For Board of Equalization

BALLOT FATIGUE CAN AFFLICT even the most enthusiastic Californian. But you’ve done your research and you’re ready to vote for governor. Good. And lieutenant governor. Well done. Secretary of state. Yes, you are well aware that California has a secretary of state and that, despite a title that calls up images of high-stakes negotiations with foreign powers, the office handles elections, certain business filings, even the California state museum. You’re ready to vote for controller, treasurer, attorney general and insurance commissioner.

Further down on the June 6 ballot are the state superintendent of public instruction, the Assembly, the county assessor, the sheriff and, depending on where you live, the Board of Supervisors and the state Senate. Still coming are the judges. And if you live in the right place, the L.A. school board.

And then you get to the state Board of Equalization. The what? Who are they? What do they do?

The Board of Equalization is a five-member panel that oversees taxes and hears appeals from rulings by the Franchise Tax Board. It consists of the state controller and four people elected from the most bizarrely drawn districts California has yet to produce. You can find the map in your Official Voter Information Guide. There you will see that the state has been carved up so that if you live in the north part of Los Angeles County, you vote in the same district as voters who live near the Oregon border. If you live in certain parts of the Palos Verdes peninsula, you vote with the people in Calexico. But the rest of Los Angeles gets a district of its own.

California is the only state with an elected tax appeals board, which touts this fact as if it were a good thing. But it’s not.

Appeals from tax rulings should be heard by judges, not politicians. In this era of term limits, the board is becoming a holding pen for politicians who have been termed out of one office and are biding their time until a campaign for another.

We should not have to put up with this. Exhausted voters with no clue what the Board of Equalization does are inundated with candidate mailers celebrating schools, public safety and other non sequiturs. If there were a ballot measure to abolish the board as an elected office, we’d be all for it.

Instead, voters in Los Angeles County vote for candidates in any of three board districts. Most will find themselves in District Four, where in the primary Democrats will pick from among four candidates. Because we will end up with one of them, we might as well pick the best, which is, by far, Judy Chu. The three-term assemblywoman and former mayor of Monterey Park is innovative and independent. On a board that gets little public scrutiny, Chu can be counted on to do the right thing whether or not her actions get much notice.