"Last week, a state appellate court declared that a 2020 ballot measure to increase hotel taxes in San Diego is valid even though it did not receive the two-thirds approval that voters had been told it would require. The decision was the latest skirmish in a years-long political and legal wrangle over voting requirements for local tax increase proposals. To begin at the beginning,"
"In 2017, the state Supreme Court hinted that while the two-thirds vote requirement applied to taxes proposed by local governments, it might not apply to those proposed by a citizens initiative, when enough signatures are collected. Writing a 5-2 decision in a case called Upland because it dealt with a tax on marijuana sales in that city, Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar declared, Multiple provisions of the state constitution explicitly constrain the power of local governments to raise taxes."
A state appellate court upheld San Diego's 2020 hotel tax measure even though it did not receive the two-thirds voter approval that had been stated as required. Proposition 218, approved in 1996, imposed two-thirds approval for local taxes designated for specific purposes. The California Supreme Court in 2017 suggested the two-thirds requirement might not apply to taxes placed on the ballot via citizen initiative. Following that hint, proponents used initiatives to propose taxes, producing split rulings in lower courts. The state Supreme Court later declined to review an appellate ruling validating initiative-proposed special taxes approved by simple majorities. Business groups responded with a proposed constitutional amendment to reinstate supermajority rules and constrain legislative authority.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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