Newest Tax-Cut Plan Qualifies for November Ballot, Jarvis Reports

A step or so slower but as feisty as ever in his condemnation of taxes and the lawmakers who raise them, Proposition 13 co-author Howard Jarvis on Tuesday announced that his latest tax-cutting initiative has qualified for the November general election ballot.

The measure, called the “Taxpayers Voting Rights Act,” is designed to overturn a California Supreme Court decision that Jarvis argues blew a gaping hole in the landmark property tax-cutting measure approved by voters eight years ago.

Under the high court’s Proposition 13 decision in 1982, city councils may approve a number of different taxes without asking for two-thirds voter approval--as sought by the initiative--if the revenues are pumped into a general fund for general government purposes.

Jarvis unsuccessfully tried to overturn this decision as part of a complex, multifaceted initiative, Proposition 36, two years ago. Now he is concentrating only on the court decision.

Among those taxes covered by the court decision and threatened by the new Jarvis initiative is the utility-user levy, such as that on water and power, which in Los Angeles will produce about $279 million in the current fiscal year, second only to the property tax in revenues raised to underwrite city services.

138 Assorted Taxes Raised

Since the high court decision, Jarvis said, 108 city councils in California have raised 138 assorted taxes by a total of more than $300 million, including business license, hotel/motel and parking levies. The California Taxpayers Assn., a nonprofit research group supporting the Jarvis initiative, had similar figures.

Under his new measure, such taxes would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of a city council--and then go on a local ballot where a majority of the voters also would have to pass them.

Another feature would allow voters to decide on local taxes approved by local government after Aug. 1, 1985. If such taxes weren’t placed on a local ballot by Nov. 15, 1988, they would disappear.

Picking up on a variation of the Proposition 13 campaign which made him a household name, the 83-year-old Jarvis, at a news conference at the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office, said:

“Should people control government or should government control people? That’s what this campaign will be based on.”

Comrie Sees Smoking Gun

The League of California Cities and many city officials, however, such as Keith Comrie, Los Angeles’ administrative officer, see the Jarvis measure as threatening to paralyze local government.

“It would really tie the hands (of local government) to provide any service whatsoever,” Comrie said.

Jarvis was accompanied by his longtime tax-cutting ally, economist Arthur Laffer, a Republican seeking Democrat Alan Cranston’s U.S. Senate seat and who will be vice chairman of the initiative’s campaign; and Larry Straw, a Republican candidate for the state attorney general’s post who helped write the measure. Selecting Tuesday, the national deadline for filing income taxes, to announce that yet another of his initiatives had qualified for the ballot, Jarvis backed his measure with familiar rhetoric, condemning politicians who, he said, eschew tax cuts for “an arrogant, tyrannical judicial system.”

In all, he told reporters at the county registrar-recorder’s office in the City of Commerce, his campaign had signed up about 600,000 registered voters to put the measure over the top, far in excess of the 393,835 signatures required to qualify it under state law.

Unlike the situation two years ago, when Proposition 36 faced formidable opposition from a number of government lobbying groups, this year’s streamlined Jarvis initiative appears to have caused a split among his traditional opponents, giving it a better chance of passage.