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8. “Property Rights over Human Life”: Taxes and Austerity in the Divided City
- University of Minnesota Press
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Proposition 13 was an anti-tax amendment passed by California voters in 1978 that helped fuel a wave of tax limitation measures across the nation and made taxes the third rail of California politics for decades to come. Health scholar and advocate Geraldine Dallek warned in the Los Angeles Times (which seems to have misspelled her name as Dalleck) that community health would suffer from cuts that would be made to California ’s public hospital and clinic services: “Because the California electorate demandedsuchseverebudgetcutstheyhave,infact,placedproperty rights over human life.”1 Dallek’s fear was not editorial page hyperbole. In the • CHAPTER 8 • “Property Rights over Human Life” Taxes and Austerity in the Divided City The cost of sloth, gluttony, alcoholic intemperance, reckless driving, sexual frenzy, and smoking is now a national, and not an individual, responsibility. This is justified as individual freedom—but one man’s freedom in health is another man’s shackle in taxes and insurance premiums. I believe the idea of a “right” to health should be replaced by the idea of an individual moral obligation to preserve one’s own health—a public duty if you will. —Dr. John Knowles, Doing Better and Feeling Worse Don’t attempt to compare Watts with the East. . . . Compare Watts and other similar areas here with the other sections of the city. See what has happened elsewhere in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County and compare that with Watts. This area has not moved at all, and although some of the problems have been addressed, it’s like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while the faucet’s turned on. What we really need is a Marshall Plan. —Dr. James Bush, Urban Health • 207 • first year of its implementation, tax revenues to counties dropped by 40 percent, slashing health, welfare, and education budgets by as much. The Chief Administrative Officer of Los Angeles County, Harry Hufford, recommended closing Long Beach General Hospital and not rebuilding Olive View Hospital, which had been destroyed in the 1971 San Fernando earthquake . He also recommended closing thirty-two of the county’s fifty-seven health clinics and cutting 10 percent of the mental health, drug, and alcohol programs. Together, these cuts would eliminate 1,900 jobs from the county’s Department of Health Services.2 The condition of California’s public medical system was already precarious . Between 1965 and 1977, counties in the state had closed twenty county hospitals, privatized nine, and transferred another three public hospitals to University of California. These were largely the perverse effects of medicalinflationonpublichospitalbudgets,aswesawinthepreviouschapter , and the ways in which the state and county governments managed the Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) crisis. A wave of clinic and hospitalclosuresandservicecutsfollowingthepassageofProp .13—postponed until the early 1980s because the state government was able to transfer reserves to cash-strapped localities—would exacerbate the existing crisis.3 In 1973 Governor Reagan tried to steer discontent over property taxes and government spending into voter support for a state constitutional amendment that would have tied growth in state expenditures to revenues and required a two-thirds legislative majority for new tax bills. The proposition he supported did not pass, but as inflation bit into paychecks and California real estate prices soared, the battle over who would pay for (and benefitfrom)governmentspendingandserviceswouldcontinue.Fiveyears later, California voters supported Proposition 13 by a two to one margin; it had even greater support in Los Angeles County, where property inflation was even higher than the state average. The initiative froze property assessment rates at 1975 levels with a 2 percent increase per year for inflation . Only when a property was sold would it be reassessed at current market rate. The bill further stipulated a two-thirds legislative majority for state tax increases and two-thirds voter approval for new local taxes.4 This chapter situates the crisis in Los Angeles’s public health care system within the context of metropolitan geopolitics, as discussed in chapter 1, and struggles over militarized austerity that would ultimately shift more of the burden of inflation and cutbacks to central cities and the poor. These forces would represent a triumph of property rights over human life. 208 “PROPERTY RIGHTS OVER HUMAN LIFE” [44.223.40.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:27 GMT) Prop. 13 would build on efforts to maintain residential exclusivity, including the vote against open housing fourteen years earlier with Proposition 14. County governments were responsible for public health systems, but had limited to no control...