Two social media and crypto executives are behind an initiative on the November ballot that would jeopardize steady funding for services financed by the General Fund and force state taxpayers to use after-tax dollars to fund what the sponsors and others like them could fund with pre-tax dollars.
The initiative would impose a surcharge for 10 years on annual incomes over $5 million in order to raise $500 million to $1.5 billion per year for the “California Institute for Pandemic Prevention.” According to Governing Magazine, the measure is backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz and crypto trader Sam Bankman-Fried. Why not fund the institute themselves or team up with other philanthropists who — unlike state taxpayers — would be entitled to a tax deduction? Or why not seek a federally-funded institute? Instead, the sponsors chose a non-deductible vehicle in a state with notoriously volatile tax revenues provided by a tiny number of mobile taxpayers already paying taxes at high rates. To add insult to injury, from what we can tell Bankman-Fried is not even a California taxpayer.
They also chose to follow in the footsteps of another state-run grant-maker — the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) — created in 2004 and endowed so far with $8.5 billion of taxpayer-backed bonds to finance stem cell research. We dare you to find anything current from the State Auditor or the Citizens Financial Accountability Oversight Committee about CIRM’s performance. A recent article criticized CIRM’s lack of accountability. At the time of this writing, even the organization’s website can’t be reached:
Appointments to the pandemic institute’s board would be made by an elected official — the governor — with no expertise in the subject matter but great expertise in the value of making appointments to boards that spend money. Who do you think governors would choose to be the members of a prestigious board that would have the power to spend $15 billion, much of the value of which would — if ever — likely be obtained after the governor has left office?
With Lyft proposing a self-serving tax increase and the legislature still in session, those of us who care about high quality state services for residents at reasonable costs to taxpayers already faced battles on multiple fronts.
