The Worker’s Case for Prop. D

Murtaza Baxamusa, the deputy director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, sent me a note just now that he and his organization have decided to endorse Proposition D.

Remember, Baxamusa and many progressives have had trouble getting totally on board with this. And he came as close as he could to an endorsement for our Prop. D page.

I’m going to go ahead and quote in full his explanation for taking the full dive in:

Dear Scott,

It may not come as a surprise to you that CPI has chosen to endorse Proposition D. It may actually surprise you that we took this long. To get to this point, it took us a little introspection on the role that we play in educating our working families regarding the future of our city. It is not an easy decision to make, to ask our hard working families to pay more for city services.

If we put our idealistic hats on, we could easily conjure litany of progressive solutions that would not make it through our front door. And then we could spend another decade doing sequels of reports like the Bottom Line — Part 10 whilst our middle-class workers feel more unsafe, have fewer recreational options, and have difficulty getting to work.

Or we could play a self-aggrandizing role of a think-tank perched atop a mighty thoughtless elephant, and prophesize about the dozen reasons why such a self-serving, ineffectual and misleading ballot would ever pass muster with the tax-averse electorate.

And then when it failed in November, we would blame it on Privatization reforms that were awkwardly loaded on to Proposition D, and we could then legitimately claim that San Diegans rejected the Privatization ballot. (We warned them that this was a backdoor way of private contractors to repeal the People’s Ordinance!)

So there were two facts that drove us to support Prop D. First, that there is a legitimate revenue problem in the city of San Diego, that has been verified by objective indicators, and reasonable people. Second, that there is a broad coalition of major city players that have come to the table in an unprecedented manner to solve long-term problems of the city.

This is so astounding to see this in this city, where elsewhere, leadership fails to look beyond the current crisis. The only stragglers it appears are those who have an ideologically-driven intent to diminish the role of democratically empowered and funded governance.

Hence we are willing to make the sacrifice, to keep us America’s Finest, even if it costs 30 cents more a day.

Murtaza

Please contact Scott Lewis directly at scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0527 and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/vosdscott.