Measure A is a big tax hike that won’t solve homelessness in LA. Here’s what should be done instead.

“If not this, then how are we going to solve it?”

That’s the standard response to anyone who resists a demand to raise taxes. The question is typically framed as a  choice between higher taxes and mass casualties.

The latest tax-hike supporters bullying California’s exhausted taxpayers with this line is the collection of organizations and developers that critics have called “the homeless-industrial complex.”

The term is a reference to President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about the development of a “military-industrial complex,” which he described as “the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” Eisenhower said this was “new in the American experience” and cautioned of the “grave implications” of “unwarranted influence.”

The problem stems from the mutually beneficial relationship between the government-employed people who spend your tax dollars and the “private sector” people who profit from those government spending decisions, especially when they have no other customers.

In this situation, problems are not something to be solved, but something to be used in a PowerPoint slide for the next budget request presentation. Promised outcomes are never achieved. This is always blamed on a “lack of resources,” and the proposed solution is always more public funding.

That brings us to Measure A on the Los Angeles County ballot, a permanent sales tax increase for homelessness programs.

People on the “private sector” side of the homeless-industrial complex collected signatures on a “citizens’ initiative” to raise the sales tax by .5% in order to provide themselves with over $1 billion per year in “resources” to continue to work on the problem of homelessness.

In 2017, L.A. County voters were persuaded to approve Measure H, a ten-year sales tax increase of .25%  to pay for homelessness services. This followed the 2016 approval of Proposition HHH by voters in the city of Los Angeles to take on $1.2 billion in debt to build housing for the homeless. In total, these measures have been responsible for more than $4 billion in spending.

How did it work out? According to the annual point-in-time count, in 2016 there were 46,874 individuals experiencing homelessness in L.A. County. Eight years later: 75,312.

Measure A may not be a genuine “citizens’ initiative.” The county government has been deeply involved in this effort to renew the expiring Measure H, which also doubles the tax and makes it permanent.

Last year, the Board of Supervisors backed Assembly Bill 1679 to allow the county to exceed the legal cap on local sales taxes. State law says local sales taxes are limited to 2% on top of the state sales tax rate of 7.25%, unless the legislature approves an exception.

AB 1679 allowed an exception for an additional increase of .5% with this condition: “All revenues from the tax shall be dedicated to services to people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, to homelessness prevention, or to providing affordable housing.”

The law also specified that the sales tax could be raised “by any applicable voting approval requirement, including by citizens’ initiative.”

Thanks to a questionable loophole invented by state court decisions starting in 2017, a “citizens’ initiative” tax increase such as Measure A needs fewer votes for approval than a government-proposed tax increase — a simple majority of the electorate instead of the constitutionally required two-thirds.

And now, as voters have ballots in hand, the tax-takers ask: “If we don’t pass Measure A, how are we going to solve homelessness?”

There are many answers, but tax-takers reject them all. Examples:

– Use tax incentives to create a rent-reducing boom in private-sector apartment construction. (“No! That’s just tax breaks for greedy landlords!”)

– Build housing in outlying areas where land is more affordable. (“No! Suburban sprawl causes climate change!”)

– Repeal the 2016 “Housing First” law, Senate Bill 1380, that requires taxpayers to provide free apartments to people who use and intend to continue using hard drugs. (“No! Sobriety must be optional! Only taxes are mandatory!”)

– Rely on manufactured housing to provide a faster, less expensive way to help tens of thousands of people get off the streets. (“No! That doesn’t provide jobs for our friends in the building trades!”)

So that just leaves tax increases?

Don’t fall for it. Vote no on Measure A.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley