Why don't they declare an emergency on the actual problem, chronic shortages of housing supply, and reform their zoning and tax/rent entitlements to fix it?<p>It's hard for me to take anything California government does seriously right now while they're ignoring the 10 ton elephant in the room that's causing almost literally every other problem.<p>If they don't start addressing this with a significant attack plan extremely soon, their tax base will leave the state in droves, and they will never raise taxes enough to make up the difference. It's an emergency, declare it one and do something real about it.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - rahm emanuel
> Because of rules designed to limit tax increases, cities can get proposed tax hikes on Tuesday’s primary ballot only by declaring a crisis. At least two have done so this year, following at least 50 since 2008.<p>That doesn't seem like a particularly informative year to use as a cutoff; 2009 would have been the first year of primaries during the recession, so it's not inconceivable that there were a number of municipalities in a financial crisis then.
I don't really have a problem with this. Declaring a "fiscal emergency" doesn't allow the city to enact new taxes, it just lets them put new taxes on the ballot for people to vote on. They're just using a loophole that let's them get around what is IMO a silly law.<p>(Then again, if this loophole didn't exist, perhaps this would encourage them to fix the actual problem with the law.)
It seems silly and potentially dangerous to limit when a city can legislate democratically (even with the Fiscal Emergency exception.) Is there any good argument for this, other than people not liking taxes?
Why don't they reduce spending?<p>Surely there are expenditures deemed "being nice" which isn't a real neccessity for the local citizens?