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By Jon Coupal
On Wednesday of last week, the California Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving the validity of a local special tax initiative that failed to secure two-thirds voter approval.
That requirement is found in Proposition 13 (1978) as well as Proposition 218 (1996), also known as the Right to Vote on Taxes Act, both of which were sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
Taxpayers had petitioned the Supreme Court to review a lower Court of Appeal’s ruling refusing to apply well-settled law.
The significance of the Supreme Court’s failure to provide clarity on this important issue cannot be overstated.
Unless it resolves this question in other cases now working their way up through the court system, a gaping new loophole will have been created in the constitutional protections for taxpayers that voters have repeatedly ratified over the decades. Moreover, the failure to act is a green light to tax-and-spend interests to extract even more dollars from the most heavily taxed citizens in the United States.
To read the entire column, please click here.
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