MAYOR V'S PHONE TAX HAS PHONY RING TO IT.

Byline: DOUG McINTYRE 

SO, Mayor V had a closed door "chat" with Councilmen Zine and Smith, and now it's unanimous! Your Los Angeles City Council and the world's sexiest mayor (sorry, Gavin Newsom) have agreed to let the peasants vote on cutting our taxes.

You read that right: The L.A. City Council and Mayor V want us to vote on cutting our phone tax 10 percent. What a great number for Hollywood! Just saying 10 percent makes me think I'm back in showbiz. It's like we get to fire AT&T's agent.

Under Proposition 218, a unanimous City Council must approve the mayor's request to place an "emergency" ballot measure before the voters. Dennis Zine and Greig Smith were the holdouts until Tony V worked his magic behind closed doors. The conversation went something like this:

Mayor V: Are you two stupid! We're talkin' a quarter billion here!

Zine: Yeah, but my district has people who actually pay taxes ...

Smith: And every Halloween I dress up as a fiscal conservative. That's my thing.

Mayor V: Fellas, have you learned nothing? We're gonna tell the hicks it's a tax cut. We fooled 'em with Measure R. We'll do it again.

Zine: Do you think?

Mayor V: Boys, relax. The hayseeds will think they're cutting their phone tax 10 percent. Of course, they could cut it 100 percent if they vote "no," but they won't. I had it focus-grouped. They'll hang themselves on the rope of their own greed!

Zine: So, we keep the quarter-bil and pay no political price?

Mayor V: Do we ever pay for anything?

Smith: And I can still dress up like a fiscal conservative?

Mayor V: Trick or treat, boys! There's enough candy for everyone!

The mayor and his bagmen are committing election fraud. Not the ballot-box stuffing, Diebold Ohio-style chicanery with electronic tabulations -- that's old school. The entire premise of Tony V's phone tax-election is a fraud. We've never seen anything like this -- oh wait, we have, Measure R, another bait-and-switch ballot measure that did exactly the opposite of what it pretended to do.

The courts are likely to declare L.A.'s 10 percent phone tax illegal. Desperate to keep their mitts on a quarter of a billion dollars, the mayor has dreamed up the unbelievably underhanded idea of selling it to the voters as a tax cut, while actually increasing the technologies the tax will be applied to, thereby not only legitimizing the illegal tax grab but increasing the haul to boot.

We're told it's all OK because during the campaign we'll get to have our say. However, the pro-tax crowd will have a well-funded war chest; every union and political hack in the city -- which is nearly all of them -- will be out plucking the fear harp. Goodbye, cops. Goodbye, firefighters. Goodbye, parks. Goodbye, libraries. Goodbye, paramedics. Goodbye anything they can think of that's the rightful business of local government but never seems to be a priority in L.A.

It's bad enough when the ballot initiative process is co-opted by casino interests, the insurance industry, and all the other giant special-interest groups that want the law to do their bidding. It is unconscionable that the city of Los Angeles will go into an election orchestrated by the mayor and City Council based upon a lie.

As the Democratic strategist Darry Sragow said, "This is a strategy that relies on deliberately keeping important information from voters." Every time you think L.A. politics has hit a new low, somebody on Spring Street breaks out the moral backhoe and digs the cesspool a little deeper.

Like most Americans, I like my taxes low. Still, I understand there are things we need to do in a modern society. We have obligations to make this city not just function but flourish, and we have to pay for it. I might even be inclined to support the retention of the phone tax on the basis of fiscal necessity.

However, also like most Americans, I resent being lied to. The mayor and City Council are not giving us the opportunity to cut our phone tax. They are deliberately obfuscating the issue. They have performed so miserably as fiscal stewards, they know that in an honest election the voters of Los Angeles would hang up on the phony phone tax.