Californians rejecting Big Government Propositions according to New Poll

A Big Fat No! to Bloated Budgets of Education Bureaucrats

Just released Poll numbers out of California... From the Field Poll via the Sacramento Bee:

Voters... are rejecting special election initiatives on education funding (Proposition 1B) and on temporary shifts in voter-approved funds for early childhood development (Proposition 1D) and mental health programs (Proposition 1E) to pay for other programs instead.

The poll found a greater proportion of Republicans opposed to the measures than Democrats.

But healthy majorities of both parties – 72 percent overall – answered "yes" when pollsters asked if voting down the measures "would send a message to the governor and the state Legislature that voters are tired of more government spending and higher taxes."

Politicians using political trick to win backing of the entire government growth package

From the LA Times:

Proposition 1B is intended to restore $9.3 billion in "lost" funding that public schools and community colleges normally would have received... The money, to be paid over an estimated six years starting in 2011, could force the state to increase its funding guarantees to schools in the long-term future

But the measure's main reason for being on the ballot is that it gives the powerful California Teachers Assn. and other school unions reason to support the overall package, or at least not campaign too heavily against the spending caps in Proposition 1A.

The margins for opposition to 5 of the 6 measures were roughly 49 to 40% against. The only measure of the six passing was the one to bar legislators from receiving a pay raise when they are running a budget deficit. (Via Memo)