KTLA News: "Mayor Tom Bradley gives press conference on Proposition 1" (1973)

we differ in the philosophy with those who are proposing proposition 1 we believe that government is necessary we believe that there are things that only government can do no member in this room this morning supports the idea that we must have unlimited spending we believe that we ought to be careful and frugal about the way we spend the taxpayers money but we cannot project what the needs are going to be 10 or 20 years from now and therefore do not think that this kind of inflexible measures should be written into the Constitution to bind the hands of our children and grandchildren the great virtue of this proposition is that it is the first time in this state or any other state that the tax payer will be able to vote on the total amount of his money he wants the state to spend now once he's limited the total then the special interests which before were battening at his door will have to batten on one another one special interest will have to fight with another special interest in order to get a share of this fixed total they will be in the same position that the children the members of a family are now with respect to their household budget you have a fixed budget and you fight about who shall spend it in the same way under proposition 1 the state legislature will have a fixed budget the citizens of the state will say through the poles what they want that fixed budget to be I think it's significant that this morning representatives from several agencies of government have joined together in a press conference in opposition to proposition 1 the boards of Supervisors I representing city officials and members of the boards of education throughout the state of California have come this morning to say to the people of California that we are opposed to proposition 1 for a variety of reasons first of all proposition 1 will drastically affect our schoolchildren in the years to come and will hurt local government in its effort to carry on the services so badly needed by the people we believe that there will be a shift in the taxes from the state income tax the most progressive tax to the more regressive property tax in order to pay for those services that people need and deserve I would not like to call upon and obviously at least in my judgment yes the state legislature is going to be cutting might also add as a side note that as a staunch Republican and with the pressures coming out of the governor's offices these days that comes down to a question of philosophy and in part and judgment about the effect of the initiative on local government including education I believe that government is necessary and the proponents of proposition 1 have the philosophy that we ought to have less government they don't really believe in government they don't have confidence in elected officials they don't think they can make proper judgments and I do I believe that we should not write into the Constitution such inflexible restrictions on our program needs in years to come lastly I believe that this is not a tax savings but it's simply a tax shift and the property tax at the local level is going to have to be used to pick up those costs if we are going to save the programs that are so desperately needed these are the reasons why I am opposed to proposition 1