KIWANIS INTERNATIONAL, PASADENA 479

Meanwhile, by way of explanation, I'd like to tell you what I've
been doing for the past eight months: service to the State, which I hope
justifies and excuses my absence from our great service organization.

Early in my term, I sponsored and saw enacted fiscal reform legisla-
tion; perhaps you heard something about it.

It is not only a valid program but a compassionate one. It is not
only structured to make the State financially solvent but to enable local
government—the government closest to the people—to maintain and
expand those vital services which you need and deserve. Above all, it
was an immediate and imperative measure designed to correct an in-
herited problem, to right an inherent wrong, to reduce inequities not
only in the collection but in the dispersion of our tax dollars.

We all know fiscal reform was inevitable. As early as 1962 plans to
produce and reallocate more State revenue were under study. In 1966,
the Cooper-Hughes Bill failed to be approved by the General Assembly
by a single vote; and a series of inefficient and ineffective stopgap
options were authorized as a temporary remedy. Let us never forget
where we were before this legislation, and where we are now and
where we can go because of it!

Prior to fiscal reform there had been a trend and tendency by the
State to let the local government solve its own financial problems. As
a result, the property tax—local governments' single major revenue
resource—was raised and raised again until in the large suburban
counties it was relied upon to finance as much as 90% of the total local
effort.

You as businessmen know this is a bad situation. Even in an ideally
located county like yours, a constantly escalating property tax inevi-
tably reaches the point of diminishing returns. Large scale investment
and development are discouraged; overuse or abuse of the property tax
can kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

As individuals whose compassion and interest in others are demon-
strated through your membership in the Kiwanis Club, you can under-
stand the impact of a rising property tax upon the income of the elder-
ly. The pensioner on a fixed income who sacrificed to buy a nice home
in a fine community suddenly found he was forced to sell his home
because he could no longer afford to pay the taxes on it. The national
inflationary spiral has hit the pensioner the hardest. We cannot pur-
chase the same commodities with the same amount of money we did
ten or five years or even one year ago. Pension incomes cannot be
stretched to meet the rising prices and rising property taxes.