Californians are saying no to new taxes
In the recent primary election across our fair state, county and city ballot measures raising levies are trailing or have been defeated. WSJ reports.
California’s constitution requires voter approval for local tax increases, which is the only protection citizens have from getting fleeced by politicians and government unions. Up and down the state, local governments asked voters to fork over more money—and almost everywhere were turned down.
Voters in the city of Los Angeles have likely shot down a 2-percentage-point increase in their local hotel tax, also described as being for “essential services.” Maybe L.A. voters took pity on visitors to their grungy city who are required to pay a surcharge merely to hail an Uber from Los Angeles International Airport. {Ed. note; this hotel tax ultimately passed.}
Down the coast, a San Diego measure that would impose an $8,000 to $10,000 annual tax on second homes looks headed to defeat. “Distrust of San Diego’s elected leaders fuels voter opposition to second homes tax,” read the headline of a San Diego Union-Tribune story, which noted that the vote “came not long after the public’s still-simmering anger over high trash fees and paid parking in Balboa Park.”
In Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, voters apparently torpedoed a 0.625-cent increase in the sales tax and a property-tax hike for community colleges. Opponents of the sales tax pointed out that the government “has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting that employee salaries and benefits have risen 47% since 2020.
Californians have long had to make sacrifices to cope with their government-inflicted high cost of living. Yet elected leaders refuse to tighten their belts. When government costs rise, they simply ask taxpayers for more money—invariably for some essential public purpose. Save the schools. Save the libraries. Save the police.
Churches know better than to hold a second collection every Sunday to cover ordinary expenses, because parishioners may get tired of giving. But politicians think they can keep squeezing taxpayers for more.
The result: Taxpayers are weary of coming to the rescue of politicians who can’t control their own appetites. Voters in the Bay Area suburb of El Cerrito last week rejected a property tax increase for libraries. Oakland voters are rejecting a property-tax hike for emergency services. Even San Francisco liberals rejected a union-backed gross-receipts tax hike on large companies with more than $1 billion in sales in the city.
Unions dressed up their measure as an “Overpaid CEO tax” because it would hit companies whose highest-paid executive makes more than 100 times its median employee’s pay. This political sales job worked in 2020, when two-thirds of San Francisco voters approved a similar tax. But voters weren’t about to get swindled again.
Following the 2020 tax hike, businesses reduced their workforces in the city to minimize their tax liability. Business groups championed a 2024 ballot measure to slash the tax, which passed. Unions hoped to jack it up again but faced opposition from some local Democratic leaders including Mayor Daniel Lurie and state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running to replace Nancy Pelosi.
They warned that the tax hike would drive out businesses and reduce revenue. Might Democrats be discovering supply-side economics? Don’t hold your breath, but the tax’s defeat suggests even liberals can be persuaded that soaking the rich is counterproductive.
That doesn’t augur well for a union-backed initiative seeking to qualify for the November ballot that would impose a wealth tax on billionaires.
Read the whole thing here.
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