'Hands Off Proposition 13,' Two-Thirds of California Voters Tell Gov. Jerry Brown and Respected Field Poll
Wow, this is pretty definitive: With all kinds of California newspapers bashing Proposition 13 (often inaccurately claiming that it has starved the state budget -- which has skyrocketed since 1978 even as compared to inflation), 63 percent of California voters are telling Governor Jerry Brown to keeps his hands off the venerable property tax reform.![]()
Green: Who backed Proposition 13 in 1978. Red: People who watched a ball game instead.
The Field Poll today found: "(63% to 29%) voters say that if Prop. 13 were up for a vote again today they would endorse it. By a five to four margin (50% to 41%) voters also oppose the idea of amending Prop. 13 to permit business and commercial property owners to be taxed at a higher rate than residential owners." That's another wow.
Now where is Brown going to get the cash he wants to bail out his battered ship, a ship that Brown said he would have no problem righting if only elected governor again?
Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field write in their prepared statement today that:
When voters are reminded of the initiative and asked how they would vote if it were included on a statewide election ballot today, they back it by about the same margin as they did more than thirty- three years ago.
This must make California's big media power brokers feel emasculated, angry, helpless and even whiny.
In the past couple of years, there have been dozens -- make that thousands -- of newspaper editorials and "news analyses" decrying the 1978 property tax revolution in California. Just Google "Prop. 13" and "reform."
But the huge sea of Californians hasn't budged, almost to a person.
Why? Because baby boomers remember their grandparents and parents facing the forced sale of their homes in the face of shockingly huge property tax increases under -- none other than 1970s Gov. Jerry Brown.
Brown has a huge hill to climb here. It's very, very hard to say how he should go about doing that -- but it's worth noting that everything he has said so far has fallen flat with Californians.






























