SACRAMENTO — Californians seem willing to be talked into accepting a tax increase to help balance the books in Sacramento.
But that will require political leadership, and currently voters don't detect much emanating from the state capital. People are pretty disgusted with the politicians.
"The public is not very impressed with the kind of money management taking place in Sacramento," says Mark Baldassare, president and pollster of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. "Here we are back with the same kind of mess we started with four years ago."
That was shortly after Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor vowing to "end the crazy deficit spending."
He and legislators now are peering into a projected deficit hole of $15.2 billion for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Baldassare released a new statewide survey today showing, the pollster says, that "voters are divided along party lines just like the Legislature that represents them."
It also shows voters to be conflicted and confused.
Last week, Schwarzenegger revised his $144-billion budget proposal and offered as its centerpiece a scheme to borrow against future lottery profits. The lottery would be modernized and expanded. Wall Street investors would pay the state $5 billion a year for three years and get back at least $38 billion -- principal and interest -- over 30 years from the presumably enhanced lottery take.
If legislators and voters didn't like that idea, or if the revenue fell short of erasing the deficit, the governor offered a backup: Raise the sales tax by 1 cent on the dollar for up to three years.
Voters surveyed by Baldassare could stomach the sales tax hike a lot better than borrowing off the lottery.
Asked their view of Schwarzenegger's lottery-borrowing plan, 62% opposed it. How'd they feel about Plan B: raising the sales tax? That was favored by 57%, including a slim majority of Republicans.
"It's about as close as you can get to a consensus -- 57%," says Baldassare, "given how negative people are about the direction of the state and the leadership of the governor and Legislature."
A majority of surveyed voters (56%) thought that tax hikes should be part of any budget solution, along with spending cuts.
But for the most part, the public is polarized on taxes. By nearly 2 to 1, Democrats believe that "tax increases should be included in the governor's budget plan." Republicans disagree by the same ratio.
