Prop 13: A Lamprey on the Necks of California Youth?

From Jordana Thigpen in today's San Francisco Sentinel,

My plan this week was to address the 10% raise which United Educators has requested.

Yet it is delusional to write about the problems that our public schools have in San Francisco, and in the State generally, without addressing Proposition 13. Yes, that Proposition 13 - the 27-year-old, $3.2 billion gorilla in the room, which no elected has the courage to address. Like most 27-year-olds, Prop 13 is about to experience its Saturn Return. Astrologically, this portends great change.

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? So are our public schools. Reforming Proposition 13 is the only way to save our State and get our educational system back on track.

Proposition 13 arose the way that most revolts do - from corruption. A series of scandals involving county assessors made the public lose faith in the process. The counties weren't assessing properties uniformly (partly because of incompetence; San Francisco actually had the worst performance record in the 1960s.) This, and resulting inequities between poor and wealthy school districts, ultimately led to the Serrano v. Priest series of Supreme Court decisions throughout the 1970s. Yet the public was evenly split in the months leading up to the June 1978 primary, uncertain as always surrounding tax reform.

But then Los Angeles County announced it intended to do huge assessment increases in the new fiscal year, and the public hobbled our schools forever by passing Prop 13. We can cut a bit of slack for the 1978 vote. California voters in the 1970s were suffering from the afterburn of the 1960s, as well as having to deal with hellish orange and ochre shag-carpeted aesthetics at every turn. Presumably, it took a toll.

But it's pretty sad that the public didn't heed the prescient warnings of the opposition at the time: that Prop 13 would, among other problems: (1) subsidize commercial property owners; (2) make home ownership prohibitively expensive and create a disincentive for transfer; (3) unsustainably lay the tax burden on the disproportionately smaller class of young working people; (4) effectively destroy home rule for municipalities; and (5) siphon the blood of the school districts.

This has been my personal feeling for years. There are plenty of people out there who can very well afford to be contributing more to the public school system than they currently are, but will not have to... All because of Prop. 13 and having owned their homes for many years.

But Ms. Thigpen's suggestion protects those who need it, "Prop 13 protects senior and disabled homeowners, whose homes are still assessed at the 1975-1976 rate. It is extremely important that this remain a feature of any reform. In fact, as Baby Boomers evolve, this feature of Prop 13 will become critical."

California Proposition 13 [Wikipedia]
Professional house flippers [SFHomeBlog]