ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Punching Hole in Prop. 13 Is an Affront to Taxpayers : An amendment to make it easier to raise property taxes is a blueprint for further debt.

The state Legislature has reconvened for 1992, and like wolves circling a wounded animal, the spendthrifts in Sacramento are closing in for yet another attack on California taxpayers. Their target is one of the few remaining havens that taxpayers still enjoy: Proposition 13. This bulwark of limited government is to the tax-and-spend crowd what sunlight in to vampires.

Apparently, the $8 billion in new taxes enacted last summer wasn’t enough. These taxers now want more of the public’s money. They plan to accomplish this tax grab with an amendment to the California Constitution, ACA 6.

The purpose of the amendment is simple and direct: to punch a hole in Proposition 13 big enough to drive a truckload of new taxes through. It would allow local governments to raise property taxes by a simple rather than two-thirds majority to pay for general obligation bonds, i.e., more public debt.

ACA 6 proponents are already beating the drums for its passage this year. State Treasurer Kathleen Brown recently added her voice to this chorus. Speaking to the California Assn. of School Business Assns., Brown urged a letter-writing and media campaign for passage of ACA 6. Her contention: It’s too hard to obtain a two-thirds majority authorizing bonded debt.

But isn’t that precisely the point? California voters were able to grasp as much when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13 in 1978. Why does that concept continue to elude the disciples of Big Government?

Or perhaps they understand it all too well, and it is that knowledge that drives them to abolish the two-thirds safeguard.

ACA 6 would allow a school district, county office of education, or community college district to incur bonded indebtedness for the construction, reconstruction or rehabilitation of school facilities. Local government would be given similar powers to impose taxes for criminal justice facilities. While these are laudable ends, the means to achieve them would trample the rights of California taxpayers.

It seems there’s to be no rest for the tax weary. The proponents of ACA 6 will try to woo us with cynical appeals to our legitimate desires for quality education and an improved criminal justice system. They will use the salesman’s old ploy of breaking the price into bite-size morsels, hoping we’ll swallow their snake oil more easily. “After all,” we’ll be assured, “it’s only a few more dollars a week! Aren’t our children worth it?” We must not be fooled. Their real agenda is making it easier to flog us with more taxes.

ACA 6 is a blueprint for government to mire us further in debt, as if the spendocrats in Sacramento weren’t already well practiced in that enterprise.

Making it easier for local government to descend into bonded debt defies common sense, especially in light of recent developments in the Mello-Roos bond market. According to a recent series of articles in The Times, cities taking advantage of this Proposition 13 loophole have piled up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Now, it seems many of these bonds are shaky, and the cities issuing them may be unable to pay them off. ACA 6 would only make it easier for local governments to pile more of such debt on property owners.

This proposed evisceration of Proposition 13 couldn’t come at a worse time. The newspapers are filled with accounts of businesses fleeing the state or refusing to locate here because of the hostile business climate. California already ranks as one of the most heavily taxed states. Do the acolytes of big government truly believe their prescription for more taxes is the medicine that will revive the state economy?

The simple truth is that prosperity and fiscal integrity will not be restored as long as state finances are in the hands of those who worship in the Church of Higher Taxes and kowtow to the Deity of Big Government. “When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and the expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government.” These words, which aptly describe our present predicament, belong to President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from an era when that party was anchored in common sense and a belief in limited government. His current heirs would do well to heed their forebear’s advice.

Fortunately, the proponents of ACA 6, and other tax hike schemes have awakened a sleeping taxpayers’ giant. Last summer’s massive public protest that forced several Orange County school districts to rescind maintenance assessment fees, and last November’s school board elections where anti-tax candidates roared to victory, offer a glimpse of the potential power of this new anti-tax movement.