Opinion: Should The Times back a second anti-gang parcel tax effort?
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In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it’s safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.
Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.
The subject came up at Tuesday’s City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city’s still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.
When the Times called for a ‘no’ vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here’s a snippet, in case you don’t want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:
But nothing real has actually happened yet. No evaluators have been hired, no evaluations have been completed, no evidence yet shows that the city has turned a corner.
So, what about now? Is the city ready yet? That’s what Hahn was getting at when she quizzed Carr at the committee hearing.
Do you think you would have enough data, enough facts, enough, you know -- We have got it right, we’ve got our programs in place, we’ve got accountability, we have a form, that really the L.A. Times would finally give their stamp of approval to that proposition if we put it before the voters again. Because obviously that was their criticism last time, that we didn’t have enough, kind of, under our belt to actually….
Committee chairman Tony Cardenas jumped in at that point, saying the Times ‘didn’t even understand what we were talking about.’
In fact, I think we understood it just fine. For more than three decades now, federal, state and local governments have been de-funding programs that used to provide top-flight education, employment opportunities, recreation and counseling for youth and support for their families. If Los Angeles is to give up its place as the world’s gang capital, it must again invest in more than just law enforcement and crime suppression. So we’re going to have to pay more. But if taxpayers can’t see that every dollar is being spent wisely, any new tax will just add to the current wave of anti-government, no-new-taxes sentiment.
Connie Rice of the Advancement Project said before the election that pumping new money into city anti-gang programs would have been tantamount to putting the cash in a pile and setting it aflame. ‘You might as well just have a bonfire,’ she said at a City Hall meeting. But she quickly added that Carr’s arrival, and the new protocols for evaluation and training, made a huge difference. She endorsed Measure A.
We weren’t convinced. But what about now? I don’t think we need to wait until the next ballot measure to gauge the city’s performance. For the present, I don’t have the answer. Off the top of my head, I’d like to see Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa use his clout with members of the school board and the teachers’ union to get the school district to work more closely with the city on youth and anti-gang programs; I’d like to see the academy for training intervention workers up and running; I’d like to see a couple rounds of evaluation of city contractors.
But I’d like to know what others think. Is the city ready? How will we know? Should taxpayers pay up?
I also wonder whether it’s too late -- whether the political window for a new tax, with optimistic and liberal Obama voters crowding to the polls and the severity of the recession not yet fully appreciated, is now closed. Or perhaps the Los Angeles Unified School District will arrive first at the parcel-tax well, asking voters for more funds to make up for state cuts to schools. I’m rooting for City Hall, and would love the Times to be able to back a smart, responsible program to protect kids from the gang life, encourage those already in that life to shun crime and violence, and help people who want to leave that life behind to do so.
Click here to read the status report Carr presented Tuesday to the Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development on Tuesday, then share your thoughts about Parcel Tax Round Two.