Prop. 13 fallout persists, film shows
California prides itself on setting liberal trends for the United States on issues from immigration to corporate regulation to environment protections. But the country’s mostpopulous state also birthed reactionary tax policies that spread throughout the country and persist to this day.
A new documentary, “The First Angry Man,” examines the origin and lasting legacy of California’s Proposition 13, passed in 1978 in a taxpayer revolt instigated by political gadfly Howard Jarvis. Prop. 13, which slashed property taxes and capped their future growth, spurred nationwide antitax policies, helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House and has exacerbated economic inequality, according to the hourlong film, which airs on KQEDTV on Friday, Oct. 16. It dramatically changed the fortunes of California’s schools and state and local governments.
Jason Cohn and Camille Servan Schreiber, the Bay Area husbandandwife filmmakers behind the 60minute documentary, which is narrated by Pamela Adlon, said its lessons are more relevant than ever with California voters now poised to consider November’s Prop. 15. That initiative would do away with Prop. 13 for commercial properties, while maintaining it for homes — a socalled “split roll.”
The couple spoke by phone to The Chronicle from their Berkeley home.
Q: What’s the significance of Prop. 15 being on this year’s ballot?
Cohn: It’s the first serious attempt to reform Prop. 13. It doesn’t have a strong specific figure like Jarvis, but what it has is the aura of Prop. 13, which, for four decades now has been called the third rail of California politics. There’s been a default position that you can’t touch anything related to Prop. 13. That’s less clear now than it’s ever been.
Prop. 15 is doing something that the Legislature wanted to do in 1978 but they got outmaneuvered by Howard Jarvis. They tried to put together a property tax reform measure that would have created a split roll so residential and industrial/ commercial properties would be taxed differently. They got outsmarted, outplayed by a surprisingly skillful politician in Howard Jarvis, and we ended up with Prop. 13, which was maybe more of a blunt instrument than we needed. Prop. 15 is an attempt to put a little more nuance into
how we tax property. Q: Your film shows a news report of the time saying that Prop. 13 was a big giveaway to Pacific Telephone, Standard Oil, Southern Pacific and other big companies. Did corporations line up to support Prop. 13 in 1978? Cohn: No, they really didn’t. All of the California establishment opposed Prop. 13. That includes unions, big business, especially banks, almost all of the mainstream politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Only a few Republicans were in favor of Prop. 13, and Ronald Reagan was one. Most of them thought it was too extreme, too radical. Even the California Chamber of Commerce opposed Prop. 13; it felt it would hurt the state. The unified opposition says something about the genius and demagoguery of Howard Jarvis that he was able to turn all of that into an asset for his campaign.
Q: Did you go into this realizing that Prop. 13 had had such seismic impacts nationwide?
Cohn: That was one of the first things that struck us. Sociologists don’t talk about Prop. 13 as a parochial California tax law, but as a major historical watershed in American political life. It’s a dividing line between the New Deal/ Great Society/ War on Poverty — grand, ambitious, governmentdriven programs — and the current era of a winnertakeall, trickledown economics and extreme marketbased theories. The result has been the widening chasm of economic opportunity for people.
Q: What else did you learn that surprised you?
ServanSchreiber: One thing I did not know at all is how much race politics played a role in Prop. 13.
Cohn: I don’t want to overstate and make it seem like racial animus was at the heart of people’s decision to cut their own property taxes, but we showed that willingness to pay taxes is connected to how you felt about the government. That was rapidly changing in that time period, especially among white people. There was a growing sense that the government was no longer working for middleclass white people in the suburbs. There was a growing unease about the way government was involved in what many viewed as social engineering enterprises in order to create opportunities and equalize society for people of color.
Q: Your film talks about how Prop. 13 decimated budgets for the state, local government and schools.
ServanSchreiber: The inequality that has come out of the taxcutting extremes is incredibly visible in California. It’s very different from 50 years ago when California was the Golden State at the top of its game, had the best schools, was a magnet of hope and opportunity. Now it’s the epicenter of homelessness, our schools are falling apart, our roads are falling apart, we’re not taking care of business in California.
Q: You ended the film with a mixed message. On the one hand, you
said California voters now show more willingness to pay taxes and that that could spread nationwide; on the other hand, you showed a clip of Donald Trump as an heir to the antitax fervor. What do you think will happen?
Cohn: We’re on the precipice now. Maybe we’ll have a clear picture Nov. 3.
California is always out front. We were out ahead on the antigovernment, antitax mood, now we’re out ahead of waking up from the taxcut hangover and realizing we’ve gone overboard. Eventually what we’ve started to do in California, which is come back more toward the middle, will probably happen nationwide.