More buzz about Prop 13

As Californians waited and watched during the excruciating budget battle this year, more and more people are beginning to agree we have to look at Prop 13 again. The long-ago decision to cap property taxes and to demand a 2/3 vote to approve budget decisions has made California a failed state. Many citizens do not understand how the budget is arrived at and they continue to demand services without approving any move to raise money for them. We can't keep on getting a free lunch forever. No other state in the country has passed legislation that puts the government in such a bind as California's. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass speaks for many legislators when she says its time to put everything on the table. Next month's Tax Commission Report should give some indication of what the possibilities are. Let's calm down, take a look at the possibilities and make some sensible, grown-up decision about how the state will continue to function.

Last chance for budget?

State legislators will vote this week on competing plans to "fix" California's budget problems. The S.F.Chronicle offers readers a handy chart comparing the two packages. The problem is that neither plan grapples with the measures needed to fix the budget permanently. Both of them push some expenses off into the future and make overly-optimistic predictions of how much money will be saved. The L.A. Times notes that Democrat's plan goes so far as to suggest paying state employees their June salaries just after midnight on July 1 so the expense is pushed into the next budget year. That's the old let's-pay-the-holiday-bills-in-January ploy that many households have tried only to find the bills are just as painful in the new year. To vote either one of these packages into law in time to save us from running out of money on July 1 will require a two-thirds majority. When are our representatives going to settle down and act like grown-ups?

Fixing a tax loophole

The fiasco of the Special Election on May 19 has made it clear that California must make some changes to its budget process. Prop 13, the ballot measure passed in 1978, has been an impediment to sensible budget planning for thirty years, but no legislator has faced up to the challenge of changing it. Now Phil Ting, San Francisco's Assessor-Recorder presents a plan to close at least one large loophole. According to Ting, the people who get most from Prop 13 are large corporations which no longer bear the brunt of property taxes. Commercial property owners paid only 43 percent of property taxes in 2008, while residential property owners paid 57 percent. If the rules were changed so that corporations paid their fair share, California would benefit from increased revenue and a large burden would be removed from many middle-class citizens. The League of Women Voters supports this reform. Let's hope the legislators have the courage to stand firm against corporate lobbyists and make Prop 13 work the way it was intended to work, protecting homeowners, not businesses.