In February, Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire, D-Santa Rosa, introduced Senate Bill 512.
The legislation, quite blandly, pertained to the timing of how the Office of Emergency Services goes about selling “firefighting apparatus and equipment to public agencies outside of California, the federal government, and Indian tribes.”
It went through the committee process in March and passed the Senate floor in April. It was approved unanimously, unsurprising given how innocuous the subject matter.
But that bill was subject to a gut-and-amend. As CalMatters columnist Dan Walters once explained of the gut-and-amend tactic, “Suddenly — usually in the final, hectic hours of a legislative session — a dormant bill is stripped of its contents and entirely new language is inserted. The new measure is quickly enacted, sometimes before legislators can even read it.”
As of Monday, the bill is now no longer from Sen. McGuire, but Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra.
Senate Bill 512 is no longer about firefighting equipment, but “An act to amend Section 9300 of the Elections Code, relating to elections.”
“This bill would authorize the voters of any district that has authority to impose a transactions and use tax for transportation purposes to impose a retail transactions and use tax by an initiative measure,” the bill reads.
In other words, they are trying to make it easier for taxes to be raised for transportation purposes. If passed, this would make it easier for taxes to be hiked via citizens initiative with a simply majority vote.
As Jon Coupal from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has previously explained in these pages, “The Upland loophole has allowed special interest groups to write initiatives that raise taxes, direct the money to themselves, and pass them with just a simple majority. The same tax increase proposed by a City Council or County Board of Supervisors would require a two-thirds vote of the electorate to pass.”
The Democratic supermajority seemingly operates on the belief that government doesn’t do enough and doesn’t have enough of your money. They will go to any length to get more of your money.
This must stop.
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