The OC Register editorial page today published an editorial calling on the Anaheim City Council to place Councilwoman Kris Murray’s “Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act” before the voters:
Anaheim’s City Council was expected to vote tonight on whether to send the kindly named Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act to the November 2016 general election ballot.
The council should do so.
Admittedly, the timing is strange: It seems to be a proverbial “solution in search of a problem.” Anaheim, after all, hasn’t seen a legitimate tax increase pushed in a long while – back, perhaps, to the mid-1990s increase in the hotel bed tax, which made it one of the highest in the nation at the time.
But it is not entirely without cause. Proposition 62, which California voters passed in 1986, required a two-thirds vote from local governing bodies in order to introduce or raise general taxes. In interpretation, however, courts have found that the rule only applied to general law cities – not the 100-plus charter cities across the state.
Many of the county’s largest cities – Santa Ana, Irvine, Huntington Beach and Anaheim, for example – are charter cities, governed by an original charter document rather than solely by state laws.
So now Councilwoman Kris Murray, who introduced the measure, is looking to bring Anaheim in line with more than 350 cities across the state in requiring a two-thirds council vote for boosting taxes.
Interim City Manager Paul Emery noted in a memo to the council that Anaheim voters supported Prop. 62, with almost 65 percent voting in favor.
You can read the rest of the editorial here.
