by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the Progressive-era reforms concerning California state elections in 1911, one of the new provisions for more voter input in governance was (along with the recall ) the ballot measure, a broad term encompassing the initiative (amending, passing or repealing existing laws or portions of the state Constitution), the referendum (repealing all or part of a law passed within the prior three months) and a proposition, which is what the two of those items became once put on the ballot.
For amending the Constitution, approving bonds, or amending/repealing laws created by a prior ballot measure, the Legislature can pass a bill to place a measure on the ballot or these can be done through a petition signed by 5% of the registered voters casting their ballots in the most recent election for governor. There have been some 1,300 propositions on state election ballots in the 113 years since.
This post looks at a published resolution to the after-effects of one such proposition, this dealing with a “Metropolitan Park Bill” offered in both houses of the Legislature in early 1929 and applicable to “metropolitan Los Angeles”. In the prior fall’s general election, held on 6 November and at which Herbert Hoover was elected president, Proposition 4 offered the voters the opportunity to vote for $6 million in park bonds to be used to acquire park property with matching private monies. In 1927, the legislature created a state parks commission, setting the table for the bond election. This was widely supported, including the Republican-supporting Los Angeles Times, and voters responded in kind, approving the ballot measure with a 74% yes vote.
A parks committee from the very powerful Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce worked to develop support for Assembly Bill 509/Senate Bill 559, with Hugh R. Pomeroy, later well known for his early role in zoning standards, being its spokesperson for the campaign. The Whittier News of 14 January 1929 reported that Pomeroy told an assemblage that,
Announcement was made of completion of [a] tentative report of [the] Citizens Committee on parks, playgrounds and public beaches for Los Angeles County which will be presented to the governor in the immediate future in connection with [the] state park movement for which [a] six million dollar bond issue was voted at the last general election.
Over the next several weeks, Pomeroy gave many speeches to promote the establishment of a system of metropolitan park districts, with the Pomona Progress-Bulletin of 28 January covering the discussion at the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. It summarized Pomeroy’s explanation as stating that these districts would allow “the populous sections of the state to develop park and recreation systems comparable to those of Boston, Chicago, Westchester county, New York and others famed throughout the country.”
Once the boards of supervisors of counties approved a petition from a district and after an election to be called for by that body. Such district were to have five members appointed by the governor and have responsibilities akin to that of flood control or other districts so as to “enable it to develop a comprehensive park and recreation system.”
The goal, the argument went, was to “make possible the preserving of the beaches and scenic and recreational areas which have brought people to California from the entire country but which are rapidly being destroyed by that very increase in population.” It was further explained that the concept would relieve local governments of the problem of establishing “burdensome local assessments . . . thus preventing the overtaxing of property owners already loaded with other assessments for public improvements [such as the Mattoon Act, which proved to be a major problem at places like Temple City], and at the same time making it possible to save valuable scenic areas before the cost becomes too great to be borne by the taxpayers.”
Pomeroy and other Chamber committee members, including the well-known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., then went to the Board of Supervisors, as reported by the Los Angeles Times of 2 February, though, rather than vote on the proposal, the county governing body took the matter under advisement, with only Chair Reuben F. McClellan openly endorsing the idea. It was added that it would take 5,000 county residents to request the formation of a district and the Supervisors would then, as noted above, put the matter on the county election ballot and a two-thirds majority required.
If this was successful, the governor would appoint the directors and provide them the authority to issue bonds for up to 2% of the county’s assessed valuation, said to be about $75 million, while another option was to enact a tax of five cents per $100 of valuation. A first concept proposed to the Board was to allow for a $17 million bond issue to buy beach property for the use of the public.
The News of the 6th recorded that the supervisors endorsed the park district concept, but opposition soon arose. Bernice Johnson of the South Side Ebell Club did not mince words, as reported by the Times of 22 February, when, in an address to her fellow club members, she expostulated,
If you want to put a mortgage over your home that may cause you to lose it, then go ahead and vote for the “Metropolitan Park Bill,” the greatest chance in the history of the State for real-estate men to cut a melon.
Adding that women did not realize that five men had the power “to vote bonds” of that 2% of valuation, which she calculated as $182 million, and “besides this they can vote $5,000,000 a year for interest and almost $2,000,000 for incidental expenses,” though she clearly misread the provisions of the bill.
Continuing that the burden would be so large as to prevent support for the Boulder (Hoover) Dam project, the massive water delivery system from the Colorado River through the new Metropolitan Water District, Johnson claimed that “the most malicious thing about it, perhaps, is that there has been written into the bill an emergency clause that makes it impossible for the people to ever referendum it [sic]; so once done, it is done for good.”
The speaker called for the maintenance of existing parks rather than creating new ones, stating that “there are acres of parks in Los Angeles today where the trees are dying for lack of water” and this due to unavailable sums. It was the case, however, that, with the massive growth of the Angel City and environs in the first three decades of the 20th century, little parkland was established. Johnson concluded that,
To me it seems one of the most dangerous bills that ever has been brought up before the Senate. It is already in such bad repute that no one will claim it as his bill, and I shall certainly bend all my efforts on my return from the inaugural services in Washington [then held on 4 March, not 20 January as was the date from 1933 onward] to see that this “illegitimate child” is killed.
That brings us to the report of the California Taxpayers’ Association, established around 1917, which was far more reasoned and free from the strong sentiment uttered by Johnson. A cover letter, dated 27 February, from Director of Research Rolland A. Vandegrift, formerly a government and history professor at the University of Southern California and who was California’s director of finance from 1931-1934 and legislative auditor from 1941-1949, was directed to the members of the park bill committee for the association and requested comments and changes on a signed copy.
This copy, however, was not signed, so it is not clear what that means in terms of its recipient. In any case, the resolution noted that the legislature’s bills “are based upon a park plan not yet completed and made public and not available for scientific study or public discussion.” Echoing Johnson, it also observed that the credit of California cities and environs should be kept clear for the first priority, which was “an adequate water supply.”
Continuing that balanced coordination of local government and no “hasty action be taken in a matter of such large importance,” the resolution added that a Citizens Committee of 200 on Parks, Beaches and Playgrounds for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce “has not completed its report” and that latter body had “not given their decision,” the Association argued that there was “the instrumentality of the several governmental units already existing, exercising powers which already repose in them,” rendering such park districts unnecessary and duplicative.
Moreover, it was argued, in wording that is striking for our current federal government:
the creation of the said metropolitan park board would superimpose another governmental agency with independent taxing and bonding powers upon the already complicated and overlapping governmental control of these same functions when the tendency in the State of California is to eliminate overlapping governmental authority and to consolidate the operation of governmental functions for particular purposes.
The resolution also observed that the bills had no mechanism for consolidating existing administration of beaches, parks and recreation, so it offered seven actions. The first was the completion and public release of that Citizens Committee survey, followed by the withdrawal of the Assembly and Senate bills from the current session of the legislature.
It also called for a “careful analysis” of the ways of implementing the plan, but also for “careful study” for the coordination and consolidation of fifteen “governmental units” including the United States Forest Service; the state departments of natural resources and public parks, along with the highway commission; city and county forestry, highway and park and playground departments; flood control and harbor departments; county board of supervisors; city boards of education and school district boards, as well as city park and playground departments; special park, road and other departments; other highway and road departments; and any other entities tasked with control of aspects falling within the plan.
The Association also suggested that “complete study” be conducted regarding the expenditure of monies for the park district concept. It asked that there be a movement to take up its recommendations in the resolution so that this was “to put into effect the will of the people in a conservative, rational, coordinated plan for park and recreational development consistent with the ability of the several communities to pay” while avoiding “the overlapping and duplicating procedure now in existence” and to be made worse by the plan.
It was agreed that there was a need to “forward the program of securing more play space, parks and beach frontage” provided that it was determined that “it is demonstrated that there is a public need.” This should only happen, however, if done by “now existing agencies” which would ensure that these efforts be “under tax burdens which will be well within the ability of the people to support.”
The Association’s final point was:
That definite action should be stated to forward the program of securing more play space, parks and beach frontage—where it is demonstrated that there is a public need—but that his action should be taken under now existing agencies and under tax burdens which will be well within the ability of the people to support. But inasmuch as the survey made by California Taxpayers’ Association shows that approximately one-quarter of the area of Los Angeles County is now reserved for public use as forest reserve[s], parks, beaches, highways and other recreational facilities, we do not believe that any action approaching the magnitude provided in the metropolitan park bill is necessary at this time.
A special report section concerned the likely costs over ten years of a local metropolitan park district gave a range of scenarios for bond issues over 40 years with total costs spanning a wide spectrum from $139 million in total costs to $430 million. Tables, looking at different percentages and cents per $100 dollars of assessments, showed ten year totals of redemptions, interest, total payments and tax rates in cents, as well as total payments for 40 or 46 years including the redemption and interest totals and the amounts in the yield of a 5% maintenance tax during those four decades.
The Times of 12 March reported that “new amendments drafted to supplant those metropolitan district park bill provisions which encountered widespread opposition when the bill was introduced into the legislature were made public yesterday by Hugh Pomeroy,” with these included to “remove past objections” as well to provide these districts “with foundation[al] principles in accord with accepted government practices.”
The main problem was the original bill’s provisions allowing broad district powers to issue bonds and impose taxes and so “the amendments provide that bonds may be issued only on two-thirds vote of the people at a bond issue election for each issue.” Bonds were limited to 3% of valuation, not the 5 cents per $100 amount previously included, while taxes could only be implemented by boards of supervisors and this limited to 3 cents per $100. As for district directors, appointments were made by supervisors on recommendations for state appeals court judges, while recalls were also to be allowed.
The district auditor and treasurer were to be those persons holding those roles at the county, while a county counsel or district attorney for the county could also take that position for the district and grand juries could investigate their operations. Ten-year leases were cut to a year and eminent domain power was stricken, though supervisors could exercise this latter. As for selling land, districts could only do this with approval of the supervisors and it could neither directly operate facilities that involved fee charging and the ability to have their own policing mechanism was also eliminated. Annexing land was subject to a majority vote election with supervisor approval.
In the creation of districts, the amendments stipulated that a majority vote of the people would follow a petition to the supervisors of 3% of voters with a minimum of 5,000 signing and the governing body holding a hearing before approving. Lastly, if passed, the bill would not go into effect directly after the governor’s signing, but would do so as with all other bills passed and signed during the legislative session. The paper concluded with the observation that, without the amendments, the district could have, without voter approval, issued $72 million in bonds along with yearly taxes of $1.827 million.
The next day’s Times editorialized in favor of the heavily amended bills, calling the changes such that the district would have “reasonably adequate, but not excessive powers, and strictly subject to local control.” Observing that “California should be behind no State in park development,” the paper lauded the changes and concluded,
It is generally conceded that such park districts are needed to work out plans for preserving the natural beauties of California while there is still time, and to create new play places for the public adjacent to our congested metropolitan centers.
On the following day, however, the executive committee of the California Taxpayers’ Association sent its resolution on the matter to the Chamber of Commerce and the Times summarized that the group “takes the position that existing agencies can do what it is proposed to do by the creation of a metropolitan park district” and that “it holds also that the new body is not necessary at this time.”
More opposition continued, including by the well-known capitalist Eli P. Clark and the Southern California Milk Dealers’ Association, which sourly remarked that, somewhat like Johnson, the bill was “costly, vicious and unnecessary,” though why that organization should feel so strongly about the issue was left unexplained. The 28 March edition of the Times reported that Pomeroy announced the pulling of the bill from the legislative session and he explained the decision by asserting that “the time is so short between now and adjournment” so that it could not be given due consideration. He insisted that he and others “will continue our work and be in a better position to get such a law enacted at the next session.”
The Los Angeles Record of 6 April quoted Pomeroy as remarking that “in the two years we must wait” until the next session because each lasted that period of time, “we may lose many of the finest beaches” as “real estate values will be increased and the costs will be heavier” leading to the likelihood that “some of the finest beaches will be fenced off,” as private property, “in that time.”
He insisted that the only way to preserve these lands was through the metropolitan park district and the paper stated that “police dogs keep off those who only want to walk along the strip of beach north of Santa Monica,” in Malibu, “and more delay awaits those who want to improve Los Angeles with more municipally owned beaches.”
Not surprisingly, the resumption of the Metropolitan Park District bill did not happen. Moreover, seven months later came the crash of the stock market in New York City that ushered in the Great Depression, so no such bill came up again in the Legislature. The battle to preserve beaches on the coastlines of our region had to wait for another era, including the passage by voters of Proposition 20 in 1972 that established the California Coastal Commission.
Notably, Governor Newsom recently suspended CCC permit rules in the wake of the Palisades Fire and the beginning of rebuilding after that devastating wildfire, while it has been reported that the Trump Administration is looking into defunding the Commission as part of its seeking conditions on federal aid, so the history of public lands and their management is very much tied to artifacts like this in the Homestead’s collection.
It seems that red tape, bureaucratic barriers, overlapping authorities, and fragmented functions exist at every level of our political system – federal, state, county, and city. As recent events have shown, achieving effectiveness and efficiency often requires executive orders rather than waiting for the glacial pace of the legislative process, which is manipulated by legislators driven by their own personal agendas and vested interests, ultimately creating wasteful money pits at the expense of we taxpayers.