Second tax measure to fund California schools proposed for 2020 ballot
School boards association seeks backers for $15 billion tax on the wealthy
Together with the Association of California School Administrators — its only partner so far — the school boards association has created a “Full and Fair Funding” election fund and website to solicit support. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance, is shopping the idea around the Legislature to see if there’s enough support to ask legislators to put the tax proposal on next year’s ballot.
“We’re talking to anyone who will listen,” and that includes the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom, said Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director for governmental relations for the California School Boards Association. “They know what we are doing.”
The association’s move coincides with the announcement this month by the organizers of another tax plan that they are rewriting their initiative, which already had qualified for the November 2020 ballot, to exempt more small businesses. The initiative from the Schools and Communities First Coalition would revise Proposition 13’s 40-year-old limits on property taxes to increase the take from business and commercial properties. Organizers say they will replace the text with the latest version once they’ve again collected the more than 1 million signatures needed to put the initiative on next year’s ballot — an expensive and possibly daunting challenge.
Their proposal for a “split-roll” tax would leave Prop. 13’s tax protections for residential property owners intact while raising an estimated $11 billion annually from business and commercial properties. About $4.5 billion would go to schools and community colleges and the rest to cities and counties, which provide the bulk of the CONTINUE READING: Second tax measure to fund California schools proposed for 2020 ballot | EdSource
