Proposition 1D			00.00 10/05
	Opinion
	Submitted as: "Education Facilities:  Kindergarten-University Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2006"
	Measure 1D is a bond in the amount of $10.416 billion, to provide funding for all parts of the California School system, to construct and modernize education facilities.
	Bonds are not "free money".  They have a number of negative qualities:
		The money is borrowed, and must be repaid.  This makes the state a debtor, and the debt at some point can become dangerous to the state's credit rating.
		The borrowed money must be repaid with interest; for a 30 year bond at 5%, this about doubles the face value cost of the bond.
		Money to pay interest generally comes from the state General Fund, operating money, dollars that might have been used instead to pay for current projects.
	Consequently, we believe bonds should be used only as a last resort, in cases where the need is urgent and there are no other means of raising the necessary money.  The purposes should be well defined and responsibility for management should be clearly described.
	1D would qualify, were it not for one fatal aspect.  The almost $3 billion that would go to pay for UC, CSU and Community Colleges is a legitimate request; those are all education facilities run at the State level.  As for the rest, there are certainly agencies in place to distribute the money and processes in being to distribute it.  There may even be a crisis, some places in the state.  But that's the problem:  If there really is a crisis, could it be at all the result of mismanagement by the Legislature, which withheld money owed to the schools under Prop 98, to save its own hide when the Budget needed to be balanced?  And if it is, why should we trust them, with more than $7 billion, to do the proper job now?
	The solution to the problem of the local schools is to STOP sending money to Sacramento, to be doled back with all sorts of restrictions and mandates.  We should not support this recurrent bleeding off of everyone's local tax base to pay for statewide bonds to be administered by people we don't know, and whose managerial skills are in doubt.  Instead we need to identify our local needs, and pass our own local bonds and parcel taxes, to be administered by people we can watch and directly control.
	It will be argued that there are school districts that simply do not have the tax base required to fund their own schools.  That may well be.  If so, it should be a simple matter for each of the other school districts to agree to send some portion, say 5%, of all the parcel tax and bond money it raises, to Sacramento to in turn be provided to those schools.  A small price to pay, to regain local control.
	Vote NO on 1D.
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