Intellectually dishonest report attacks Proposition 13 on ‘equity’ grounds – Press Telegram

It’s surprising, in a way, that as California politics have shifted to the left over the past few decades, the iconic symbol of its once-conservative side, Proposition 13, remains intact.

Passed overwhelmingly by voters in 1978, Proposition 13 froze property tax rates (1% plus bonds) and limited the growth of taxable values ​​to 2% per year as long as the property did not change hands. It also made it difficult to enact new taxes of any kind, whether by politicians or voters.

Like all tax policies, the provisions of Proposition 13 were arbitrary. With the property tax bill rising at the time due to high inflation, anti-tax hawks Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann saw an opportunity and seized it, overcoming fierce opposition from leaders of both political parties and those who disliked the notion of limits fiscal and spending. .

Critics of Proposition 13 widely assumed it would be temporary because either the courts would invalidate the measure or voters would repeal it. It didn’t happen either. Both state Supreme Courts and the United States Supreme Court have upheld its constitutional validity, and in subsequent years, voters have strengthened its provisions.

The state’s leftward turn over the past quarter-century has spawned new efforts by those who loathe Proposition 13 — public employee unions and other advocates of additional spending — to amend or repeal it, but so far they have been unsuccessful.

Opponents believed the most salable change would be to remove property tax limits on commercial properties, while leaving them in place for homes and other residential properties. They chose the 2020 presidential election, with a large expected turnout of anti-Donald Trump Democratic voters, as the most favorable venue. However, they could not make the sale on a “split roll” and Proposition 15 was defeated, although not by a wide margin.

So what’s next in the perpetual battle over Proposition 13?

Last month, some left-of-center academics produced a new study framing Proposition 13 as a racist tool because white and Asian homeowners allegedly receive disproportionately high benefits from its limits compared to black and Latino Californians.

“Generations of Californians have been harmed by this policy, especially black and Latino Californians, those with lower incomes, and those with less wealth,” the study states. “The policy benefited older generations of Californians at the expense of those who came after.”

Income and wealth disparities among Californians are well-known and unfortunate, but they stem from multiple reasons that have nothing to do with Proposition 13, the study, conducted and published by the Berkeley-based Opportunity Institute, alleges. White homeowners benefited greatly from property tax caps because they were more likely to own property in the first place.

The study essentially catalogs a bunch of social ills that arose after the passage of Proposition 13 and tries to link them to the measure—guilt by chronological association, you might say. But the effort is undermined by a revealing paragraph:

“We found that disparities in housing and wealth have increased. While we cannot causally connect these patterns to Proposition 13, they nevertheless paint a troubling picture of the disparities that undermine California’s values ​​of equal opportunity for all.