California's at it Again

It's almost up-or-down time for ''payroll protection'' and bilingual education

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.–The state’s voters (at least those who pay attention to such matters) are studying and talking about a pair of ballot initiatives that could start or advance national trends.

The first is Proposition 226, a version of the anti-union proposal that national Republicans call ”paycheck protection.” If voters give it a thumbs-up on June 2, unions in the state would have to advise their members annually that they can choose not to have money deducted from their paychecks for union political activity.

The local sponsors, whose drumbeating has been backed by a flood of out-of-state money, say the measure would merely ensure that rank-and-file workers who don’t share their union boss’s political views or candidate preferences aren’t forced to make do with less on payday. National and state labor federations naturally argue that the scheme is designed to make them handicapped in ways that corporate political check writers are not.

The other initiative is Proposition 227. It would end officially sanctioned bilingual education in public schools and require almost all instruction to be in English. Non-English- speaking kids, forced to learn the language most of their countrymen use, would be much better equipped to hold their own in the job market, supporters of Prop 227 maintain. Teachers’ unions and the California PTA oppose the notion because, they argue, it would reduce the choice available to parents.

According to the Field Poll, both propositions are shoo- ins, although the share of respondents who say they favor Prop 226 has recently dropped from 72 per cent (in November) to 55 per cent after an intensive labor television and mailing campaign. The union drive argues that not only union-dues payers but also others who have parts of their pay withheld for health insurance, charitable donations and other expenses will be affected. Reduced deductions across the board, a labor ad suggests, would ”weaken patient protections against HMOs, privatize education and export American jobs.” Also, a ”legislative alert” dispatched by a United Way of America official, later disavowed by the organization’s leadership, argued that the language of the proposition is overly broad. It would, the official said, mean that the group’s supporters would have to be notified that they have the right to opt out of any political use of charitable contributions.

Prop 226, whose leading backers are Orange County conservatives, say this assertion is a smoke screen. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, chairman of the initiative, calls the warning ”totally bogus.”

”If you read the initiative,” he says, ”it clearly deals with political contributions and with involuntary ones at that,” and charitable contributions such as those made to United Way ”don’t pass that test.” Opponents are scrambling, Wilson insists, because ”they recognize that the only chance they have to beat (Prop 226) is to mislead people into believing it’s something utterly false.”

Foes of 226 have also seized on a donation of $ 441,000 to the proposition’s advocates by Americans for Tax Reform, headed by Washington-based activist Grover G. Norquist, and $ 49,000 chipped in by Indianapolis insurance executive J. Patrick Rooney. Those contributions underscore, they say, the extent to which the ”paycheck protection” campaign is the work of ”outsiders,” who have come to figure in anti-226 TV spots. One ad shows a man examining the initiative with a magnifying glass as a voice-over declares: ”When you take a closer look at Prop 226, you’ll see that a foreign lobbyist (Norquist), multinational corporations and an out-of-state insurance tycoon (Rooney) are behind it.”

If Prop 226 is approved, its restrictions would presumably cover the run-up to the November elections.

Meanwhile, support for Prop 227, according to the Field Poll, has continued to grow. In November, 69 per cent of all respondents backed it; last month, the approval rating was up to 71 per cent. Particularly notable is the fact that Spanish- speaking voters, whose children would be most heavily affected by any sharp curtailment of bilingual education, also support the initiative.

Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1992, who heads the Prop 227 drive, says the proposal enjoys ”the highest support of any contested initiative in California history.” If it carries on June 2, he suggests, ”it may be the beginning of the end of bilingual education” in the country. That’s why, he says, bilingual teachers and their unions are against it.

Richie Ross, a Sacramento political consultant running the ”No on 227” effort, insists the Field Poll is all wrong. The initiative will fail, he says, because, in the end, voters will object to another provision–the spending of $ 50 million a year for 10 years to teach English to non-English-speaking adults who pledge to then teach it to kids. The poll, he continues, does not reflect grass-roots campaigning in the Latino community.

And Ross predicts that Prop 226 will fail, too, because nonunion voters don’t care about the issue. He notes that of about 300 initiatives submitted in the past 10 years, only 85 have qualified for the ballot and only a handful have been approved.

But unless heavy TV spots can reverse the apparently prevailing sentiment, both initiatives seem likely to pass. In any event, the country will be watching California closely to see whether it will be, once again, a national trend-setter.



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