Anaheim Councilwoman Kris Murray bylined this article in today’s edition of Fox and Hounds Daily:

Closing the Tax Loophole for Charter Cities

By Kris Murray

In 1986, California voters passed Proposition 62, which among other things, closed some loopholes in Prop. 13 and mandated a local agency’s legislative body obtain a two-thirds vote in order to place new or higher general taxes on their local ballot. It was a successful state initiative designed to make it more difficult to increase taxes at the local level. Proposition 62 was also the last major tax initiative led by Howard Jarvis – he ran the effort to qualify it for the ballot but did not live to see it approved by the voters having passed away just before the election.

As a member of the Anaheim City Council one of my priorities has been to strengthen taxpayer protections so I was surprised to learn that Proposition 62 did not pertain to Charter cities, like Anaheim. On March 3, 2015, I introduced the Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act to change that and I am pleased that several of my council colleagues stood with me to begin the process to change this oversight in our city charter.

In the years since Prop. 62 passed, the courts have ruled that the requirement of a two-thirds vote to put general taxes on the ballot only applies to General Law cities but not to the state’s more than 120 Charter cities. Even with the passage of Prop. 218 ten years later, there was no increased vote threshold required of the governing bodies of Charter cities to approve new taxes or recommend an increase of existing taxes for the local ballot.

Charter cities have escaped this requirement due to a lingering loophole in state law. To ensure that Anaheim meets the letter and the spirit of the law, I introduced the Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act to conform our city with existing state law, which if passed would increase Anaheim’s city council approval for any new or expanded tax from a simple majority to a two-thirds vote.

You can read the rest of Councilwoman Murray’s column by clicking here. Her proposed charter amendment was continued to the April 7 council agenda after Mayor Tom Tait and Councilman James Vanderbilt wondered if making it more difficult to raise taxes would, somehow, negatively impact Anaheim’s bond rating. If willingness to raise taxes led to better bond ratings, the State of California would be AAA+++++.

When spending outstrips tax revenue, the eternal temptation is to use the taxing power to extract more money from the people rather than tighten the budget belt. Thanks to Measures L and M, will shift the political center of gravity of future Anaheim city councils to the Left, and a Left-oriented council is much more likely to attempt taxing their way out of budgetary adversity.  This charter amendment would be a firebreak in case future city councils are tempted to solve a budgetary crisis on the back of taxpayers.

There is a long, healthy tradition in America of requiring a high-threshold before our elected representatives can act on matters of grave importance. A two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate is required to convict an impeached President. Constitutional amendments must be approved by a two-thirds vote of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures. Did the Founding Fathers “tie the hands of future Congresses” by including those provisions in the Constitution?

The California Constitution prohibits the state legislature from imposing or increasing taxes by less than a two-thirds majority vote; absent that higher threshold, Californians would be swimming in new and higher taxes. These higher thresholds act as a brake on popular passions and impulsive governing, and ensures a higher degree of consensus on fundamental questions such as taxation. Murray’s Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act is entirely in keeping with this centuries-old tradition.

Four of the five members of the Anaheim City Council are conservative Republicans. A charter amendment requiring a true consensus of the city council before any tax increase is placed on the ballot ought to have four votes. It’s remarkable the issue is being drawn out because this charter amendment makes it more difficult to increase city taxes. Hopefully, those four votes will be there on April 7.