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By Jon Coupal
Last week’s column was entitled, “Legislative session ends with declaration of war on taxpayers.” The war has now gone nuclear. Governor Gavin Newsom and the Legislature just filed a lawsuit, directly in the California Supreme Court, seeking to have the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act removed from the November 2024 ballot before voters get a chance to approve it.
The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA) was written to restore key provisions of a series of voter-approved ballot measures that gave taxpayers, not politicians, more say over when and how new tax revenue is raised. Over the past decade, the California courts have created massive loopholes and confusion in long-established tax law and policy. TPA closes those loopholes and provides new safeguards to increase accountability and transparency over how politicians spend our tax dollars.
After more than a million Californians signed petitions to successfully put TPA on the November 2024 ballot, government officials started talking about this popular taxpayer-protection measure as if it was going to end Western Civilization.
First, the League of California Cities, which never met a tax that it didn’t like, disseminated a “Special Release” claiming TPA somehow restricts the right to vote on tax measures. This was absurd as the whole point of Proposition 13, Proposition 218, and now TPA, was to guarantee the right to vote on taxes.
Proposition 13 requires that a local special tax (meaning for a specific purpose) must receive a two-thirds vote of the electorate in order to pass. In 2017, this clear requirement was weakened by ambiguity in the California Supreme Court’s infamous Upland decision, which has been interpreted to allow special taxes to pass with only 50% plus one vote if the tax was put on the ballot by a “citizens’ initiative.” This has enabled special interests to write their own tax increases, direct the money to themselves, and get these self-serving measures passed with only a simple majority vote. TPA restores the two-thirds vote requirement and closes this costly loophole.
The second attack against the Taxpayer Protection Act was launched by the California Legislature with a late-session gut-and-amend that became Assembly Constitutional Amendment 13. This measure was a cynical attempt to derail TPA by changing the rules for passing certain kinds of constitutional amendments — specifically, initiatives that protect taxpayers by requiring a two-thirds vote to raise taxes.
To read the entire column, please click here.
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