Proposition A Los Angeles Sales Tax Election Results: Voters Rejecting Tax Hike by Eight Points

By Hillel Aron Wed., Mar. 6 2013 at 9:57 AM

Will LA buy what Wesson is selling?

Update, Wednesday morning: In a huge embarrassment for City Council President Herb Wesson and the City Hall establishment, voters resoundingly rejected the citywide sales tax hike, 55.17 percent to 44.82 percent. See details on next page. With additional reporting by Jill Stewart.

Update, 12:40 PM: Bad news for Council President Herb Wesson and the Mayor, as Proposition A trailing by eight points.

Update, 11:10 PM: Prop A now losing by only 6 points.

Votes are slowly being counted by the City Clerks office, and Proposition A, the proposed sales tax hike, is losing narrowly by about eight points.

Things are not looking good for City Council President Herb Wesson, who forced the tax hike onto the ballot after scant public input or discussion, as well as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who are also backing the measure.

Prop A would raise the sales tax in Los Angeles from 9 percent to 9.5 percent, making it among the highest in state, along with Culver City and Santa Monica. It's supposed to raise $211 million a year in order to close an estimated $216 million budget gap. But critics say the tax will do nothing but postpone the inevitable - dealing with the city's ever-growing public employee health care and retirement liabilities.

The city had at first intended to raise fees for property sales, but after intense lobbying from the real estate industry, Wesson switched things up at the last minute and rammed the sales tax hike on the ballot. The Yes on A campaign has been heavily funded by the real estate, construction and billboard industries, as well as many public employee unions.

The No on A campaign was basically just Jack Humphreville posting on facebook.

A reporter we know spotted Wesson at the Mike Bonin victory party and asked him, "how can you justify a new tax given your large salary and large city council staffs?"

Said the pint-sized Wesson: "We do a lot of work on the council. We have a lot of constituents."

The reporter countered: "What about giving subsidies to large corporations like AEG and Eli Broad?"

Wesson replied: "I don't think that has anything to do with it."

Glad he cleared that up!

Update: Wesson's striking loss Tuesday night, after likely voters told pollsters they were nearly evenly divided but slightly leaning toward approving the sales tax hike, was reminiscent of Wesson's torpedoing in Sacramento of a new cigarette tax -- because Wesson wanted far more money.

In that major misreading of the tea leaves, then-Assembly Speaker Wesson, who is not viewed as a California Speaker who left a mark, wiped out a more modest tax plan for his far more radical own idea, and nothing was achieved.

Similarly here, Wesson stunned L.A. political leaders who had worked out a plan to bring in less money to City Hall, but still patch the deficit, by hiking the city's real estate transfer fee, which would have socked it to people involved in land, building and home transactions.

Many economists say the sales tax hits the poor far harder that any other economic group.

See: L.A. Sales Tax Hike: Will $211 Million Increase Fix City's Problems?

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whatevas

Wesson does have a sweet tooth for other peoples money.

David

In my opinion, the caricature of Council President Wesson is racist.

abramsrl topcommenter

1 Like

Thank you, thank you, than you LA Weekly for asking Wesson whether the multimillion dollar gifts to AEG and Eli Broad might play a role in the city's financial problems.

(1) $52 Million to Broad for the billionaire's own parking garage next to his art museum where he rents the land for only $1 per year

(2) Since Eli "rents" the land from the City, he pays no property taxes? What would the property taxes be on a large parcel of land next to the Disney Center? It is hard to tell because none of the developers on Bunker Hill pay one cent in incremental property taxes.

(3) Wesson gave $42 Million to CIM Midtown and then he gave them all the sale tax and business tax income for their Project;

(4) The City gave $30 Million to CIM rehab the new Kodak Theater

(5) The City paid Hal Katesky $5.4 M for 1601 N Vine (which was $1.4 M over appraised value) and then sold the same land back to him for only $835,000. That was a $4,565,000 loss for the Cit. Meanwhile Katersky did not have to carry any mortgage for the 6 years the City owned the land, which saved him about $6 M.

(6) There was the $11 M to CIM for the N/W corner of Hollywood-Western

(7) 6 Million for Sunset Gordon

That's about $140 Million going to specific projects and it is a small partial list of the gifts to developers. During the time Garcetti was in office, the CRA drained over $1.5 BILLION of property tax dollars.

However, Angelenos love fraud. Angelenos love working hard and paying high taxes so that Garcetti and Wesson can give away our tax dollars. What other explanation can there be for almost 80% of Angelenos voting for on one the three councilmembers to become Mayor?

cdzuvich

Everyone wants someone else to pay. Why don't legislators and administrators everywhere get the hint. People want the gap between the "have's" and "have not's" to be narrowed. At least bring legislators and administrators salaries down to a point where they don't have tax loopholes and level the playing field. All those salary cuts could go a long way to balance Los Angeles' budget.

Herb Wesson is on of the sleeziest politicians ever.

Oh and if the City weren't so busy repeatedly making unconstitutional laws that they are supposed to be preempted from making, maybe they would't have to pay large downtown firms $100,000 retainers to defend them. What exactly are all those deputy city attorneys doing anyway besides making laws that get the City, LAPD, LAPD personnel sued in federal court.

Robert Willer

Still hiking gas tax 3.5 cents

William Gallegos

Oh no! How is LA now going to cover its pay raises, pensions, and LAPD-related lawsuits?

Fred N Cindy Mett

Yes I am.

Shane Maxwell

sales tax = most regressive form of taxation. glad this shit was voted down

Johnny O's

So I take it the dumbasses who got Brown elected didn't show up to vote.....

abramsrl topcommenter

@Johnny O's This has nothing to do with Brown. In fact, Brown saved us literally BILLIONS of dollars by killing the corrupt CRA's

Lovely Marie

1 Like

We already pay you enough money in taxes, you just need to learn how to spend that shit better!

ladjmarco

1 Like

The voters in LA are a pretty strange group-they like corruption, high taxes and over development

checkerspot

C'mon LA....let's hope more voters than not realized that more taxes and higher fees do not equal a better-run city. Our leaders have had ample opportunity to show us they can cut the budget and manage the city with what they have, and they've failed continuously. Why would we give them even more money to waste? And no, they're not laying off cops and firefighters -- that's what they always say.

abramsrl topcommenter

@checkerspot Please learn the facts rather than making them up. based on a falsified 2011 deployment report, Garcetti cut $200 Million from the LAFD which resulted in slower response times. Fire station 35 for example had a whole engine company cut. FS 82 was cut 75%. According to firemen and paramedics, 50% of the time they have to take out of area calls because each part of the city does not have enough paramedics.

Prop A was NOT the answer. The real answer, which would never happen in LA, would have been to arrest Tony V, Chief Cummings and Eric Garcetti over the materially false 2011 Deployment report. They all knew that cutting the LAFD would harm response times -- that's proven by the fact that they all LIED about LA's having good response times where our responses times were so slow that back in 2005, USA Today had reported that Angelenos were needlessly dying. Each year the response times became worse and the City refused to update the 911 System. remember the kid who died because the 911 operator refused to send paramedics until the caller gave her the street address of the school's playground. That's right, if you call 911 for paramedics to Marshall High school, no one will respond until you go outside and look at the street address on the front of the building and then the LAFD has to respond to that address even if you tell them that the kid is out back dying on the football field.

These are problems about which Tony V, Eric Garcetti, Chief Cummings and all the other big wigs at city hall knew, but they wanted to give tax dollars to real estate developers like $30 Million to CIM Group to rehab the Kodak Theater rather than fix the 911 system.