Where Did Elvis Stand on Prop. 13?

The hottest thing in newspapers these days is the revisiting of old news: anniversary journalism. The death of Elvis, the invention of aluminum wrap, Jackie Robinson’s baseball debut: another edition, another milestone to be run through the journalistic microwave, reconstructed, remembered and loaded with retrospective.

Thirty years later, what did the Summer of Love really mean? Or the Sputnik launch? Or Hank Aaron’s home run? The flood of such pieces can leave readers confused. One morning it’s back to Bloody Omaha. The next it’s up the river with Lewis and Clark.

For journalists it can become quite competitive. The battle not only is to find watershed events to revisit, but also to revisit them first--no matter when the actual anniversary date falls. I once worked with an editor who considered it a badge of honor, a scoop, to publish anniversary packages at least a full week before any other newspaper.

One way to measure a moment’s import, in fact, is to track just how prematurely the anniversary journalism starts rolling out. In this vein, it is interesting to note that, nearly seven months before the 20th anniversary of its passage, Proposition 13 retrospectives already have begun to trickle into print, an op-ed piece here, an impact analysis there. Before long, this is certain to become a flood. Well, as the kids say, last one in the water. . . .

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Twenty years ago today, the Los Angeles Times of Nov. 12, 1977, brought word of soaring stocks and trouble in the Mideast. A plague of bark beetles had chewed away more than 3 billion board feet of California timber. California convicts had won a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections over poor medical treatment. Five Los Angeles officials were in trouble for flying first-class to Europe at taxpayers’ expense, and a hermit called the Phantom of Santa Ana Canyon stood accused of chucking stones at freeway traffic.

And yet for Californians, then and now, the most important news of the day was taking place, not in the drought-stricken forests or faraway international hot spots, but in shopping malls and in front of grocery stores across the state. Two old political gadflies, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, had begun to collect the signatures that would place on the June ballot what would become known as (insert drumroll) Proposition 13.

Opposed by most of Official California--politicians, business groups, newspapers--it passed by a landslide. Property taxes that, in many counties, had been rising out of control at once were rolled back and essentially frozen in place. No new taxes could be passed without a super-majority. It was a political earthquake that altered fundamentally how California governs itself and--in another sense--how it imagines itself.

With Proposition 13 came a cottage industry of policy experts devoted to arguing about its impact. “That’s one of the fascinating things about Proposition 13,” the editor of Sacramento News and Review wrote this week, introducing his publication’s Proposition 13 anniversary cover piece. “It’s almost 20 years old, and it can still spark a fistfight at a cocktail party.”

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One side tells of retirees who hung on to their homes only because of Proposition 13. The other points out that most of the tax cuts have gone, not to homeowners, but large corporations--many of which opposed the measure as fiscally imprudent. One side notes that government, despite campaign rhetoric, did not crumble post-Proposition 13. The other laments the closed libraries, crumbling infrastructure and dramatic falloff in public school spending. Once ahead of the national curve on public education, California by several measurements now scrapes shamefully across the bottom.

One side notes that government needed to be humbled, and that this blunt instrument did the trick. The other will counter that Proposition 13’s impact was anything but “populist,” that it in fact stole power--and resources--away from town councils and county boards and shifted it to Sacramento. It instituted the absurd derby between cities over auto malls and card rooms: the sales tax game.

The battle goes on and on--to no real resolution, as most California’s political leaders, still terrified by the ghosts of Jarvis and Gann, go mute on the subject of Proposition 13. Both sides come loaded with numbers, bar graphs, data. Let me suggest, however, that Proposition 13’s main legacy was more spiritual than fiscal.

Intentionally or not, it served to mark the end of a California that did grand things together as one. Water projects. Freeways. Universities. Instead, it became just one more place to look out for No. 1. Want to go to a park? Pay a fee, pal. Send your kid to state college? Pony up tuition. I got mine. You get yours yourself. Anyway, happy birthday, Proposition 13. Make a wish, and blow out the candles.