Yet, there's a libertarian argument for keeping decisions and programs at the most local level possible, since it's most accountable to individual voters. An annoying opposition of facts.
In a place like Hillsborough or Palo Alto, there may be some hope of a retired or free-time competent executive being a local resident and doing a good job for non-economic reasons. Ghetto parts of SoCal, though, have little risk of that happening.
Maybe some hope, but as far as I can tell municipal government in Silicon Valley is still the domain of the most provincial and short-sighted people in the area.
Occasionally you get lucky and get someone like Bloomberg heading up your municipal government, but even with prestigious gigs like that (the mayor of New York is arguably a more important person than most Governors) quality people are still few and far between.
I wonder if transparency into operations might help solve some of this. Being able to see that a local principal or superintendent is doing great things might attract more prestige within the community, or nationally, vs. "oh, he's another superintendent of schools in a small town". So maybe data tools could help.
The opposition of the fact that local government is vastly more corrupt and incompetent than the federal government vs the theory that they are more accountable to voters is not an opposition of facts.
You get good government when there is enough of a media market to pay for people to spend all day, every day, tracking government. The USFG has that.
Richmond, Hercules, Pinole, El Cerrito, San Pablo and El Sobrante don't.
The Poway School District has a very good reputation and mostly covers upper middle class exurbs with a lot of residents working tech jobs, with Qualcomm, HP, Intuit, Broadcom, Sony, and more having offices in or near the district.
San Diego (especially in the suburbs) has much more of an anti-tax climate than most of California, so I'd guess this is more an attempt by a politician or school board faction to increase services without increasing taxes, George W. Bush-style, with the bill coming due later.
You don’t need to live in the “ghetto parts” to be seduced by a long-term loan that has easy terms up front.
The subprime mortgage crisis was built on respectable hard-working middle-class families that were persuaded to take on debt like this for their own homes.
Really? I was under the impression it was largely those with little or no income. Have you got a breakdown to link to? Not saying you're wrong, genuinely curious.
It doesn’t have exact numbers, but the tl;dr is that people from every income bracket were taking out subprime mortgages, including middle- and upper-class people who could qualify for prime mortgages but wanted to borrow even more.
Bond issues like this are usually subject to popular vote. Not sure whether there was loophole in the procedure, or public approved such bond terms, but Californian cities do have to get majority of residents to agree to new bond issues.
People often defer to professional administrators. If a school administration asks for something, I think the default is to give it to them, after all, it's "for the kids". And if they only bring one option to the table, even if it's not the best option, it might still be better than doing nothing. So you're still down to needing competent administration, even if the public has some oversight role.
Yeah, you're right. I think the public votes on the intent to issue bonds, and once the intent is approved, the administrators duke it out. I would not attribute everything to incompetence or corruption though - a lot of California municipalities have negative ratings, and school board bonds are least attractive compared to general obligation and other muni papers, so that rate might be in line with market.
IMHO, expecting voters to understand the consequences of these highly-deferred bonds is too much. We elect representatives for a reason, and most people aren't going to put in the research necessary to fully understand a "small" (it's only 2.5 million, of course) local bond issue at the bottom of a 10 page ballot.
In a place like Hillsborough or Palo Alto, there may be some hope of a retired or free-time competent executive being a local resident and doing a good job for non-economic reasons. Ghetto parts of SoCal, though, have little risk of that happening.