California voters might have done billionaires a huge favor by putting Proposition 40 on the road to defeat, but they also showed their willingness to tax a much larger, poorer pool of people: everyone else.
On Election Day, voters in counties and cities big and small, rural and urban considered more than five dozen sales tax measures on their local ballots. These aren’t taxes that will bring in anything close to the estimated $100 billion in revenue of Proposition 40, but much smaller requests like the half-cent increase in the Sacramento Valley city of Williams (population 5,500) for “fire prevention,” and a quarter-cent in Carpinteria for general services.
Golden State is a reader-supported nonprofit publication. Help us remain independent with a tax-deductible donation.
And many voters agreed to open their wallets: Of the 66 measures I tracked, 49 appear headed for approval. This is no small feat. When voters decide to raise sales taxes, they’re effectively increasing their own cost of living, even if these tiny increments seem easy to stomach.
We can argue the economic wisdom of ever-increasing sales taxes, but there’s no debate that voters time and again have indicated a willingness to pay more, as those in Los Angeles County did in the June primary. Here are two key takeaways from the overwhelming support for local tax measures on Nov. 3.
Voters like keeping tax dollars close to home for services they already use. The backers of Proposition 40 had two main goals: Taxing wealth to claw back some of the power dangerously hoarded by billionaires and backfilling the Trump administration’s expected cuts to health services. Compelling, perhaps, but it also puts some distance between voters and the revenue raised.
Local sales tax measures are typically more specific about how a half or full cent of every dollar paid will maintain or expand nuts-and-bolts services, such as fire and police response, street maintenance and buses and train operations.
Golden State staff
In the city of Los Angeles, for example, Measure FD (ahead by seven percentage points on Thursday) asked voters if “hiring firefighters, paramedics, and other staff” and “purchasing and maintaining vehicles and equipment” was worth a half-cent sales tax increase. Voters in the San Bernardino County city of Highland were asked if it’s worth a full-cent increase to pay for emergency services and even improving a single freeway interchange. As of Thursday, that measure was passing with almost 60%.
Transportation had a pretty good election night. Measure RTM, a half-cent sales tax increase in four Bay Area counties and a full cent in San Francisco, is passing with more than 61% of the vote. It would provide about $1 billion per year to the region’s financially struggling transit agencies, including BART, the 131-mile rail system that the pandemic put into a “death spiral” of declining ridership, diminishing service and plunging revenue.
Voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly passed Proposition H to shore up Muni, the city’s transit agency – though that was a parcel tax, not a sales tax. Also in San Francisco, voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition G to reopen the Upper Great Highway to cars during the week and preserve Sunset Dunes Park. I hope this finally settles the fate of that two-mile stretch of road. Between Measure RTM and Propositions H and G, Bay Area residents have a healthy appetite for travel options besides driving in California’s second-largest, traffic-choked metro area.
Dan Morain
In Fresno County, Measure S – which would replace an expiring half-cent sales tax and provide about $113 million a year for street repairs, transit and bike lines – is trailing with about 47% of the vote. But in the city of Fresno, which skews more liberal, Measure D is passing with about 58%. That new half-cent sales tax was put on the ballot by the Fresno City Council as a hedge against Measure S’ failure, and it appears to have been a smart bet.
Elsewhere, Measure A in Riverside County and Measure I in Riverside County are passing. Both would keep existing half-cent sales taxes to fund mostly road and highway repair, causing advocates who favor better cycling infrastructure and transit to oppose them.
Of course, this method of raising local revenue is a symptom of a broken tax system statewide that fails to keep basic services afloat for all Californians. Laws like Proposition 13 limit the ability to raise revenue predictably, leaving it up to local governments to meet their needs by passing small tax increases where they can. In L.A. County, with 88 incorporated cities, school and road quality vary from one community to the next, highlighting gaping inequality.
But it isn’t just wealthy areas voting to tax themselves. Residents of Cudahy in L.A. County and Santa Ana in Orange County – both dense, working-class, heavily Latino cities – overwhelmingly passed sales tax measures on Tuesday.
Let’s hope they get what they voted to pay for.
Golden State is a reader-supported publication. Help us stay independent by upgrading to a paid subscription.
