Proposition 1A is the latest aftershock in the Proposition 13 earthquake.<\/p>\n
When Proposition 13 passed, limiting property taxes to 1% of value, and limiting increases to 2%\/year, local governments were creamed – the property tax was their major revenue source for operations.<\/p>\n
State government at the time was relatively solvent, so it diverted a substantial amount of state revenue to local school districts (the AB 8 bailout) to keep them from going bankrupt.<\/p>\n
In the first rounds of the state fiscal crisis in the early 90’s, the state shifted more property tax revenues from local government to education, to reduce the state’s obligations. This combined with a reduction in the vehicle license fee, whose revenues were shared with local governments, to put local governments in a bind.<\/p>\n
This is a part of the reason why Gray Davis reinstated the higher VLF, and was ultimately recalled.When Schwartzenegger was elected, his first act was to reduce the VLF – and thereby hammer weak local government revenues. The cities protested, and moved for a legislative constitutional amendment to prohibit such revenue-juggling, which makes local budgeting almost impossible.<\/p>\n
1A is the result of that amendment, plus some negotiating, in which it was agreed that there is a one-time, $1.3 billion transfer from local government to the state.<\/p>\n
Based on the rare consensus that it represents, and my own belief that state government has been using local government as a piggy bank, I’m supporting it.<\/p>\n
California may be unique among states in that we have four levels of government that are material: State, County, City, and Special Districts. Each has it’s own complex revenue\/taxation formulas, and each budgets independently – while relying on tax rates that may be set at and collected by another level of government.<\/p>\n
One of the best things we could do in the long run here in California, is to create a ‘unified budget’ in which we rollup the various budgets and try over some multiyear budget cycle to make them conform to each other. That way we might have some idea of what’s really being spent, and begin to coordinate programs among the different levels.<\/p>\n
Proposition 65 was a competing measure, whose backers have signed onto 1A, and now urge voters to vote against it as the proposition with the highest number of votes will be entered into law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Proposition 1A is the latest aftershock in the Proposition 13 earthquake. When Proposition 13 passed, limiting property taxes to 1% of value, and limiting increases to 2%\/year, local governments were creamed – the property tax was their major revenue source for operations. State government at the time was relatively solvent, so it diverted a substantial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}