Posted by curious, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Oct 29, 2009 at 9:06 am

Hold on to your wallets. These people are trying to eliminate the Proposition 13 taxpayer protections. Repair California not! More like Bankrupt California (even more than it is now)!

Posted by Steven Nelson, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Oct 29, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Repairing the initiative process is part of the CA Constitutional solution. We have the most amended constitution in the world! Besides the corporate-no-property-tax increase (over 1%) I would like to see the crazy 2/3 (any) budget rule sacked. This makes the state government inoperative.

Prop 13 (1%) property tax limits for residential is what the majority still wants. But the lifetime (or residential ownership time) of any Californian (i.e. a person) is much less than a California commercial property owner (Corporation). Changing the commercial rule to match the average residential turnover period (forces full assessment at 1%) would help most local governments. BUSINESS NEEDS TO PAY ITS FAIR SHARE OF PROPERTY TAXES!

A 2/3 requirement make senses for a constitutional change - not for a yearly budget. Yet the initiative process has gotten that reversed. For a 0% increase budget- 2/3 legislative vote makes no sense. If the budget increases faster than the state domestic product (ie revenues increase as a % of state domestic product) MAKING STATE GOVERNMENT GROW then maybe the 2/3 budget rule mades sense. But the last constitutional change - by less than 2/3 of the state voters is really bad government.

Our state constitution is broken. The initiative process for citizens to amend it with 50.001% majority is a big part of the problem! The US Constitution takes 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the states to amend.

Posted by Political Insider, a resident of the Sylvan Park neighborhood, on Oct 29, 2009 at 10:05 pm

Spoken like a true partisan. Without the 2/3 rule most residents would be bankrupt. We need to elect better politicians that know how to work and control spending. We had a spending limit which is now useless because politicians gutted it. That's when the problems started. The voters have spoken on the tax issue but politicians are unable to hear the message because most are sold out to special interest groups. Though not required, most cities balance their budgets with more than a majority vote.