Pat Dando | San Jose Mercury News | May 10, 2010
If you ask 100 random residents of San Jose what they believe the state's spending priorities should be, most of them would put jobs, education, public safety and transportation at the top of their lists.
What you won't see on any list is taxpayer financing of political campaigns — yet that's what Proposition 15 on the June ballot would do. With a mammoth budget deficit, taxes going up, a crumbling infrastructure, and teachers, police officers and firefighters being laid off, it's not surprising that voters can think of plenty of ways to spend their money besides giving it to politicians to pay for junk mail and negative TV ads.
Four years ago, 74 percent of voters said no to Proposition 89, a plan to tax businesses to finance political campaigns.
In 2000, two-thirds of voters rejected another public campaign financing scheme, Proposition 25.
Here we go again. Sacramento's big spenders will ask voters to pass Proposition 15 — the third attempt in 10 years to repeal the ban on public campaign financing voters enacted more than 20 years ago.