Severance Pay from Oil?

A new ballot initiative is going into circulation which imposes an oil severance tax for education, including higher ed. It apparently has some level of endorsement from community colleges. However, there is no money at this point for signature gathering. Hiring signature-gathering firms for an initiative costs $1-$2 million.

The backers say they will use students, Facebook, etc. So far, no one has gotten anything on the ballot in recent memory without hiring signature-gathering firms. Of course, getting something on the ballot is only a first step. You then need lots more money for TV ads, particularly if you take on the oil industry.

Below is info on the initiative:

Backers of oil tax initiative can start to gather signatures (excerpt)

Steven Harmon, Contra Costa Times, 05/03/2011, 05/04/2011

SACRAMENTO -- The Attorney General's office on Tuesday released its title and summary on a ballot measure that would tax oil companies, with proceeds used to increase education spending by $2 billion to $3 billion a year.

Backers of the initiative can now begin to collect signatures.

Easier said than done, especially for what is basically a one-man operation. Peter Mathews, a Southern California college professor, said he will be enlisting students around the state to gather the signatures, using Facebook and Twitter to generate interest.

Mathews has a website, RescueEducationCalifornia.org, and boasts the endorsement of the California Community Colleges Association.

That group's president, Ron Norton Reed, has pledged to gather signatures and send out fundraising letters.

Recently, the California State Los Angeles Associated Students Incorporated passed a resolution stating it would get the word out to begin collecting signatures...

He's also received the personal endorsement of Jack Scott, the chancellor of the state's community colleges.

But the hardy support of the education community is not the weapon they will need if the initiative gets on the ballot. They'd be going up against an industry that spent $90 million to defeat a similar oil extraction ballot measure in 2006.

The measure lost, 55 to 45 percent, despite the endorsements of former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and other luminaries who came to the state.

All they had to do was raise the specter of higher gas prices, and it was enough to spook voters. A difference, Mathews said, is that the revenues would have been earmarked for environmental programs. Revenues for schools might get a different reaction, he said.

...The tax would be $15 on each barrel of oil extracted from California and allocates the revenue to educational funding (for non-construction purposes) with 30 percent going to K-12, 48 percent to community colleges and 11 percent each to University of California and California State University...

The measure would prohibit oil companies from passing a tax on to refiners, gasoline stations or consumers.

Full article at http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics-government/ci_17985024

Official info on the initiative is at

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i934_title_and_summary_11-0004_final.pdf

and

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i934_initiative_11-0004.pdf