Festivities Honor Jarvis, Gann on 10th Anniversary of Proposition 13

While many cities and counties are cutting back services and blaming their poverty on Proposition 13, a few of those who helped guide the property-tax initiative to victory in 1978 are celebrating its 10-year anniversary.

At the Pickwick Entertainment Center in Burbank, about 140 members and friends of the United Organizations of Taxpayers spent Sunday afternoon dancing, eating and listening to speeches. The crowd was largely made up of senior citizens, who were among the primary supporters of the tax-reform initiative.

Keynote speaker and radio talk show host Ray Briem credited the initiative, which drastically decreased property taxes, with paving the way for former Gov. Ronald Reagan’s election to national office.

Briem and others said local government reports of declining city services because of Proposition 13 have been greatly exaggerated. To back up his point, Briem referred to what he called “scare stories” told before the June, 1978, election by Proposition 13 foes.

“You remember,” he told the audience. “The ones about how the rats were going to be in the streets, with all the garbage collectors gone. The scare stories were legend.”

Briem said he tells Proposition 13 naysayers to “check their tax bills . . . and then ask, ‘Was Proposition 13 worth it and is it doing the job?’ ”

Sunday’s luncheon was a virtual memorial to Howard Jarvis, former president of the taxpayer’s organization and co-author of the initiative with Paul Gann. Jarvis died nearly two years ago.

Among the door prizes were cassette tapes of excerpts from Jarvis’ salty speeches. The podium was dominated by the enlarged cover of a 1978 Time magazine, which featured Jarvis and the words “Tax Revolt.”

When the Rev. Phillip Adams gave his invocation, he blessed the “great good” that Jarvis did “in making this proposition come to life.”

Briem concentrated the bulk of his remarks on reminiscences of late-night radio interviews with Jarvis. He quoted Jarvis’ favorite descriptions of politicians as “popcorn balls” and “buckets of steam.”

A theme of several of the other speeches and much of the informal conversation at the luncheon was the inalienable right to own property, a right that Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich--greeted with a chorus of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” by the band--said was protected by the tax initiative.

“At a time when people were losing their homes” because of an inability to pay rising taxes, Antonovich said, “Proposition 13 allowed people to retain their homes.”

The back of the program quoted Jarvis on that subject: “The most important thing in this country is to preserve the right to own private property because it is the No. 1 extension of human rights in the United States.”

But Jarvis’ partner Gann was allowed to share a little of the spotlight. Gann sat at the head table, noticeably drawn from his battle with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He received two standing ovations during the course of the afternoon--one when he was introduced along with other dignitaries and another when he rose to speak.

Gann, whose group, The People’s Advocate, helped gain enough signatures to qualify Proposition 13 for the ballot, described states without the right to petition as only “half-free.”

“Isn’t it wonderful to be an American?” Gann asked. “I mean a California American.”