Publisher Make Annual Plea to Repeal Sales Tax

The publishers of California’s daily newspapers are finding themselves in the company of ferret lovers and motorcycle riders when it comes to their success in lobbying state lawmakers for special-interest legislation.

Each group launches an annual effort to repeal laws they don’t like and none has made much headway of late.

The ferret lovers push for legislation that would lift the state ban on keeping ferrets as pets. Motorcycle enthusiasts typically start off the new legislative year with a rally calling for the end of the mandatory helmet law. And representatives of the state’s daily newspaper publishers come before the Legislature each year to urge the repeal of a sales tax imposed back when California was in the throes of a recession.

The California Newspaper Publishers Assn. wants the state to repeal a 1991 tax, which was imposed in part to make up a $14.5-billion budget deficit. The group says the tax is unfair because it applies only to the state’s 105 largest daily papers, including the Los Angeles Times.

The CNPA had early success in narrowing the scope of the tax when it persuaded lawmakers to exempt weekly newspapers. But the daily newspapers have had a tougher time in their appeals. Last year’s efforts, for example, went nowhere.

CNPA lobbyist Thomas Newton is more optimistic this year. Because the tax was created at a time when the state needed additional revenue to balance its budget, he said, the time is right to reduce the tax--if not repeal it outright--now that the state has bounced back financially.

“The negotiations have been going on nonstop,” Newton said. “But I’m optimistic we finally have a bill that can make its way through [the Legislature].”

Instead of pushing to repeal the tax, which brings in $79 million annually to state coffers, the publishers are pushing legislation that would eliminate the sales tax on daily newspapers purchased at newsstands while maintaining the tax on newspapers sold via subscription. The bill, AB 1608, is being carried by Assemblymen Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced).

“The price tag for the amended bill is only about $10 million,” said Pringle aide Shawn Kent.

Kent added that Pringle and Cardoza were forced to add amendments last week that would reinstate the tax in full come July 1999. The measure is expected to pass the Assembly.

But the state Senate may not be so supported. Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) helped orchestrate the demise of a similar measure last year that would have repealed the entire tax.

Lockyer “is not necessarily on board with the Pringle bill,” said his spokesman, Sandy Harrison. “The publishers need to make a persuasive case that the existence of newspapers is threatened by having to pay taxes just like everybody else.”