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By Jon Coupal
Recently, a San Francisco judge upheld the validity of a local special tax that failed to secure a two-thirds vote of the city electorate as required both by Proposition 13 (1978) and Proposition 218 (1996), also known as the Right to Vote on Taxes Act. Both initiatives were sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The lawsuit was brought by HJTA and, after the ruling, it immediately filed an appeal.
The harmful consequences of the court’s ruling cannot be understated. Unless reversed on appeal, a gaping new loophole will have been created in the Constitutional protections for taxpayers that voters have repeatedly ratified over the decades. Moreover, the decision is a green light to tax-and-spend interests to extract even more dollars from the most heavily taxed citizens in the United States.
By way of background, in June of 2018, 50.87% of San Francisco voters voted affirmatively for Proposition C, a tax on commercial rents. There is no dispute that the tax, projected to raise $145 million annually, was intended for the specific purposes of providing child care, early education, and salary increases for preschool teachers in the City of San Francisco.
The less than fifty-one percent of the vote doesn’t cut it. Proposition 13, approved by California voters in 1978, requires a two-thirds vote of the electorate to pass a tax increase for any special purpose. This has been the law for 40 years. It has also been the consistent position of interests often hostile to taxpayer rights. The Legislative Analyst’s Office, California League of Cities, and numerous other local governments have agreed that all local special taxes require two-thirds voter consent.
The basis for the court’s strange ruling, unfortunately, had its genesis in an earlier California Supreme Court case in 2017.
To read the entire column, please click here.
A note to our valued members and supporters: To increase the reach of our message to as many Californians as possible, HJTA made an agreement with the Southern California News Group papers to carry Jon Coupal's weekly column. The newspapers in the group, including the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Daily News, have added a paywall that allows only a limited number of page views per month, and then asks readers to become subscribers. HJTA is not marketing these subscriptions or receiving any payment from them. The columns are exclusive to SCNG's papers for one week and then are posted in full on HJTA's own website, www.hjta.org, under "California Commentaries," where you can read them at your convenience. Thank you for your understanding.
For your convenience, here are links to the opinion pages of all the SCNG papers:
www.whittierdailynews.com/opinion
www.dailybulletin.com/opinion
www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/opinion
www.sgvtribune.com/opinion
www.ocregister.com/opinion
www.pe.com/opinion
www.dailynews.com/opinion
www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinion
www.sbsun.com/opinion
www.dailybreeze.com/opinion
www.presstelegram.com/opinion
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