Get rid of elected body that has few duties

The only elected tax board in the country, California’s Board of Equalization is composed of four elected members and the state Controller. Established over a century ago by a constitutional amendment, its original purpose was to establish uniform property tax assessments at a time when there was rampant corruption among assessors in the state. Over the years, the board’s scope widened to include two additional constitutional programs and over 30 tax and fee programs. It eventually came to oversee the collection of one-third of all the taxes paid in the state. It also served as a judicial panel for tax appeals.

These days, however, the board does far, far less.

In 2017, then Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature transferred most of the body’s duties to the newly created Department of Tax and Fee Administration and the Office of Tax Appeals after accusations of gross mismanagement, blatant nepotism, and employee mistreatment.

Those reforms have largely worked, increasing efficiency and transparency in California’s tax system. In the past, for example, taxpayers often had to wait years to get a tax appeal heard. The appeals office inherited a backlog of over 2,000 cases when it took over in 2018. But that backlog has largely been eliminated. At an Assembly Budget Subcommittee hearing in March, appeals office director Mark Ibele noted that the only cases not processed were those of taxpayers who wanted in-person hearings. For its part, the Tax and Fee Administration is processing 80% of refund claims within 30 days, with the majority of those claims processed within 10 days. Similar improvements in efficiency have been made in other areas as well. Both new bodies have also taken measures to modernize and increase transparency, including the Tax and Fee Administration establishing a public data portal.

So where does that leave the Board of Equalization? With little reason to exist. The board’s ostensive function remains to adjudicate and hear appeals. But it handles only 20 to 30 of those per year, with the majority of those processed by staff members. The elected board hears only three or four cases and spends most of its time holding obligatory monthly hearings as required by statute.

Even though board members were stripped of most of their duties as well as 96% of their staff, the diminished workload did not reduce elected board members’ salaries — each of whom takes home $163,917 of your tax dollars annually, the same as California’s secretary of state.

Bay Area voters are considering three candidates on the ballot June 7 for the board’s open District Two seat and the generous salary that comes with it: Democrats Michela Alioto-Pier and Sally Lieber, and Republican Peter Coe Verbica. The seat was recently vacated by former San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen, and the district runs from the Oregon border to Ventura County.

Alioto-Pier is also a former San Francisco Supervisor who is viewed as a businessfriendly moderate. Lieber, who is on the Mountain View City Council and is a former Assembly member, meanwhile, is a staunch progressive. Verbica has mostly private sector experience as a managing director at an investment bank and as a certified financial planner.

Lieber and Alioto-Pier are the more qualified candidates, so much as one can be qualified to do very little. Lieber pointed to her six years of experience on the revenue and taxation committee, and insurance committee in the Assembly, while Alioto-Pier cited her role in establishing the Office of Economic Impact and other job growth initiatives during her tenure in San Francisco government.

In our endorsement interviews with the candidates, none were willing to support eliminating the Board of Equalization or using their position to help dismantle it. It would take a state constitutional amendment to eliminate the board, and Lieber and Alioto-Pier say they would only work to dismantle it after this happens.

That’s not what we were hoping to hear.

Lieber strikes us as a fine enough candidate with some relevant experience. But neither she, nor any other politician, deserves a cushy multiyear launching pad for higher office. In 2018, we called on California’s Legislature and voters to eliminate the elected Board of Equalization. In 2022, our position remains the same.