A California Supreme Court decision this week has lifted a cloud over the ability of school district voters to pass a parcel tax by a majority vote in some instances instead of by the standard two-thirds supermajority.
The court on Tuesday voted unanimously to remove a significant anti-tax initiative from the Nov. 5 statewide ballot as unconstitutional. The “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Initiative,” which the California Business Roundtable and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association qualified for the ballot, would have redefined state and local government fees as taxes requiring taxpayer approval and would have required a statewide tax increase, which already requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, to also require a majority approval of California voters.
By requiring that all special taxes, including parcel taxes, pass with a two-thirds majority of voters, the initiative would have overruled a July 2021 ruling by the Court of Appeal in San Francisco. The court said that the two-thirds majority for passing a parcel tax, imposed by the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, did not apply to citizen-initiated parcel taxes. The implication was that teachers, the PTA, or groups of concerned citizens could pursue the majority threshold, as long as a parcel tax proposal wasn’t government-initiated.
The case involved a $298 parcel tax organized by voters in San Francisco Unified in 2018. In August 2021, the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case, meaning that, for now, the appellate court decision holds sway.
The case was not widely publicized, and then the Howard Jarvis Association made it clear that relying on the appeals court ruling would be risky since approval of its initiative would overrule the appeals court.
Business groups said the initiative would have given voters another check on taxation and eliminated the ability of local and state leaders to subvert taxation restrictions by calling them fees and then approving them administratively.
Gov. Gavin Newson and legislative leaders, who asked the Supreme Court to rule whether the initiative was constitutional, countered that it would have hindered leaders’ ability to raise additional funding for programs. It also would have interfered with their ability to respond to budget deficits amid an economic crisis without eviscerating spending priorities.
Writing for the court, Justice Goodwin Liu wrote that the initiative’s changes amounted to a revision of the state’s constitution that can be changed through a constitutional convention or by a legislative initiative – but not by a voter initiative. Taxation is an “indispensable power” of the Legislature, Liu wrote.
Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable attacked the decision at a press conference. Noting that six of the seven Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic governors, he said, “Clearly, the state Supreme Court has now sent a signal that they are part of the progressive agenda in California, that we are a one-party state in California and there is no independent judiciary in California anymore.”
—John Fensterwald
