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Wake-Up Time--Prop. 218 Is Law

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The unfortunate passage of Proposition 218 earlier this month will negatively affect every resident of this state and every local government in ways that have only begun to be carefully analyzed.

Proposition 218 won by a 13% margin, but the low turnout on this measure (supported by just 30% of the state’s registered voters) perhaps suggests that its potential impact was not fully understood.

The new constitutional amendment targets all municipal levies: general taxes such as those imposed on hotel rooms; fees for specific services such as tree trimming and street sweeping, and special assessments on property to pay for such essential matters as police and fire services and for libraries and parks. It calls for local governments to win approval from a majority of voters before increasing such taxes or imposing new ones, and it is retroactive to January 1995.

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Los Angeles County depends on such funds for about 15% of its library and fire suppression budgets. Ventura County officials say 218 will force the county to scrap a planned bailout for its financially troubled library system. Inglewood’s special police tax may be in jeopardy. In Orange County, in La Palma, a special lighting and landscaping assessment that raises the equivalent of 10% of the city’s budget is in the cross hairs.

The Los Angeles City Council is suing to stop 218. The council’s challenge is based mainly on the idea that the proposition’s weighted votes for large and sometimes absentee property holders hurt renters and small owners and violate the concept of one person, one vote.

But no locality can afford to wait for the outcome of that legal action; all will have to assess their reliance on such levies and go to their constituents with the most revealing information ever on how their general fund monies are spent. It may take weeks or months to fully analyze options. Nothing less than a full accounting will convince those who go to the polls in future elections of what they stand to lose under 218’s stipulations. Such an accounting must be undertaken to begin the process of determining what level of local services the public can now expect.

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