A lot hangs on Prop 98 ruling - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess
The onus was on the attorney for education groups suing the state: convince a skeptical Superior Court judge that the governor and Legislature violated voters’ will and the minimum school funding requirement under Proposition 98 by diverting billions in tax revenue from the General Fund last year.
“There will be no such thing as a minimum guarantee if the state can manipulate it for political purposes,” attorney Deborah Caplan told San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn on Wednesday.
Judge Kahn issued this one-paragraph preliminary ruling on Tuesday then entertained 90 minutes of testimony on Wednesday. Click to read.
In a one-paragraph preliminary ruling the day before, Kahn wrote that nothing in the wording of Proposition 98 precluded the Legislature from shifting $5 billion in sales tax and