A SITUATION WHERE BELOW THE RADAR IS GOOD
Advocates for the mentally ill often complain, legitimately, that their issue too often slips under the radar when the Legislature decides on spending priorities. They argue that mental health services have been the victim of 30 years of neglect, as the state never stepped forward to provide the level of community-based mental health services that were intended to replace the state mental hospitals that were closed.
Now, however, these same advocates perhaps stand to gain from being under the radar. This morning they turned in more than 643,000 signatures to place on the November ballot an initiative that would create a 1 percent income-tax surcharge on any taxable income an individual earns in excess of $1 million. The measure would generate an estimated $600 million a year to expand services to the mentally ill -- a step that advocates say would have a noticeable effect on reducing the number of homeless adults on California's streets.
Given that the fall ballot is likely to be crowded with controversial initiatives — one that would create higher property tax assessments for businesses, another that attempts to negate a state law requiring large- and mid-sized businesses to provide group health insurance to workers, perhaps two having to do with gambling, perhaps a high-profile measure designed to reform workers' compensation — the mental health measure might escape the kind of opposition it might otherwise expect.
Business groups will be focused on the health-care mandate and potentially workers' compensation reform. Taxpayer groups will target the split-roll property tax. Who will be left to fight a proposed surcharge on millionaires?
Impressively, mental health advocates collected 100,000 signatures through the work of volunteers. Backers spent close to $1 million on paid signature-gatherers to come up with the rest.
Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg of Sacamento, one of the initiative's sponsors, said most Californians understand the issue — that is, they recognize that the number of homeless they see on the street is partly a consequence of the state never delivering on its promise to fund community-based mental health services. Pilot programs sponsored by
Steinberg legislation have had measurable success with the homeless in a number of counties, resulting in declines of more than 60 percent in hospitalization and incarceration. "Mental illness," Steinberg said, "does not have to be the ticket to an unproductive life."
As for the proposed tax on million-dollar income earners, Steinberg notes that as a result of federal tax cuts for the wealthy, they will have a net decline in their tax liability even if the initiative passes. "It is a tax," he said, "that we should all aspire to having to pay."
