Continuing a series here at Calitics (see here for a recent installment), I thought it worth mentioning several votes that took place this week around California on local tax proposals. To my knowledge, all of them passed. The measures included:
• Homestead Valley (Marin County) parcel tax, which crossed the 2/3rds hurdle with just 12 votes to spare.
• Rocklin (Placer County) parcel tax for parks, which polled a whopping 82% in favor. Note that this is in a region of the state being hailed as the “new Orange County” in terms of its more conservative electorate.
• Carmel Valley (Monterey County) property tax for ambulance service which polled around 86% support.
There will be plenty of local tax proposals on the November ballot, including two here in Monterey County alone. Some of those will pass, and some will not. But the overall trend is that local taxes are more often approved than not. And if there weren’t a 2/3rds rule in place, local taxes would almost always be approved.
Obviously this does not immediately translate to state government. Despite the fact that local governments tend to be more scandal-ridden than the state government, voters still have a basic level of trust in their local governments that they utterly lack in state government, and that may make it easier to pass a local tax than a statewide tax.
That being said, going back to at least 1998 most state-level tax increases have won at the ballot box. Several tax proposals did not pass in 2006, but between 1998 and 2004 a number of others were indeed approved by an electorate that behaves like and resembles the one we have today.
Let us not forget (the way pretty much everyone else in the state has forgotten) the David Binder poll from May that showed large majorities for various statewide taxes. Voters aren’t likely to just want to dump money in the general fund, but taxes to fund specific services, such as schools or health care, are widely popular and would probably be approved at the ballot box.
So let Chuck DeVore throw a hissy fit about a tiny tax increase that conservatives themselves brought about through indexing brackets – most Californians do not share the vehement, frothing-at-the-mouth dislike of taxes that the Zombie Death Cult espouses.
Voters support LOCAL tax increases because they see where their money goes, and because they are implemented by local governing authorities, they feel there’s more accountability.
You can’t translate that to state issues.
And a David Binder poll is not an election.
As discussed before, it’s one thing to say you support taxes, it’s another thing to vote for them — particularly the kind we need to generate significant revenue.
I’m fascinated that you believe that the 1998 electorate is like the 2010 electorate. There was just a posting here the other day mocking Garry South for saying something similar.