January 10, 2011 – Daily Brief

Can’t wait to see pix of the new puppy.

Brown also proposes to eliminate enterprise zones and phase out redevelopment agencies, which he said will return billions in property tax revenues to schools, cities and counties. It is about time!

The assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords is indeed a heinous act committed by a truly deranged individual. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the victims, their families and friends. This is the time to take a moment of silence, look inward and reflect upon how precious and fragile life is.

Congrats on the new pooch!!!!

What happened to the old (or should I say former) dog?

Jeff says: “Blogger says Prop 13 is to blame for mega developments like Newhall Ranch. Do you agree?” Proposition 13 was enacted in the first year after I finished school, and one of the intellectual burdens of my job was to understand it and apply it, as local government agencies have spent 32 years trying to get around it. I agree that counties’ approvals of massive development is done with knowledge that they will derive increased real property tax revenue from thousands of new homes, as well as from new office/industrial complexes. In contrast, cities like Santa Clarita and Moorpark, which were incorporated after Proposition 13 get no real estate tax revenue, and must live on other less lucrative tax revenues, like sales tax and car registration subventions (which the State periodically takes away), so when a “no-tax city” approves a mega development, their cost/benefit analysis is often different. As to Los Angeles County’s motivations for approving massive subdivisions in their territory, one would have to spend a lot of time evaluating the details about their income streams and structural, non-discretionary expenses. The answer to the question posed by Jeff could be the subject of a masters degree dissertation because at times in the last 32 years Los Angeles County was not “cash strapped” and as a result theoretically not tempted to maximize real estate tax revenue, to the detriment of individual community residents, to pay the County’s bills. The reality is that after Proposition 13 was adopted by the voters, it was challenged in California and Federal courts, and the question of its legality was taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court case was litigated well after the California Supreme Court declared the ballot measure constitutional. The appellants in the U.S. Supreme Court case were represented by an attorney named Carlyle Hall, once a public interest attorney for the poor, but more recently a developer’s attorney representing people like Dan Palmer, Jr. The U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court said Proposition 13 is constitutional under both the state and Federal Constitutions. Both before and after than court challenges, local government agencies devised all sorts of fees and charges which they claimed were “not covered by Proposition 13″. It is for that reason the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association carried the ball and got Propositions 218, 7, 62, 58, 193, 60 and 90 approved by the voters, statewide, to shut down each loophole the local politicans tried to invent to defeat the purpose of Proposition 13. The HJTA’s work continues as local government agencies try to wiggle around all of those ballot measures, and continue to soak the public for additional funds. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association publicly says that they are “Dedicated to Protecting Proposition 13 and Protecting Taxpayers’ Rights”. They say that: “Opposition to Proposition 13 and to taxpayers’ interests in general comes primarily from three sources: 1. Politicians whose political power is based on providing transfer payments (transferring money from taxpayers to tax receivers) to their constituents. 2. Government-employee unions who see additional revenue as an opportunity to press for enhanced wages and benefits. 3. Wealthy and superwealthy political dilettantes who see new taxes as a way to compel others to fund programs that are a part of their vision for society.” The HJTA website is a marvel of plain English information about why the various Proposition 13 ballot measures were approved by the voters, and what the post-Prop 13 measures were supposed to protect against. See: http://www.hjta.org/ Santa Clarita’s City Attorney law firm, Burke Williams & Sorensen, appears as appellate counsel or as amicus counsel in almost all significant “Spirit of Proposition 13″ court cases, uniformly in favor of the local government agency and against the interest of local residents. There are even a few cases where BW&S has dared to say that among their clients on amicus briefs was the City of Santa Clarita. I’ve scratched my head about that one, doubting whether Santa Clarita’s majority Republican City Councilmembers have understood what BW&S was doing in their name. I’ve also doubted that the voters and taxpayers of Santa Clarita would have supported their City Attorney signing on to amicus briefs supporting “rip off the real estate taxpayer” positions, let alone their city’s tax dollars being used for that purpose. As the California courts have almost uniformly ruled in favor of the public, and against local government agencies, the decision makers for local government agencies have become all the more brazen in deciding, in closed session, simply to defy the express text of the Proposition 13 related ballot propositions, the statutes and the cases interpreting them, to impose new taxes, assessments or fees (which a fair reading of the law and cases show to be illegal) and then just wait for some poor saps to sue to invalidate what the local public agency decision makers have done. Similarly, it has been a rare local government agency which has repealed a tax, assessment or fee after it has been made illegal under one of the Proposition 13 related ballot measures. Los Angeles County’s repeal of its library special tax when Proposition 218 was adopted, and then submitting it to the voters for super-majority approval, is an example, after it was prodded by the HJTA. Unfortunately, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association does not have enough income to litigate all of the breaches of Proposition 13 and its progeny occurring throughout the state. They have to refer cases to real estate tax expert litigators around the state, who sometimes take the cases on contingency. In furtherance of local government agencies’ determination to violate Proposition 13, the related ballot propositions, the statutes and case law, municipal law firms litigate the challenges to the new taxes, fees and assessments in a no-holds-barred manner, wasting the taxpayers’ lawyers’ time and leaving no stone unturned in defending the illegal actions of their clients at the expense of the local taxpayers who get stuck paying the municipal lawyers’ bills through the budgets of local government agencies. An example of the aggressive defiance of Proposition 13 and its progeny was the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation Districts’ staff proposal to impose massive new sewer fees on Santa Clarita property owners as a means of funding the construction of sewer plant upgrades, a desalination plants, brine injection wills, and “mitigations” to downstream water quality problems in Ventura County’s farmlands, with agency staff and legal counsel advice to defy the law and wait for the public to get the money together to sue the San Districts. The improvements which were to be paid for through those increased Sanitation District fees are some of the disguised improvements for the benefit of Newhall Ranch which Lynne Plambeck recently wrote about in her Signal editorial. There is a basic principle in California planning policy which cities and counties have been encouraged to follow, since the 1970′s. It’s called “Development should pay its own way” meaning that every nickle of additional cost to a community in providing water service, sewer service, storm drainage, roads, utilities, libraries, fire houses, police stations, schools and main thoroughfare traffic mitigation from new real estate developments should be paid for by the developer of the project, with those costs passed through to the tenants or buyers of the development rather than being passed on to the real estate taxpayers of the community. In contrast, Jeff’s essay today, about the intangible costs to the local community of massive development, are rarely if ever paid for. The reality is that California’s Supreme Court majority, with its less than sterling educational background

Prop 13 is hardly the root cause for development of Newhall Ranch. The root cause is however, contained within your rant.

Good for Brown. finally someone is being realistic about what needs to be done.

Congrats on the puppy