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By Jon Coupal
With great fanfare, the proponents of an initiative to raise property taxes in California by $12 billion a year announced they had turned in over 1.7 million signatures to qualify the measure.
Their press release was headlined “Schools and Communities First make history with most ever signatures submitted.”
It’s a wonder they didn’t break their arms trying to pat themselves on the back.
For those who have forgotten, the measure, entitled the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act of 2020, would remove one of Proposition 13’s most important protections – the limitation on annual increases in taxable value – from business and commercial properties. The increased tax burden would be passed along to consumers and taxpayers who are already struggling with California’s high cost of living.
Multiple efforts to “split” the property tax roll have failed over the last 40 years. Most never made it to the ballot and the one that did, voters rejected. Prop. 13’s continued popularity remains remarkably strong to this day as evidenced by a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll showing that a strong majority of Californians believe that the initiative is “mostly a good thing.”
To read the entire column, please click here.
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