Who’s to blame?

Re “California’s hurdles,” Opinion, June 25

Jerry Roberts’ and Phil Trounstine’s Opinion article lists Proposition 13 as the first factor that makes California impossible to govern. George Skelton still speculates on why voters rejected last month’s budget propositions. Do they ever talk to regular voters?

Proposition 13 gave the same message as last month’s vote. California needs to live within the money it takes in. If that is not enough to provide the services that people need, the voters will elect people who will raise taxes.

No one knows what level of services California is willing to pay for because the state hasn’t tried living within its available funds.

Californians last month clearly voted to stop the borrowing, but the governor and both parties have already rejected that message and are loading up the budget proposals with fiscal deceit.

The problem is not the fickle voters -- it’s the absolute denseness of the politicians.

John Vasi

Santa Barbara

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The authors say there are “six key factors combined to make the state impossible to govern.” Their arguments are good, and in part show why the state is in such a financial mess.

But the “politically correct” article leaves out perhaps the most important reason our state is going bankrupt -- the cost of illegal aliens.

Education, incarceration, providing healthcare -- add up all the state’s expenditures for illegal aliens and you have gone a long way toward balancing the budget.

Bill Cool

Corona del Mar

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It never ceases to amaze me how politicians and political pundits blame nearly every problem in California on Proposition 13. The measure was a product of failed leadership in Sacramento, no different from the failed leadership in the current budget crisis.

All the other “hurdles” the authors describe are related to, or the result of, the same incompetence in Sacramento.

Budget initiatives, gerrymandering, term limits, boom-and-bust taxation and the two-thirds vote are as frustrating to the public as the politicians. The difference: If the politicians do their job, the public won’t have to do the politicians’ job. Stop blaming the public.

Cary Adams

North Hollywood

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Among the factors listed, term limits are the worst.

We, as voters, need to think logically and rationally about the consequences of propositions that are on the ballot. Just because a proposition sounds good -- like term limits -- doesn’t mean that it is so.

We kick around the California Legislature but we, the voters, are the ones who approved a number of propositions that have made our state ungovernable.

I, for one, want an expert politician representing me -- not an inept person who has one eye on their next political position.

We, the voters, have made it very, very difficult to be a legislator and do a good job for his or her constituents.

Frances Hayward

Laguna Niguel

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Roberts and Trounstine criticize Proposition 13 as damaging. But damaging to whom? Damaging to the state’s power to exploit homeowners without limit by raising their property taxes at whim.

Proposition 13 was the best taxpayer-protection bill ever passed in California. The real cause of California’s fiscal catastrophe has been decades of irresponsible spending by the Legislature and various governors.

The state has become ungovernable because, instead of working to protect individual rights, the state government has worked tirelessly to satisfy every last need of every citizen.

By what right? Needs are not a proper claim on your neighbor’s money.

Edwin A. Locke

Westlake Village