PROP. BB: TELLING TALES OUT OF SCHOOL : PASSAGE WOULD REWARD BUREAUCRATIC BUNGLING AT EXPENSE OF PROPERTY OWNERS.

Byline: Clint Simmons

PROPERTY owners beware! On Tuesday's ballot, voters will decide whether or not to raise your property taxes in order to finance the LAUSD's Proposition BB - a $2.4 billion ``School Repair and Construction Bond.''

Proposition BB, if it passes, will mean that for every $100,000 of assessed property value, your taxes will be hiked by $37.14. If your property is assessed at $200,000, you will pay an additional $74.28 annually, and so on.

The reason for the high cost of Proposition BB is because Los Angeles property and business owners will be charged twice the bond's value. First, for the principle on the $2.4 billion bond, and second, $2.2 billion more for debt service and interest.

Is it fair for property owners to be singled out to pay thousands of dollars in increased taxes over the next 25 years to fix L.A.'s schools? Surely the public hasn't forgotten how past LAUSD bureaucratic ineptitude has hindered school repairs.

Just last March, California's voters passed Proposition 203, a measure calling for $3 billion to construct and repair public schools throughout the state. But when the State Allocations Board began dispersing Prop. 203 funds, instead of receiving the $250 million to which it was entitled, the LAUSD received only $16 million.

Why? Because district officials missed deadlines in order to apply for those funds. This lost revenue - all $234 million of it - could have been used, for example, toward relieving the school's $560 million deferred maintenance backlog. Or it could have retired numerous other projects entirely.

Then in June, when the remaining $600 million of Prop. 203 state bond money became available, L.A. bureaucrats attempted to push through their $170 million in applications, ahead of other school districts that had played by the rules and applied on time. Apparently, the State Allocations Board was unwilling to bend the rules for the district and it again left Sacramento empty-handed.

Until and unless the Los Angeles district can show that it can be trusted to properly manage and spend state school construction money, it will continue to forfeit additional billions.

It is precisely the public's distrust that led the LAUSD to embark on a Proposition BB public relations campaign, to appoint a Special Oversight and Audit Committee. This committee's job is to ``ensure that all projects are completed on time and within budget.'' Since Prop. BB bonds will be issued and sold for the next 16 years, unless the committee agrees to supervise this bond measure until the year 2014 any assurances about working within budgets or time lines are meaningless.

Another ploy by the district is its attempt to now show fiscal restraint by including language in Proposition BB stating, ``None of this money can be spent on administration.''

Comforting as it seems that downtown bureaucrats won't siphon off bond money for higher wages, in truth, they have never been dependent on bonds in the past for their obscenely high salaries.

Seeking to pave the way for the bond measure's passage, United Teachers-Los Angeles (UTLA) embarked on a voter registration drive followed with absentee ballot applications. On March 7, UTLA President Day Higuchi asked all teachers to cast ``three votes for our future,'' by supporting Proposition BB and UTLA's two bankrolled candidates for school board ``in order to secure a significant salary increase.''

Promoting employee interests at the cost of student educational interests is a rampant problem in our public schools. To illustrate, California ranks 42nd in per-pupil funding, but ranks ninth highest in teacher salaries. Funding disparities such as these occur because spending for salaries and programs is politically popular.

There is no question that schools in California are in serious need of repair. Certainly the LAUSD's well-orchestrated ``Our Kids, Our Schools'' campaign has shamefully used students to sell their parents and the public on the need for Proposition BB. According to the LAUSD's ``Bond '97 School Information Packet,'' supplied to every school, this 36-page guide includes the do's and don'ts about how to sell the bond measure.

Some of the ``do's'' include using student homework to communicate the need for the bond, giving school tours to the community to emphasize areas of needed repair, and registering 18-year-old students to vote.

Some of the ``don'ts'' include not specifying exactly where repair work will be done and especially not to include the costs.

The public must remember that Proposition BB is a temporary fix. It rewards Sacramento's lack of fiscal leadership and the district's misguided politics and bureaucratic ineptitude. It unfairly singles out property owners to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in higher property taxes for the mistakes of our local and state politicians.

Tuesday's election is one that property owners can't afford to sit out.