Business Will Fight Tax and Fee Increase Threat
More than one-hundred representatives from different segments of the business community convened at the California Chamber of Commerce yesterday to discuss forming opposition to proposed business taxes and fees. Public employee unions and advocacy groups have started a campaign to push for higher taxes. SEIU sponsored a television ad calling for higher taxes. Members of the business community at the meeting vowed to respond with a vigorous effort of their own opposing tax and fee increases.
Wary of a strategy that would try to divide the business community by focusing taxes or fees on one or two particular industries, California Chamber president, Allan Zaremberg, argued that the coalition must stick together and oppose all the various tax and fee proposals. Like water rushing through an opened dam, a multitude of revenue proposals have flowed forth from legislators, public unions and advocates since the May 19 special election.
The group’s opposition effort is not only prepared to take on tax and fee increases, but also will be ready to oppose efforts to lower the two-thirds vote on taxes, and oppose a split roll property tax raising taxes on business property.
Split Roll is a Lose-Lose for Small Businesses
After the defeat of the recent ballot measures in May’s special election, many small businesses thought that perhaps they would be able to breathe a sigh of relief. The massive tax increases imposed as part of the February budget deal would expire in a few short, but bloody years. With all the stimulus talk and love for small business throughout the Capitol, some of California’s job creators began to think that a new dawn of realization was on the legislative horizon. They shouldn’t have been so optimistic.
The ink was barely dry on the ballots when the attacks on small business started with talk of eliminating their Proposition 13 protections. Proposition 13 limits property taxes to 1 percent of a property’s acquisition value, with increases limited to 2 percent a year. Prior to Proposition 13, Californians were burdened with higher taxes based on over inflated property values and a lack of consistency when assessing properties.
Here come the taxes!
Public sector unions are in full-throated panic over proposals to cut state and local spending programs. The defeat of Proposition 1A (which many of them opposed) has created a broad political consensus that tax increases should not be on the table, and instead, billions in real program cuts affecting thousands of unionized state and local public employees are likely to be adopted within the next several weeks.
The unions have responded with a barrage of tax increase proposals:
· The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) proposed a six-page list of tax increases totaling more than $30 billion, demanding that Democratic legislators sign a pledge to support it.
· The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has launched a $1 million statewide television advertising blitz calling for new taxes to help balance the state budget.
Antonio Agonistes Redux
Back in mid-March I posted a piece on this page (Antonio Agonistes) suggesting that no one should underestimate the ability of Antonio Villaraigosa to revert to form, whether it’s in his taste for women, or his unerring grace in bouncing back from adversity. What Gavin, Jerry, Steve, Meg, and certainly, Tom Campbell, fail to realize, is that the Mayor of Los Angeles grew up looking down at the poverty from which he fought his way out. His world is upside-down by most perspectives in that he transcends the thin moralities and hypocrisies of standard politics. He’s a street kid with an attitude and an asphalt eye-view of the California political landscape. He’s a survivor.
Trumped up Los Angeles Magazine covers notwithstanding, Antonio hardly sees himself as a failure, quite the contrary. In the wake of specious journalism, he’s gone right ahead and done what he likes, whether we like it or not, to borrow a phrase from the current mayor of San Francisco.