Credit Orange County lawmaker John Moorlach for shining a bright spotlight on a surprise tax increase that starting in April will be on car owners’ registration bills.
Moorlach, a Republican and a staunch critic of the way the state has handled workers’ pensions, says a $10 increase, buried in the state budget, will go toward covering the state’s rising tab for the California Highway Patrol officers’ retirement plan.
Moorlach says the state, with lawmakers’ and the governor’s blessing, is using the state car tax to raise the revenue needed to cover its growing cost — an estimated $415 million this year.
The governor’s office said in June the increase is needed to cover the rising cost of CHP pensions and to prevent “significant” cuts to CHP’s ranks and to Department of Motor Vehicle offices.
The increase was approved with little public attention, maybe because it’s only $10, at least to start, and because we don’t know how many other state fees are being quietly raised because of the state’s rising pension costs.
Our local representatives, Assemblyman Marc Levine and state Sen. Mike McGuire, did little to inform their constituents of the increase, both before and after the budget was voted for and signed.
It is an expense that the owners of 27.7 million vehicles in California now have to cover, keeping promises made to CHP officers, who play an important role in helping keep our state safe. But that doesn’t mean state taxpayers have to be happy about those promises made with little oversight and less foresight that are taking bigger and bigger bites out of the state budget.
The state’s annual bill for CHP pensions has grown from 13 percent of the cost in 2000 to 50 percent today. That’s largely due to changes approved in 1999 that allowed officers to retire at age 50 with pensions, as much as 90 percent of their highest compensation for as long as they live.
It wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers more. Lawmakers said returns from state investments would cover the cost of the change. Then the dot-com stock bubble burst — there was a national recession.
Of course, lawmakers’ strategy of quietly approving the increase and not having it go into effect until April might ease the political heat.
Built into the increase is an annual, automatic cost-of-living increase.
Moorlach, a public pensioner himself, deserves credit for being forthright and honest about the increase, its purpose and its importance, both in covering a growing budget gap and a budgetary maneuver that we are all paying for.
