Dear Jack Day, (Jack is a Loomis School Board Member)

If you honestly believe that taxes are too low and taxpayers bear the blame for the conditions in our schools, then we should politely agree to disagree. I am sure that we can still work together on the areas where we agree. Every disagreement should not be considered an insult to someone’s integrity. Rather than raising taxes again and again and again, the Republican volunteers I work with would prefer educational reforms that would reduce the costs of running our local schools. I hope you will let us know if there is an opportunity to work together toward something like that. I can certainly understand your frustration after so many years of fighting to improve the schools. If tax increases are always the first resort, I don’t believe that we will ever be able to get the educational establishment to focus on the real problems facing our schools.

I take issue with your comment about “this unilateral determination” in the context of the Placer County Republican Party endorsement, but perhaps I misunderstood your point. I am not aware of any unilateral determinations with regard to the opponents of Measure G. It almost sounds as if you are saying that the Placer County Republican Central Committee, the Placer County Republican Assembly, the California Republican Assembly, the Placer County Taxpayers League, the local No on G Committee in Loomis, and the California Taxpayer Protection Committee all acted unilaterally TOGETHER in opposing Measure G. These groups did not hold any joint meetings and most members of the different groups do not even know each other. In any event, separate endorsements by unrelated organizations do not constitute unilateral action. I apologize if I am jumping to the wrong conclusion about what you meant.

By contrast, the vote of your Board of Trustees was a unilateral action. If my information is correct, your Board of Trustees did not contact any of the bond’s opponents or likely opponents when you unilaterally decided to place Measure G on the ballot in a low turn-out special election. Instead of placing a normal bond on the ballot (requiring two-thirds approval from voters), your Board unilaterally decided to seek a “Proposition 39 bond” requiring only 55% voter approval. If you consulted anyone about that decision, I am not aware of it. I note that there is an unresolved legal question about whether Proposition 39 bonds are even eligible for placement on a special presidential primary election ballot. Perhaps the courts will have to resolve that matter if the bond receives approval. In any event, it seems more accurate to say that your Board acted unilaterally, but the bond opponents did not.

As a result of the unilateral action by your Board of Trustees, the Placer County Republican Central Committee did not receive ANY notice of Measure G until it was too late to invite your Board members to a meeting to explain the need for it. We had no reason to even suspect that local school boards would seek to take advantage of the special election on February 5th to place Prop. 39 bonds on the ballot. I was willing to call a special meeting during the holidays, if necessary, but there was little or no support on the part of the Central Committee for such a special meeting in the middle of the Christmas season. Thus, as a result of the unilateral action of the Board of Trustees, the Central Committee had no opportunity to meet with you in public before the vote to oppose the bond was taken. I am as frustrated about that as you are. In the future, I hope you will let me know if you are planning to place bonds and tax increases on the ballot.

For your benefit, I should mention that our Central Committee members are just as unlikely as most Republican voters to support a tax increase for schools or for any other purpose. Easily two-thirds of our Committee members agreed with Ken Campbell’s argument that we should NEVER support a Proposition 39 bond and we should continue to fight to overturn that disastrous initiative and restore the two-thirds vote for tax increases that Proposition 13 required. I am not saying that to defend the fact that you were not invited to speak, since I really wish the Central Committee had been given enough time to invite speakers. I am just trying to explain that speakers would not likely have impacted the outcome of the Central Committee endorsement.

I look forward to having the opportunity to work with you on something positive in the future. I am sorry that we disagree on Measure G.

Tom Hudson, Chairman
Placer County Republican Party