Florida actually has “Save Our HOmes” which limits tax increases to 3%, I believe.
While I appreciate your length analysis, are we to believe that no liberal or progressive individual or group in CA could raise $1M to offer a different proposition to the voters? None? $1M is chump change. Why do you think that is?
And the idea that people want things but don’t want to pay for them is not surprising at all. That tells me that they don’t really want those things. I don’t see why it’s any more complicated that that. Not seeing a contradiction at all.
Prop 13 should have been better written, and could be well amended, but it saved my single mom from having to sell the paid-off family home because she couldn’t afford the property taxes. I do hope we can improve on it, and including commercial property was a big mistake.
First, the $1 million figure is at the low end. Schrag’s book is eight years old now, but even then he was talking at least $1 million, and often considerably more. While that might be “chump change” in some areas of politics, it’s a significant commitment just to go out and collect signatures, before even getting something on the ballot. Anyone spending that much on gathering signatures knows that they’re going to have to keep spending to actually get the measure passed.
Also, i’m not sure where i said that the initiative process is one that only benefits conservatives, and only works to the detriment of liberals and progressives.
My point about the initiative process was part of an overall argument about California politics, but it was separate from my point about Prop 13. Yes, liberal and progressive organizations can get measures on the ballot. But the bigger problem with the initiative process is precisely that it places those initiatives largely in the hand of individuals and groups with access to a relatively small number of big donors.
Sure, in theory, if you can get a lot of people interested, it is possible to use a true grassroots movement to get something on the ballot, but in practice that’s not usually how it works. Generally, a few people, or an organization, decide that they want something, and they spend big money to create an initiative and pay signature-collectors to stand outside supermarkets and shopping malls to buttonhole people with well-spun arguments about why this or that thing needs to be on the ballot.
As i said earlier, these ballot initiatives were originally designed to protect the democratic process from the corrupting power of money, but with the number of signatures required these days, you need a whole bunch of money before you can even get the voters to think about an issue. It’s not that the process itself is always bad, or always produces bad results; it’s just that it’s no longer really serving its original purpose in any meaningful way, it has become captive to moneyed interests just like other political mechanisms, and it is often used to hamstring the legislature in terms of discretionary spending.
Of course, for some people, reducing legislative control over spending is a de facto victory, no matter what. “If we make them spend money on X, they can’t go and waste it on Y.” But the way it often works out is that we just get one self-interested group substituting its own priorities for the priorities of the state as a whole. It hasn’t eliminated self-interested pork-barrelling; it’s just moved it around a bit.
Also, your point about offering “a different proposition to the voters” is another problem, because it detaches these decisions from the broader compromises that are part of the political system. For all their shitty practices, legislatures and legislators are supposed to represent the interests of the people, and in voting for these folks we, the voters, need to consider the pros and cons of each candidate.
While an occasional proposition, on a really big issue, is a good and valid use of the system, we’ve turned it into a sort of political free-for-all, where anything that a bunch of wealthy and connected citizens don’t like about the political system can be fixed by an appeal to the demos. Plenty of Americans make a point of noting that this is not a democracy, but a republic, and that this means representative government, with all its benefits and failings. Resorting to old-fashioned democracy, where individual issues are put to a vote rather than left to the legislature, actually ends up making things messier while not really improving the situation. This is especially true because ballot measures are often even less likely than elections to reflect the broad will of the people, due to the fact ballot measures often only attract voters with direct and vested interest on either side of the debate.
My argument isn’t that initiatives should be eliminated altogether, but that they have taken over the political process in detrimental ways. A wise man once said that, like the filibuster, the initiative is a good idea that should be used rarely. I wonder who that was?
I recently moved to SF from Seattle, one thing this state is NOT spending tax dollars on in effing roads. I drove across a bridge on hwy 80 that looked like it had last been paved 30 years ago and then had to pay a toll for the privilege of off roading my prius across it.
(/end hijack)
So let me get this straight if I bought an average house in San Fransisco in 1990 it would have cost me $299k and it’s now worth $1.225m. 0.66% is the tax rate so their annual taxes have increased about $510/month but their home value has gone up $950k. Why should I be responsible because they’ve got a million dollars in assets (assuming they’ve got 5 years left on their mortgage) but don’t want to pay $6k per year extra for the school system. I think that is proof they don’t cherish their community at all.
Supporting prop 13 is the equivalent of saying that my income taxes can never be raised because I bought a house and I didn’t plan on my taxes going up in the next 30 years. Property taxes aren’t special they are just another way for the government to capture revenue the government can either tax away your ability to pay for your house or increase what your house costs. It is much easier to tell some on with a million dollars to find someplace new then it is to tell someone just starting out that the rich people’s burden is falling to them since the rich people voted that way
My bolding.
No, they want these things, all right. They want them very badly, in some cases, but they want somebody else to pay for them. That’s the American Way. You see it with presidential candidates: “We’re going to build a wall on the Mexican border, and we’re going to make Mexico pay for it.” (Wild applause.) “We’re going to make public colleges tuition-free, and we’re going to make Wall Street pay for it.” (Wild applause.) You see it with communities: “My taxes are way too high, the government and the IRS suck, but the feds had better put more money into our failing air force base so it stays open.” (Wild applause.)
Sure, sometimes “I want” really does mean “I’ll pay for.” And sometimes “I won’t pay for” means “No one should pay for.” But very often people want X, AND don’t want to pay for it, AND yet feel very strongly that someone else should pay for it. Cognitive dissonance? Sure. But this is what we do.
I’m not in CA and I don’t know much about the details of Prop 13, though I do remember when it was passed, but the things described in this thread sound very much like this great American pastime. We need to fix the potholes in the roads–but I don’t want to pay for it, let my new neighbor pay for it. “I want this/I need that/and you need to pay for it” is very deeply ingrained into American culture these days, across the whole political spectrum; why would Prop 13 be any different?
How about this for a modest proposal: Your home’s value rises from $200k to $1 million. You don’t have to pay property tax beyond $200k, because it wouldn’t be fair for you to be financially hurt by something beyond your control. By the same token, when you sell out, the $800k in profit goes to the state, because it wouldn’t be fair for you to financially benefit from something beyond your control?
And the fact that this law was written such that I can pass this tax break on to my children who can still use it when they rent out this cherished family home despite living in Saskatchewan means that it was never about family homes and community and was all about voting into law “I got mine, fuck you!”
By the way, because of Prop 13, Disneyland is paying property taxes at 1970s levels. And, apartment buildings are never actually sold; the company that owns the buildings are sold. That way, the apartment building doesn’t need to be reassessed, and can keep it’s prop 13 level taxes even when “sold”.
Because, again, this law was written and passed in order to keep grandma in her home or something?
YES!!! That’s VERY fair. You get a shitload of money to go move somewhere else along with all those neighbors of yours that are also getting run out of town because their real estate taxes have risen proportionally to the value of their fucking homes.
So I’m still waiting to read all those cites about people getting run out of their homes for failure to pay real estate taxes. 
Why only ownership changes for residential (other than political reality)? The value of your home is higher, property tax is essentially a wealth tax. Why should your wealth be sheltered while the wealth of your new neighbors is not? Your new neighbors are bearing a disproportionate share of the community tax burden.
Most other jurisdictions do not have an analogue to prop 13. Can you show me cites showing lots of people losing their homes because of real estate taxes in California before prop 13? Or can you show me that this is happening anywhere in the country?
I don’t live in Cal, but what I have read of the situation on this thread is that prop 13 was the least bad of the options, concidering that the state did nothing.
Either this prop is old and out of date, or it is still very much in tune with the wishes of californian citizens.
Declan
As others have pointed out, grandma getting pushed out by raising taxes is a nice story, but it was not why this law was passed. Other states deal with this situation which is not in any way unique to California. Prop 13 was not the least bad option, it was a bad bad option and any small benefits it might have had over the years is undone 1000 fold by the unintended (and frankly intended) consequences.
The way the law was written belies any of this grandma losing her house nonsense and shows the real intent of the law which was for businesses to get a huge tax break; the tax freeze on residences was put in in order to solidify the vote by getting people to vote themselves a tax subsidy in perpetuity while screwing over the future residents.
Well, apparently you thought it was so good that it had to be copied in its entirety.
Grandma, my sweet ass. Let’s remember that Prop. 13 was created and promoted by Howard Jarvis, commercial property owner and lobbyist for the the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association. Jarvis knew (and intended) that the primary beneficiaries of Prop. 13 would be landlords and other commercial property owners, and spent years before and after Prop. 13’s passage lobbying for other changes to increase landlords’ power over tenants.
Jarvis also ran for Mayor of Los Angeles many times, on an anti-tax platform. He never gave a damn about people’s homes or their neighborhoods - it was all about the money.
Be that as it may, it was the only option for those in my mother’s situation. No one else in California politics at that time seemed to care. A mortgage-burning party doesn’t have much meaning if your property taxes become bigger than your mortgage payments were, and you have to sell the house. I have no reason to doubt your characterization of Jarvis, perhaps he helped us inadvertently, but 13 was the only way we could have kept our house.
If Prop 13 had been defeated, there was no possible way for anyone to propose a better legislative solution?
Or a financial one. Grandma only has a tax issue if she has enjoyed a huge increase in the home value (poor Nana!). A home equity loan on that windfall would solve the problem.
Reminds me of that scene in Shawshank Redemption when the guard is complaining that he has to pay taxes on the money from an inheritance.
Who can know? I was in my teens at the time, I don’t know how much longer she could have held out.
Of course I think that a government should live within its means. Why are you asking me that? Ask the people who support Prop 13; they’re the ones who say that it shouldn’t.
And John Mace, you keep saying that the only alternative offered by the legislature was nothing. Do you seriously mean that until 40 years ago, the state of California had no property tax structure whatsoever?