Foes Keep Heat on Jones’ Tax Record

Three of the major Republican candidates seeking to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer hope to trip up GOP front-runner Bill Jones for pushing the largest tax increase in the state’s history through the Legislature in 1991 when he was an assemblyman.

Though criticism of Jones’ tax votes isn’t new, it intensified Thursday with a press conference by former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin in Sacramento.

She said Jones -- who, as Assembly Republican leader, was instrumental in passing a combination of tax hikes and program cuts that plugged a $14-billion budget hole -- has shown he couldn’t be trusted to withstand pressure for tax increases in the Senate.

“He has voted several times to either raise taxes or make it easier to raise taxes,” she said. “Voters should judge candidates by what they do, not by what they say.”

Marin further questioned Jones’ conservative credentials because, she said, he hadn’t signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s “no-tax pledge” -- viewed as sacrosanct by many Republican primary voters. Jones responded that yes, he had signed it, though he hadn’t publicized it.

Jones defended the 1991 legislative tax package, pushed through under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, as a one-time fix that employed only temporary tax increases. “He’s in favor of cutting taxes where he can,” spokeswoman Valerie Walston said.

Hoping to trump Marin’s charges, Jones announced his endorsement Thursday by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., named after the state’s legendary tax foe who died in 1986. Group president Jonathan Coupal praised Jones for defending the state’s landmark property tax reform measure passed by voters in 1978.

The volley illustrated the urgency on the part of the campaigns of Marin, former Los Altos Hills Mayor Toni Casey and former Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian to stall Jones’ momentum as the March 2 primary approaches. Those candidates have hovered in single digits in voter surveys, with Jones well ahead and many voters still undecided.

Kaloogian was among the first to criticize Jones’ tax record. He represents a hard-line wing of the party still stinging from what they perceived as a sellout by Wilson for Democratic budget votes to pass the 1991 budget.

“You can’t hold the base of the Republican Party when you’re the author of the largest tax increase in the history of California,” Kaloogian said in January.

Taxes aren’t a partisan issue but a California issue, Casey said, particularly when the taxes are paid to the federal government. California receives about 77 cents for every dollar paid in taxes, she said -- a statistic repeated by all of the candidates as evidence that the state needs a stronger fiscal voice in Washington.

On his campaign website, Jones said he is “concerned about higher federal spending” but said some of the current budget increase is justified because of the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq and the anti-terrorism programs. All of the candidates have urged Congress to make permanent the temporary tax cuts pushed by President Bush.

“To reverse them, as a number of Democrats have suggested, would mean raising taxes,” Marin said Thursday, “and that is simply unacceptable. Much of the economic progress we have made would be lost.”