A Remembrance of Albert Rodda
By Mason Gaffney
[Reprinted from an email notice received 3 June,
2010]
We have lost former Cal state Senator Al Rodda, senate leader and
Georgist stalwart. Perhaps it was time: he lived his 3-score years and
10 plus 27 more, but he left footprints in the sands of time.
Anyone caring to write him up, start with
The Back Bench.
Al graduated from Stanford in the year when Law Prof. Jackson Ralston
was beginning his series of campaigns for LVT in California. Very
likely, some of this rubbed off on young Al. At any rate when Al got
to the Calif State Senate, and became head of its finance committee,
and a major leader, he kept introducing initiative and other proposals
for a statewide tax on land values.
You may be sure this raised the consciousness of other statesmen,
even though he failed. He also worked with Senator Mills of San Diego,
who fought to finance BART and other muni transit systems with benefit
taxes on the affected lands.
I first heard him speak to a Georgist group in the Bay Area in the
1960s. Among those present was Perry I. Prentice, Editor of House
and Home Magazine in the stable of TIME, Inc. Rodda scolded us for
not doing more politically I confess I resented his attitude
then, although I learned later that is a professional hazard in Sacto.
Anyway, Prentice, a man not accustomed to being scolded, rose to lead
cheers, and second Roddas remarks.
LBJ was President, preaching of The Great Society it was
another age, scarcely believable to those not living then. Lunch
counter sit-ins were chic; MLK Jr. was preaching, Vatican II was
underway
a time of hope and excitement when people dreamed.
In 1976 we moved to California Jerry Brown was Governor. Time
to dream some more! Appropriate technology was the rage,
with E.F. Schumacher and Amory Lovins drawing crowds. Reforming water
law was thinkable.
Rodda invited me to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on
his latest move for a statewide land tax. I most vividly remember a
nasty heckler and sandbagger, Senator George Deukmejian, a harbinger
of times to come. I remember him because he did not want answers to
his questions, his mind was made up, dont bother him
with facts.
As we morphed into the Reagan Era I ran into more and more people
like that, including Deans Lowell Lewis and Shannon and Fatso the
chemist at UCR, and various entomologists consulting for Monsanto, and
physicists consulting for General Atomic, killers of the dream. Pretty
soon instead of Al Rodda we had Howard Jarvis and the dark night of
despair. California began its long slide downhill into the abyss of
Alabamization.
Al Rodda, after 22 years a Senator, went down in the Reagan landslide
of 1980. So what good came of his hard work? A good deal, I think.
Rodda was a product of the era when California had a magnetic tax
system a way of raising ample public revenues without repelling
jobs and capital. An object lesson for the world. It was far from
perfect, but a student of its nuances, like our friend the Assessor
Ted Gwartney, could see its relative virtues a mile away.
To explain, I attach a SHORT module from an article, When
California had a magnetic tax system. With the State and nation
mired in a new underemployment equilibrium, the stage is
set for a renaissance of the old values that built the State before
the calamity of 1978. God bless you, Al, and if there is a
Reincarnation, send Al back in the body of an ambitious young
politician!
|