I haven’t yet decided how I’m voting yet, but I learned some really interesting things about the history of Prop 13 from a news story from the California Report. The reason why it applied to commercial property as well as residential property is because the original author didn’t want to carve out new exceptions into the state constitution. More surprising was that businesses at the time opposed the proposition, and weren’t the ones asking for the taxes to be frozen. I cynically assumed it had been a big business tax grab hidden inside the plan to save the homes of retired Californians.
Since moving back to California I’ve been hearing about how prop 13 cripples local government funding in a variety of ways. So I’m definitely excited to do something about it. However, I’m hesitant with this reform because I worry it will also have unintended consequences. And I’m not talking about the consequences that are being argued right now, but consequences that we haven’t predicted yet.