Rift widens between backers of education initiatives 30 and 38.

[RandySF]

All pretense of goodwill is gone between backers of the two competing education tax measures on November’s ballot.

State Board of Education President Mike Kirst and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg joined union leaders Monday in sending a strongly worded letter to Molly Munger, the primary backer of Proposition 38, asking her not to run TV ads criticizing Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s school funding measure. Kirst also emailed PTA district presidents, implying they should pressure Munger “to do all in your power to stop this destructive course of action.” The state PTA, bucking education groups representing school boards, unions, and administrators, is a co-sponsor, with Munger, of Prop 38.

The letters to Munger and the PTA follow a TV interview in Los Angeles on Sunday in which Munger called Prop 30 TV ads featuring Brown “utterly deceptive,” marking a turning point that advocates for more education funding have feared: both campaigns going negative on each other, to the potential destruction of both.

In the latest polls, Prop 30, which would raise $6 billion annually for the General Fund by increasing the income tax for the wealthiest earners, along with a temporary sales tax increase, has a precarious majority barely breaking 50 percent.


http://www.edsource.org/today/2012/rift-widens-between-backers-of-ed-initiatives-30-and-38/20883?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdsourceToday+%28EdSource+Today%29#.UHYi1H15RoU

[ellisonz]

1. Prop 30!

woot

[bemildred]

2. Oy. Oooooog. All right, let's have the discussion.

I'm thinking about voting for both, to make sure at least one passes. So why not?

And 38 raises more money for longer and is less regressive, or so it appears to me, So why not?

And I don't like the legislative blackmail being applied in 30, vote for us or the schools are doomed, I tend to reject such political games on principle, the doom of our schools is very much due to the choices of our legislature, and will not be fixed with the piddly amount of money for the short period in 30, the legislature needs to suck it up and pass reliable, progressive long-term corporate income tax so that business pays for the schools and the employees we provide for them. More patching of the current disfunctional mess is not what is required.

Finally, if we set a progressive income tax system in place for 12 years, it's going to be near impossible to get rid of, and near impossible to argue that it will ruin the economy, because it won't.

---

Now, that said, it's already clear to me I'm going to have to read the text of the law for both, before making a final decision, the ballot arguments are lacking.

[KamaAina]

3. 38 reaches down to much lower income levels than 30

wiping out any advantage it might have had in terms of being regressive.

It also gives all the money to schools, leaving Medi-Cal, CalWORKS and so forth up the proverbial creek.

Finally, Molly Munger has now revealed herself to be a Trojan horse; her son, Charles, is putting big bucks behind anti-union Prop 32.

[bemildred]

4. Well, Charlie is the one that worries me.

I mean trust has no place with them. My primary concern with the Munger law is what it forbids. And I'm leery of further tying the legislatures hands with money, and I'm leery of laws that forbid other changes in the same area too, education here.

But OTOH I am quite dissatisfied with Jerry's prop, much too timid for me, pretty much a status quo option, the schools stay bad, tax law is not changed much or for long, keeping the old game alive, the basic inadequate funding regime continues; and I am really sick of Sacramento threatening public services to get people to vote for bad laws, that's how we got here, that's the corporate "don't tax me Bro, I'm special" game too.

One of the reasons I have to read the text of the laws is because the devil will be in the details with both.

Thanks for your comments. I'll comment further here when I've read them both. Mayber we can work out a consensus.