California Prisons, Post-Partisanship, and the Death of Democracy

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Laura Magnani
Californians United for a Responsible Budget

What is touted by some as post partisan politics, where Democrats and Republicans broker a deal on a complex issue, looks to us like an end run around democracy. Deals like the one struck on prisons by our own Senator Don Perata and others in leadership came with no actual bill to debate, no hearings, no amendments, and no public participation of any kind. As far as we know there was no language available to lawmakers including many of our East Bay representatives such as Loni Hancock and Sandre Swanson -- who rushed to vote yes on the measure.

There were some numbers attached $6.3 billion in lease revenue bonds for 53,000 new prison and jail beds. But lease revenue bonds are another end-run. They don't require a vote of the people, as general obligation bonds do, and they carry higher interest rates.

California voters have been turning down prison bonds, so legislators have increasingly turned to this non-democratic alternative. But revenue bonds were created for projects that come with revenue streams like toll bridges that generate money once they are built. With lease purchase bonds for prisons, taxpayers through the Department of Corrections purportedly "lease” the prisons back from the Department of Public Works which builds the prisons, as the mechanism for generating revenue. In other words, the state leases the very buildings that they built all again without voter approval.