California had a birthday this summer that few people noticed. The happy event was the diamond anniversary of the passage of Proposition 1, which requires a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature to approve a state budget. Nobody, as far as is known, popped a balloon.
The exact date, for those who like trivia, was June 27, 1933, which means the anniversary fell not long after the Legislature missed the June 15 constitutional deadline to pass this year's budget, and just a few days before the beginning of the current fiscal year. Since then, California has set an all-time record for budgetary gridlock -- 80 days and counting.
The two-thirds requirement makes California one of only a handful of states requiring a supermajority to enact a budget. Forty-six states, practicing quaint, old-fashioned democracy, can pass budgets with simple majorities.
The two-thirds rule is an enormous obstacle, yet it was a side issue when it was passed in 1933. The big issue at that time -- how surprising! -- was property tax relief. Like the rest of the country in 1933, California was in the pit of the Depression. The two-thirds threshold was almost an afterthought.
The heart of Proposition 1 was a complicated shift of taxes and revenues between the state and local governments, including an increase in state support for schools. Because the Legislature also was seeking to impose a sales tax, the measure, in an effort to reassure voters that money wouldn't be wasted, included a 5% spending cap that could only be overridden by a two-thirds vote. The ballot argument barely mentioned the spending limit and said nothing about the two-thirds vote. Talk about unintended consequences.
The Constitution's spending restrictions have been amended since 1933, but the two-thirds supermajority rule, which now applies to any budget -- whether or not it increases spending -- has stayed put.
And, of course, it's become a fundamental part of the state's latter-day, near-chronic budget problems because it allows any minority that controls more than a third of the votes in either house -- currently anti-tax Republicans -- to, in effect, veto the budget or any other fiscal measure. Today, in practice, it means that to pass a budget, the Democrats must win over two Republican votes in the Senate and six in the Assembly.
