Lower-income districts would benefit from 55 percent parcel tax passage threshold, study suggests - by John Fensterwald
Only about one in eight school districts in California have passed a parcel tax, and they predominantly have been wealthier and smaller districts. But if the threshold for passing a parcel tax were dropped from a two-thirds majority to 55 percent, an EdSource analysis suggests more districts with larger enrollments of low-income students would pass them.
Most of the parcel taxes passed in the last 30 years were for less than $99 per parcel. Source: Raising Revenues Locally; Ed-Data Parcel Tax Election Database. (Click to enlarge)
“Raising Taxes Locally,” an extensive look at three decades of parcel taxes, found that, had the 55 percent threshold been in effect from the start, 87 percent of parcel tax proposals overall would have passed, compared with just over half approved under the two-thirds requirement. Those districts in between 55 percent and two-thirds had a significantly higher percentage of English learners and low-income children than the districts that successfully enacted a parcel tax under current law.
A Senate committee on Wednesday will hear SCA 3, a proposed constitutional amendment by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that would lower the threshold for passage to 55 percent. Democrats have been eyeing the opportunity for a lower threshold for a decade, but only now, with a two-thirds majority in the Legislature, do they stand a good chance of putting it before voters. Getting voter