A Citizen Gets in His Half-Cent’s Worth on the Tax Hike

Mr. Popejoy, meet Mr. Benson. It would be wise to get to know him well, or at least his thinking, because he’s the kind of person you’ll need to win over between now and June 27 if you want that half-cent sales tax increase to fly.

Jack Benson isn’t a member of any anti-tax group. Nor is he interested in joining any Committees of Correspondence whose goal is to kill the tax and recall the supervisors.

Benson is 47 and has lived in Southern California most of his life. He has three grown children who all went through public schools. He and his wife rent an apartment in Newport Beach, and he owns a small firm that rebuilds and retrofits earthquake-damaged buildings. Within the last few years, he lost a business and “started all over again at the age of 44.” Now, he says, “I’m doing OK--not great, but OK.”

He’s followed the county’s bankruptcy closely. Although most of his business dealings are with Los Angeles County, he said he thinks his concerns about government are somewhat universal.

“I’ve been hearing about all these people crying about losing their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, losing a job is a traumatic situation, but I think the county, as with most bureaucracies, has got to start acting as a business instead of something with an unending chain of funds. It’s got to be more responsive, and I speak this way as someone in the construction business, going for permits and planning checks and things like that . . .

“The county doesn’t have that customer attitude. They’re here to tell me what to do. That’s fine, I can go along with that, and a lot of people need to be told, but if it considered nurturing better relations between the business community, especially small businesses, which are leaving the state in droves, we could do a lot better and would feel a lot better about a tax increase.

“There is an emotional element in it, in that I lost everything I had during the recession. Nobody came to bail me out. Nobody. When I went to court, the attitude was, ‘Too bad, why don’t you file for bankruptcy and forget about it?’

“The taxes I have to pay are outrageous. For every dollar I pay out in paychecks, I have to spend 75 cents for taxes, insurance, Social Security. How much more can they get out of us? Why should we bail out government? It wouldn’t bail us out, me or anyone else, but they keep on their spending ways.

“I don’t doubt that they need the money to continue the services, but the thing of it is, are we the taxpayers getting our money from those services? I’m not altogether certain that privatizing is the way to go, either, but I believe a new way of thinking has got to come into play.

“I don’t doubt that they’re in serious financial shape, I really don’t. But let me cite the Chrysler Corp. and what Lee Iacocca did for them. He got tough, rolled up his shirt sleeves and got in and found out what the problems were, where the waste was. Like in L.A. County, get in there and find out where the poker games are that start at noon and go on till 5 when no one knows what’s going on.

“It’s not a matter of do I doubt they need it, but if you give it to them, what are they going to do with it? There’s been more than one time I’ve had to go to a creditor and say, ‘I don’t have the money to pay you. But I’m going to bust my butt and have it for you the first of next month.’ Why give it to them if they’re not making every effort to straighten out the bureaucracy?

“I’m not anti-tax. The government needs money to provide service, no question about it. At one time in my life, for eight months, I had to collect welfare when my wife was pregnant with our third child and we desperately needed it at that time. It was a safety net. I understand that, there are people who need help from time to time. I know we need money for fire and police departments, which are underfunded and understaffed. And I think the biggest crime is education not being funded and funding prisons to hold people who never were given proper education and taught to behave in the first place.

“We need taxes, but I get sick and tired of spending billions like it was nothing. The half-cent is nothing, but it’s tacked on top of a half-cent for this and a half-cent for that, and they want to increase this and increase that. They say the Republican revolution last November was to stop spending. Don’t they get the point? We don’t want to see money spent the way it’s being thrown around. Why won’t government listen to us? Why don’t politicians hear what we’re saying?”

What I heard from Benson was frustration, not vituperation. I asked if county CEO William J. Popejoy could sway him to vote for the tax.

“It’s not that I need to be swayed. The only thing that really upsets me is that everyone agrees the money is being spent the wrong way. He’s going to have to convince me they’re going to do something if he wants my vote on it.

“I just wish they would listen to us more. I’m not a radical. In general, I’m very conservative in my politics but liberal in my religious views. What I am is a common-sense person. I live in this world, and by the grace of God, I have some street smarts, and I would give anything if there were a course in school in street smarts.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.