Tilting California voters toward raising local taxes often involves tricks, manipulation

California’s Nov. 3 ballot contains 14 statewide ballot measures and five of them pertain to taxes, including the much-debated Proposition 40, which would tax the wealth of the state’s billionaires.

Meanwhile, local ballots are also heavily loaded with measures that would either raise taxes to benefit school districts or local governments or authorize the issuance of bonds that require new taxes to repay.

The California Taxpayers Association has counted 273 such measures that, if all passed, would levy $3 billion a year in direct taxes on retail sales and property, and sanction $19.5 billion in bonds, with interest costs of more than $1 billion a year.

The largest tax measure asks voters in San Francisco and four other counties to hike sales taxes by nearly $1 billion a year to bolster public transit services.

In the last decade, a flurry of local sales tax measures has raised rates to over 11% in some jurisdictions. The biennial deluge of local tax and bond measures draws heavy campaign spending by proponents and opponents and some questionable gamesmanship by the local agencies that propose them.

Under the guise of “information,” it’s not unusual for them to spend taxpayer money on brochures and other forms of communication that approach out-and-out advocacy, often hiring professional campaign consultants to prepare the materials and otherwise use techniques that tout the supposed benefits that taxes or bonds will provide.

If it crosses the line, an “information” campaign violates a state law that declares, “An officer, employee, or consultant of a local agency may not expend or authorize the expenditure of any of the funds of the local agency to support or oppose the approval or rejection of a ballot measure, or the election or defeat of a candidate, by the voters.”

However, prosecutions for violation are as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, although the Fair Political Practices Commission does crack down when instances are brought to its attention.

Another technique officialdom uses to tilt tax elections in its favor is to pretend that ballot measures are not, in fact, tax increases.

Last month, the state Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s finding in Riverside County that the Hemet Unified School District misleadingly declared in the language of a $225 million bond issue that it would not raise taxes. The declaration hinged on the new measure continuing property taxes that had been collected for a previous ballot measure, but both courts rejected that rationale and ordered that the language be altered.

“While the full text of the measure may accurately explain the true nature of Measure I,” the appellate court ruled, “the term ‘no-tax-rate-increase,’ on its face, connotes such a conclusive meaning, that voters are likely to find it unnecessary to read the full ballot materials, erroneously believing that ‘no-tax-rate-increase’ has the plain meaning their tax burden will not increase.

“The impact of such terms in ballot titles and questions has previously been addressed and found impermissible where the terms constitute advocacy or partiality … Replacing ‘no-tax-rate-increase’ with ‘rate-extension’ would be accurate, neutral, and does not mislead voters into believing their tax burden will not increase.”

It’s also noteworthy that Hemet Unified’s board of trustees voted on Aug. 12 to place the bond issue on the November ballot but gave the public just five days to submit arguments on the issue. Compressing the time for opponents to respond is another common technique employed to tilt the game.

Tricking voters is election fraud as onerous as stuffing ballot boxes. Unfortunately, while officials may be a bit embarrassed if caught, such behavior does not invalidate a ballot measure that voters pass.

It should.