Are voters ready to alter Prop 13?
- April 29, 2014
By Scott Bridges
Business Journal Columnist
A new poll shows California voters are open to putting once-sacrosanct Proposition 13,which puts restrictions on property taxes and is generally considered untouchable, back on the table.
About half – 49 percent – of registered voters, when asked in a general way if they would support the idea of making some changes to the landmark measure that was enshrined into the state constitution in 1978, said they would, while 34 percent said they were opposed to the idea, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
“Proposition 13 is not as sacrosanct as it had been in the past,” said Carl Stempel, a California State University East Bay professor involved in creating the poll.
Stempel attributes some of that openness to the youth of many California voters who “don’t have the same historical memory as the older generation.”
The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted between March 18 and April 5 with a 3.2 percent margin of error, found that less than 50 percent of voters knew that the measure’s rules apply not only to residential properties, but to commercial ones, as well.What they did know, however – almost three out of four, anyway – was that of owners with similar homes in the same neighborhood, the longtime owners generally pay less inproperty taxes than newcomers.
When it passed with 65 percent of the vote, the popular measure limited the availability of tax hikes of every stripe, which proponents claim has kept the state affordable, but opponents argue that it has led to the precipitous decline in the quality of public education and strapped Sacramento for cash.
But so far, every attempt to tweak Prop 13, and there have been more than a handful in recent years, have come up short due in large part to the opposition provided by the business community and advocacy lobbies like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.The group’s president, Jon Coupal, argues that it’s important that businesses keep low property taxes because if raised, they would, in turn, “hit the pocketbooks of consumers and tenants.”
Here’s a fun fact: Commercial property buyers who take a less than 50 percent stake in the ownership are able to avoid having the property reassessed at market rate.Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (17th Assembly District) in February put forth a bill to close that apparent loophole. If it passes, any sale would trigger reassessment and a higher tax regardless of how many new owners are involved in the transaction.
The proposal seems to find consensus across political affiliations, as voters support changing the measure from the current so-called split roll system as a means of ensuring that business properties are reassessed at the time of sale, just as houses are. In fact, the poll reported that 71 percent of registered Democrats and 64 percent of registered Republicans were in favor of the change, which Ammiano’s bill would address.
“It’s the first time in memory we’ve seen voters want to do anything about Prop. 13,” said San Jose State University Professor Larry Gerston.