in 2007.
According to the California Legislative Analyst's Office, "The average cost to incarcerate an inmate has more than doubled over the past 20 years from about $19,000 in 1988-89 to about $49,000 in 2008-09, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent." This overspending problem was escalated in 2002, when Democrat Gov. Gray Davis gave the prison guards' union a massive 33.76% pay hike and shut down five private prisons that threatened the union's monopoly.
Since then, overtime and excessive costs have made corrections the fastest-growing part of the state budget. Reducing expenses by reining in bloated salaries, privatizing prisons and following the lower-cost model of federal prisons would result in substantial savings.
In addition to bloated prison costs, skyrocketing prison medical expenditures must be placed on an immediate diet. As the Associated Press reports, "Annual health care spending has soared from $2,714 in 1995 to $13,778 this year for each of the state's 171,000 inmates, according to the state Department of Finance. While the receiver's office disputes the state's cost figure, California's inmate health care costs are high compared to other states. University of Texas researchers found California averages $6,935 annually on each inmate's direct care, while Ohio and Texas each spend less than $4,300. New York spends $5,813, while Florida averages $4,330 on inmate health care, about the same as the federal prison system."
Adding to these costs is the obvious fact that most convicted murderers in California prisons are dying natural deaths with very expensive prison health care instead of receiving the death penalty even though that was their well-deserved sentence.
8. Government schools: California public schools receive more than 40% of the state budget yet have chronic problems: bureaucratic waste, low academic performance, high drop-out rates, lack of discipline, lack of accountability, language confusion, negative socialization, sexualization, violence, etc. Private schools operated by churches usually educate for half the price that the public schools charge taxpayers, with usually much higher achievement levels and parental satisfaction.
In the mid-1960s, California had an admirable public school system and spent $3,000 per pupil in year-2000 inflation adjusted dollars. Now, California taxpayers spend much more for a vastly lower quality of education. Current per-pupil spending statewide averages $11,626, a 27% increase in real, inflation-adjusted terms over the past decade. But all these billions of dollars aren't meeting the academic needs of children. And still, the well-moneyed government employee unions continue to call for more spending and higher taxes, which shouldn't even be considered when public school enrollment is declining.
California government schools are not poor, but misspend much of the $40 billion in state general-fund spending for K-12 public education they receive each year. The Pacific Research Institute study, Citizens' Guide to California Public School Finance, found that California's per-pupil spending is as high as $15,000 or $20,000 per pupil, depending on the district. According to the landmark 2007 education study, Getting Down to Facts, "Solely directing more money into the current system will not dramatically improve student achievement and will meet neither expectations nor needs."
9. Illegal aliens: Subsidizing illegal immigration and non-English languages costs California more than $10 billion per year. The drain of taxpayer funds is felt in the public schools, the state welfare system, the unemployment insurance fund, jails and prisons, and much more under Health and Human Services.
Illegal immigration is not just a federal problem. The California Legislature has undertaken no serious effort to place citizens' needs first at emergency rooms or report employment violations to federal authorities. What's more, California doesn't have firm laws mandating English immersion in schools or requiring English-only government forms and voting pamphlets. Between 1990 and 2004, dysfunctional illegal immigration policies helped close 70 California hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers. More than 42 percent of California's taxpayer-funded, Medi-Cal births are to illegal immigrant mothers. In Los Angeles County alone, the total cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers exceeds $1 billion per year, not counting education. Every month, $37 million in welfare and food stamps goes to illegal aliens and their families in Los Angeles County.
L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich reports, "Within this County's health care delivery system, illegals are being treated at a cost of about $400 million dollars a year. The cost alone to our Criminal Justice system for the 25 percent of the illegals that up the jail population exceeds 250 million dollars a year. Additionally, illegals collect over $240 million in CALWORKS payments and $180 million in food stamp allocations. These costs alone exceed one billion dollars annually -- excluding the cost of education."
Five closings of hospital emergency rooms in 2003 and 2004 in LA County were largely caused by illegal aliens seeking "free" medical care. The head of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency stated that the cost of treating thousands of uninsured (illegal immigrant) is severely distressing hospitals.
Last year, hospital administrator Carol Plato testified to the Florida Legislature how just one hospitalized illegal immigrant cost her medical center $1.5 million. These high-cost occurrences in California, which has more than three times the illegal alien population of Florida, are likely draining funds from California hospitals at a greater magnitude.
10. Surplus property: Billions of dollars in revenue could be easily realized by the sale of thousands of acres of unused or underused property. In 2004, the California Performance Review noted, "The State of California owns millions of acres of real estate, plus more than 22,000 structures. It owns golf courses. It owns a stadium. It owns fairgrounds across the state, some located on patches of the state's choicest land." Last week, the California State Auditor criticized the state Department of General Services and various state agencies for failing to identify and report excess property that could be sold off. Selling of the valuable land under the antiquated San Quentin Prison could yield $2 billion alone.
Government leaders and voters would be wise to follow the substantial recommendations of the California Performance Review, which, in 2004, laid out a plan to save $32 billion over five years by eliminating duplicative bureaucracies, improving internal systems, stamping out fraud, and requiring performance-based budgeting. Now, more than ever, these sensible reforms need to be implemented.
