California teachers’ budget protests include tax pitch, arrests

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Posted May 9th, 2011 by Charlotte Draper No Comments »

The state’s largest teachers union revved up its faithful Monday to lean on state lawmakers to extend current tax rates and eventually increase them.

The daylong rally by the California Teachers Association kicked off a week of budget lobbying, press events and teach-ins by the union. Their plans and those of anti-war protesters this week prompted stepped-up Capitol security over concerns that some activists might stage Wisconsin-style sit-ins at the Capitol or commit other acts of civil disobedience.

Although law enforcement officials said the crowds were generally peaceful, they arrested about 65 protesters after warning them to leave the Capitol rotunda after the building closed at 6 p.m. They were charged with misdemeanor trespassing.

“We’re not just here to lobby. We’re here to raise some hell,” Betty Olson-Jones, president of the Oakland Education Association, said as the arrests began.

About 1,000 teachers, parents, school support workers and religious leaders began in the morning, urging lawmakers to immediately pass a tax extension to avoid deeper cuts to education budgets around the state. After that, they want a tax hike put before voters.

“Amen! Shame!” said CTA members in light blue T-shirts as CTA President David A. Sanchez and other speakers blasted what they said is corporate greed and politics that have scapegoated public employees, gutted government budgets and put children, the poor and the infirm at risk.

“It’s not right that the rich and big businesses don’t pay their fair share of taxes,” Sanchez said.

School funding has fallen from a high of $56.6 billion in fiscal 2007-08 to between $49 billion and $50 billion in each of the last four budget years. The cuts have forced shorter school calendars, larger class sizes, outright layoffs for tens of thousands of teachers and staff and furloughs for most of the rest.

Meanwhile, schools districts are in the final week of issuing pink slips to teachers.

“Teaching has become crowd control in our district,” said Ellen Old, president of the Stockton Teachers Association.

CTA hopes to persuade at least two Republicans in each chamber to support the five-year extensions that Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking to income, sales and vehicle taxes. That’s the bare minimum of GOP support needed to reach the two-thirds constitutional threshold to approve a tax bill, assuming that all Democrats support it.

“One of our messages (to Republicans) is that we’ll be there for them” when their re-election rolls around, Old said Monday before heading into the Capitol to lobby.

But their quest for taxes faces increasingly long political odds, and the risk of the deepest school cuts they fear may be abating with positive revenue reports from state tax collectors.

Republicans haven’t been sympathetic to tax extensions, which they view as tax hikes by another name.

“We respect (the teachers’) First (Amendment rights) to protest and say what they want. My question is, why aren’t they in school if school and education is their highest priority?” asked Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar.

GOP lawmakers have said surging state revenues about $2.5 billion above expectations this year and perhaps even more in the fiscal year starting July 1 prove there’s no need to extend the taxes. Under Proposition 98′s education funding guarantees, schools get 40 percent to 50 percent of new general fund tax revenues, which means the recent surge could bring them close to even with this year even without the tax extensions.

Huff said the revenue “should be plenty enough to take care of education.” He said the GOP likely wouldn’t support any further cuts to schools under the current conditions.

CTA’s Sanchez and California PTA President Jo Loss both said Republicans still need to agree to taxes.

The revenue surge, Loss said, is “an uptick that doesn’t begin to fill in what’s been taken away.”

Rally organizers on Monday wanted to walk in silence from Cathedral Square and around the Capitol, but a group of people carrying peaceandfreedom.org posters joined the back of the procession and started shouting, “Who should we tax? The rich! When should we tax them? Now!”

The loud group split off as the teachers turned at the Capitol’s northeast corner, but it illustrated how several groups are in Sacramento this week seeking to ride the budget crisis’ political draft.

Code Pink and activist Cindy Sheehan came to Sacramento on Sunday. Peace of the Action, another anti-war group, called for a weeklong “Occupy Sacramento” movement.

Like the teachers, those groups want to close corporate tax loopholes, increase school funding and hike taxes on the rich.

All the activity raised the specter of mass demonstrations, or at least plenty of congestion at the Capitol.

The Assembly and Senate Rules committees issued a joint memo Friday warning staffers that high turnout for the events this week “may have an impact on your daily work environment.”

The memo told staff to expect extra visits, email and phone calls: “If you experience any disturbing situation or become apprehensive about anything occurring, please contact your Senate or Assembly sergeant-at-arms immediately.”

At one point Monday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg had to show his identification to a uniformed California Highway Patrol officer as he tried to cross the temporarily closed Capitol rotunda.

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