His new, and much more successful tactic is to dole out corporate pork and priorities in the guise of green and people friendly policies.  For example, his Million Solar Roofs initiative was pushed and heralded by environmental, liberal, and progressive groups as a big leap forwarded.  Apparently, they still haven't read the fine print.  This is a big subsidy aimed primarily at California solar wholesalers and large developers that could be made to do much more environmental and energy good by passing HVAC and insulation performance standards recommended by the California Energy Commission but never given a thought by Schwarzenegger because that would benefit skilled labor without handing big business another pork sandwich.  Or, and did I mention that the government funded Million Solar Roofs initiative, unlike most government programs, has no requirement that any union labor be employed?  Yep, that's a million union busting roofs those liberals and progressives just worked to put in place.

Other plans include big public works and highway projects that will primarily enrich and benefit big businesses and favored contractors and developers who give generously to Arny and other Republicans, but have some appeal to individual drivers, consumers and home buyers, too, which is how the projects are sold in public.  Meanwhile, promises about shoring up education funding he raided, or actually reversing environmental damage when there seems to be no easy way to do so in the pursuit of more corporate welfare never see the light of day.

It's easy to spot once you understand the strategy.  And now you do.

But the sad truth is that the Williamson Act, and the limited amount of local property tax relief it provides, is woefully inadequate to protect farm and ranchlands in California from development.  Agriculturalists may see property tax relief of a few dollars and acre as a result of the Williamson Act. An analysis done in Plumas County California shows a landowner savings of about $1.37 per acre of ranchland. For the average landowner this is welcome relief, but nowhere near enough to affect their long-range decisions about land management and eventually sale for rural residential subdivision.

The real problem in California is much more complex that the retention or elimination of the Williamson Act.

Proposition 13, passed by California voters in 1978, capped property tax to no more than 1% of the value of real property per year. Prop 13 also created a new 2/3 threshold for future increases in taxes, including sales and income taxes, and capped the growth of value in real property to no more than 2% per year. That means that if your real estate base value was $100,000, and real value increased 25% in 5 years (to $125K) your tax would be calculated on the capped 2% per year (or $110K). Multiply this inequity over 30 years in a state with 60% home ownership and you begin to understand the problem.

This had the effect of lower property taxes in California by approximately 57% and disrupting the entire finance structure of the state.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what this did to the financial structure of the state. Property owners were protected and enriched by Prop 13, but all kinds of new taxes were created that encouraged the conversion of land from agricultural uses to rural residential, commercial and industrial uses.

Property owners who owned property for a long time have benefited from inequities built into the system in the amount of local property tax paid based on reassessment at time of sale, leading to dramatic differences in taxes paid on similar properties.

Commercial real estate developers benefited by keeping property in the same corporation while deeding or merging it to new owners, thus retaining lower property tax rates.

Affordable housing has disappeared as the cost of development of new property has skyrocketed in order to make up for the tax base lots with the passage of Prop 13.

California education was gutted as local tax revenue declined and new schemes to fund education through state government were concocted.

Today in California cities and counties compete like vultures for sales tax dollars (as evidenced by the dueling big box stores circumnavigating our urban centers), for transient occupancy tax dollars (as evidenced by the sprouting cookie cutter lodging centers facing the big box retailers) and for impact fees (as evidenced by the trading of corporate welfare for sales tax dollars by negotiating fees through development agreements).

The bottom line in California is that the property tax collected does not even begin to pay for the services in the form of infrastructure, public safety and public good that property owners receive.

All of this leads to the annual dance. The governors (Davis and Schwarzenegger) propose the elimination of services and taxes to local governments, the locals scream unfair and negotiate a deal at the last minute, the Williamson Act (and other proposed cuts) get saved at the last minute and everyone thinks they have done something important.

Meanwhile the core issue, the unfair and unconscionable government subsidy of services to property owners through Proposition 13, which is the greatest welfare program ever perpetrated on the citizens of California, is unchanged and unchallenged. The poor, the ill housed, those without health care and the clients of public education suffer.

The proposals to kill the Williamson Act will continue, year after year, until California voter overturn Prop 13 and come up with a more fair and equitable tax structure that appropriately shares tax revenue between local and state government and eliminates the subsidy that favors the propertied over those starting out in life.  

Thanks for the link and coverage of this important issue.

A small bit of irony in Schwarzenegger's budget plan is that he has been one of the biggest boosters of the "California Grown" marketing project. He will have a hard time promoting California agriculture when visiting Japan or Europe if it is paved over. But then again, that's a problem for the future to tackle.  We can just keep up with the status quo of paving over farmland, right?  We'll just buy our vegetables from China or Argentina.

The inability of humans to recognize dire consequences of today's urban planning  decisions reminds me somewhat of the inability to realize that today's energy and transportation policies could have severe consequences in 10 or 20 years (i.e., climate change).

A May 19, 2006 article in USA Today called California city [Bakersfield] to expand boundaries illustrated this to some extent:

At a time when many areas of the country are trying to contain sprawl, the City Council won approval this year to expand an area chosen for development outside city limits that could nearly double Bakersfield's size in the years ahead.

[...]

Mayor Harvey Hall says Bakersfield has little appetite for higher-density developments and other urban design trends. "I certainly respect the interests of the smart-growth people," Hall says. "But as the mayor, I support prosperity. You just can't stop growth."

If traditional growth patterns persist -- opposition to large-lot, cookie-cutter sprawl has been muted but is on the rise -- it will mean further loss of some of the world's most productive farmland. Bakersfield sits at the southern end of the flat, fertile Central Valley, a 400-mile-long food machine that provides much of the nation's fruit and vegetables.

[...]

Farmland is being urbanized across the valley, but nowhere as fast as here: 70,000 acres in 1988-2002, more than 7,000 acres in 2002-04, the state conservation department's most recent reporting period.

Last year, the department warned Bakersfield that it was illegally expanding in protected farmland. "They're as sprawl as sprawl can get," says Edward Thompson, American Farmland Trust's California director.