Despite surplus, the left wants tax hikes

With its $97.5-billion budget surplus, California has so much money the governor and Legislature can’t figure out how to spend it all. They’re mostly concocting new social programs rather than addressing our fundamental infrastructure problems and longterm unfunded liabilities.

Keep that in mind as progressives again take aim at their bogeyman: Proposition 13. Passed in 1978 to keep Californians from being taxed out of their homes, the “tax revolt” initiative caps property taxes at 1% plus local bonds, reassesses rates at a property’s sale price and limits annual property tax increases to 2%.

It provided a needed check on government excess, but unions and activists still plot the initiative’s demise. The latest fusillade is unusually bizarre. A Berkeley-based group called the Opportunity Institute, which features former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on its board, details the proposition’s “Unjust Legacy.”

“Since 1980, California has experienced a widening gap in homeownership between Black households on the one hand and white and Asian American households on the other,” the report concluded.

How to have your say:

Perhaps we can blame Prop. 13 for climate change or the homelessness crisis, too.

“The study essentially catalogs a bunch of social ills that emerged after Proposition 13’s passage and attempts to tie them to the measure — guilt by chronological association, one could say,” CalMatters columnist Dan Walters pointed out. He highlights a telling paragraph from the study, which admits that “we cannot causally connect these patterns to Proposition 13.”

We’re reminded of Saturday Night Live comedic character Emily Litella, who would launch into some long tirade before realizing a fundamental error in her premise (Oh, it’s violins, not violence) and then she’d conclude with, “Never mind.”

Higher homeownership rates among white Californians explain the tax-break disparities. If the institute were serious about boosting equality, it would target housing regulations that drive up costs and put homeownership out of reach for Californians of all backgrounds.

We can’t improve opportunity by raising taxes to fund a government that has plenty of money and can’t figure out how to spend it wisely.

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