Reform would also require voter approval<\/i><\/p>\n
by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n
Fresh off Robert’s call for action<\/a>, the Democratic Supermajority is now looking at one of the bizarre aspects of our election law. Specifically, our system of differing thresholds for taxes, bonds, and other ballot measures.<\/p>\n As it stands right now, most targeted tax increases require a 2\/3 vote of the people. Many general tax increases only require a simple majority. Why is is that we require a higher vote total for a more planned out increase? And of course, bonds require the seemingly random 55%. Why 55% you ask? Well, it’s more than 50% of course.<\/p>\n But that may change with the Democratic supermajority taking a look. Dan Walters has it as one of Sen. Steinberg’s top priorities.<\/p>\n Among other things, it means that Democrats are empowered to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without any Republican support and legislative leaders – Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, particularly – want to reduce the vote requirements for local government and school district taxes, particularly those parcel taxes.<\/p>\n If schools could raise more money locally through parcel taxes, it would reduce the state budget’s school finance burden.<\/p>\n Twenty-five school parcel tax measures were on the ballot last week and 15 of them passed, including three in the $200-per-parcel neighborhood. And all but one of those that failed achieved more than 50 percent approval, indicating that were the vote requirement to be reduced, parcel taxes could generate a substantial flow of revenue. (SacBee<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Walters, and the Sacramento CW, see this as a moderate first step. And moderate it is. After all, only a bare majority is required at the ballot (after the 2\/3 approval of the legislature) to change this system. And if we can change the constitution by a bare majority, shouldn’t we be at least able to raise our taxes?<\/p>\n This isn’t going to overhaul Sacramento, but if it happens, it is one solid baby step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reform would also require voter approval<\/i><\/p>\n by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n Fresh off Robert’s call for action<\/a>, the Democratic Supermajority is now looking at one of the bizarre aspects of our election law. Specifically, our system of differing thresholds for taxes, bonds, and other ballot measures.<\/p>\n As it stands right now, most targeted tax increases require a 2\/3 vote of the people. Many general tax increases only require a simple majority. Why is is that we require a higher vote total for a more planned out increase? And of course, bonds require the seemingly random 55%. Why 55% you ask? Well, it’s more than 50% of course.<\/p>\n But that may change with the Democratic supermajority taking a look. Dan Walters has it as one of Sen. Steinberg’s top priorities.<\/p>\n Among other things, it means that Democrats are empowered to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without any Republican support and legislative leaders – Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, particularly – want to reduce the vote requirements for local government and school district taxes, particularly those parcel taxes.<\/p>\n If schools could raise more money locally through parcel taxes, it would reduce the state budget’s school finance burden.<\/p>\n Twenty-five school parcel tax measures were on the ballot last week and 15 of them passed, including three in the $200-per-parcel neighborhood. And all but one of those that failed achieved more than 50 percent approval, indicating that were the vote requirement to be reduced, parcel taxes could generate a substantial flow of revenue. (SacBee<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Walters, and the Sacramento CW, see this as a moderate first step. And moderate it is. After all, only a bare majority is required at the ballot (after the 2\/3 approval of the legislature) to change this system. And if we can change the constitution by a bare majority, shouldn’t we be at least able to raise our taxes?<\/p>\n This isn’t going to overhaul Sacramento, but if it happens, it is one solid baby step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[3405,60],"class_list":["post-14692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-3405","tag-60"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3OY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}