California Scheming

by Mike Stoker

Court Says No Taxpayer Protection

The California Supreme Court recently ruled that the Taxpayer Protection Act (TPA), which had been legally qualified as an initiative to be on the November ballot, cannot be on the ballot after all. The court ruled that the TPA would be a revision of the state constitution and cannot be proposed via initiative, rather only by a constitutional amendment.

In so ruling, the court has made it very clear that after almost 30 years of appointees by liberal and progressive Democrat governors, the court has finally become nothing more than a group of robed political cronies willing to do whatever the legislature and the governor want. Their decision, on its face, had no legal basis and clearly defied logic and common sense. The TPA did nothing more than strengthen and protect Proposition 13 and Proposition 218 from being changed by the legislature and governor.  (They are trying to remove all Proposition 13 protections for business properties.) Propositions 13 and 218 were both initiatives that qualified for the ballot, just as the TPA did. To suggest Propositions 13 and 218 could be passed by initiative but the TPA, which only seeks to protect Propositions 13 and 218, could not, makes no sense at all.

You don’t have to be an attorney to understand that.

TPA was sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Business Properties Association, and the California Business Roundtable. It had broad support among hundreds of business associations, chambers of commerce, and virtually every taxpayer association in California concerned with the preservation of Propositions 13 and 218.

Recent polling has indicated that Californians feel overtaxed, which would have helped the measure’s backers potentially win in November. Fear of that outcome propelled Democrat officials to ask the Supreme Court to block the measure from reaching the ballot. They won the case exactly one week before the final deadline for initiatives moving forward on the ballot.

So, the legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom, knowing the voters do not support their agenda to raise your taxes had no where to go but the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court in doing their dirty work overturned over 100 years of legal dictum and precedent that always liberally construed the law to allow initiatives to go forth and allow the voters the right to make their own decisions.

As Jon Coupal, President of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (the Association that qualified Proposition 13 as an initiative) stated, “A close look at the decision reveals that the court has now devolved into just another tool of the progressive power structure in California. Ignoring over 100 years of case law recognizing the court’s duty to “jealously guard” the initiative power, the court now sees no value in the right of the sovereign people to control their government. Hiram Johnson must be spinning in his grave.”

It is one thing to have out of control progressive Governors and legislators who have transformed California that was once the “Golden State” and almost number one in every ranking possible, except taxes, to the “Broken State” at the bottom or in the bottom five of all categories except for taxes where we are ranked (fittingly) number two. It is another thing when a political Supreme Court takes away the right of the people to use the initiative process to enact laws and policies…a right the is ironically given to us in the California Constitution.

Our Supreme Court has made it clear where it stands and that is now not going to change until you change the thinking of those who are on the court. And that is only going to happen one of two ways. The first is to stop electing progressive governors who support progressive ‘political’ justices. The second, and perhaps the most compelling, is to vote to remove all Supreme Court justices when they come back up to the voters to be ‘retained’ or ‘removed.’  We did it in 1986 when we removed Chief Justice Rose Bird, and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, over their refusal on the bench to impose the death penalty.

It worked then.

And I believe it could work now.

SB Current is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy receiving our mix of daily features please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

If you’d rather not tie yourself to a monthly or yearly contribution, a one-time donation would work too.

Whatever you choose, your encouragement and patronage is greatly appreciated.

Mike Stoker is an attorney whose law practice emphasized environmental, land use, agricultural, and business law. He has also served on the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors, served as the Chairman of the CA Labor Relations Board, served as CA Deputy Secretary of State, and most recently served, having been appointed by the President, as the Southwest Administrator of the US EPA serving 75 million people spanning 8 time zones from Navajo Nation in New Mexico in the East to the Mariana Islands in the west with Guam, America Samoa, Hawaii, California, Arizona, and Nevada in between. Stoker currently serves as the President & CEO of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Advocacy Center-SBCTAC.