Measure Aims to Ease Approval of School Bonds.

It's no secret that California has a shortage of classroom space for its burgeoning school-age population. Add to that the overwhelming desire among politicians, parents and teachers for smaller class sizes and you have a school building shortage that has grown to crisis pro portions in the past decade.

In L.A. alone, roughly 100 new schools need to be built in the next five to 10 years to relieve current and future overcrowding.

One oft-touted solution to the crisis has been to ease the threshold needed to pass local school bonds, allowing more money to flow into school district coffers. Currently, it takes a two-thirds vote to pass those bonds, and only about 60 percent of bond measures get that many votes on the first try.

Twice before, California voters have rejected moves to reduce that threshold to a simple majority of 50 percent plus one, the last time in 1993. But a coalition of business, education and labor groups are trying once again with Proposition 26 -- hoping that the perceived crisis in education and the general feeling of prosperity among California voters will push this measure over the top.

With just over a month to go before Election Day, it's going to be another uphill battle. In the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll, taken in early January, Proposition 26 was in a dead heat -- 45-44 percent against, with a margin of error of 2 percent.

Critical need for classrooms

"Right from the start we knew this wasn't going to be easy," said William Hauk, president of the California Business Roundtable, the group of CEOs from 75 of the state's largest companies that has been pushing for a simple majority school bond threshold for most of the last decade. "But we have got to provide facilities for public education in this state if we are to have a workforce that will meet today's and tomorrow's needs. And we cannot continue to (address) the need for more classroom space with makeshift trailers."

Proponents note that out of the 28 local school bond measures on ballots last November in California, only 16 got the two-thirds vote necessary to pass. But all of them received at least 55 percent of the vote, which means they would have passed if Proposition 26 had been in effect.

"It takes two or three times to pass these bond measures," said Burt McChesney, executive director of California Business for Education Excellence, a coalition of the state's major business organizations and a Prop. 26 co-chair. "But with each delay, the backlog of facilities projects mounts while the bond amount is reduced to ensure passage."

Opponents of the measure, led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, question the need to raise more taxpayer dollars for school facilities given the huge budget surplus emerging in Sacramento.

"Why do we need to make it easier to impose taxes on property owners when the state is sitting on a $6 billion surplus?" said Jon Coupal, president of the association. "Gov. Davis has said the surplus should go to onetime capital costs. Well, this is the perfect opportunity to use some of those funds."

The state already is pouring billions of dollars into new schools, thanks in part to the passage m November 1998 of Proposition 1A, a $9.2 billion school facilities bond. But there is a catch: In order for local school districts to tap into those funds, they have to come up with a 50 percent match. That means for every dollar sought in Prop. 1A funds, districts need to raise a dollar of their own.

"It's unreasonable to ask local districts to do this and then not give them the adequate tools," Hauk said. "If we can't build the schools, we won't have the trained workforce California needs."

Fallout from Belmont

L.A. has another problem. With the recent turmoil at the Los Angeles Unified School District, the district missed the July 1 deadline last year to submit a plan for how to use its share of Proposition 1A funds and thus forfeited a potential $850 million. And with a strong chance that the deadline will be missed this year, district officials are scrambling to obtain an extension.

Then there's the Belmont fiasco, which has sapped the credibility of local school district officials. To date the school district has spent $170 million in its effort to build a school atop an abandoned oil field just west of downtown. Last week, the LAUSD Board of Education voted to pull the plug.

"People don't trust local school district officials to spend the money they receive in a wise manner Coupal said.

In fact, this credibility problem is so pervasive that even Proposition 26 supporters admit their own polling shows that in L.A., support for the measure is lacking.

"We're winning in most other areas of the state, but we're losing in L.A. and we're losing big in Orange County," said State Sen. Jack O'Connell, D-Santa Barbara, a Proposition 26 co-chair.

Proposition 26

* Ballot: March 7

* What it would do: Change the requirement for passage of local school bonds from the current two-thirds majority to a simple majority of 50 percent plus one.

* Fiscal impact: Potentially hundreds of millions of dollars annually in higher local school costs, depending on how many more bonds win voter approval.

* Main argument for: Currently takes too much time and effort to obtain a two-thirds vote for school bonds, resulting in ever-greater backlogs of school facilities projects and lower bond amounts getting approved.

* Main argument against: Would increase homeowners' property tax bills, with taxpayer dollars going to school boards that might not spend the money wisely.

* Supporters: California Business Roundtable, California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers Association, California Building Industry Association, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, California Teachers Association, various labor and local government organizations.

* Opponents: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.