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Santa Clara County assessor candidate Rishi Kumar is turning heads — and raising eyebrows — with a vow to shield older adults from property taxes. Some people are pushing back on the idea.
After the abrupt resignation of the county’s 30-year former assessor, Larry Stone, a special contest to manage the county’s $700 billion real estate roll is headed for a Dec. 30 runoff between Kumar, a former Saratoga councilmember, and Los Altos Vice Mayor Neysa Fligor — who also serves as an assistant assessor. Kumar faces an uphill battle against Fligor’s commanding lead of 37% of the vote in the Nov. 4 special election. Still, it wasn’t enough to win outright and avoid a runoff.
Now Kumar is betting on a lofty set of campaign promises to take him the extra mile — most notably his proposal to exempt residents age 60 and older from paying taxes on assessed properties. After uproar and cries of illegality from established political circles, Kumar clarified his approach is to advocate for a statewide ballot measure to make the change.
His proposal seeks an amendment to Proposition 13, the “keep grandma in her house” bill, approved by voters in 1978. The proposition capped the annual increase in a property’s assessed value at a maximum of 2% per year until it is reassessed due to new construction or a change of ownership. Kumar said he has already submitted ballot language to the state Attorney General’s Office.
“All sorts of allegations keep flying at (my campaign) as a result of this proposal,” Kumar told San José Spotlight. “People have basically said, ‘You don’t have the authority,’ or ‘You’re lying’ or ‘You would be misusing the authority of the office.’”
One such critic is Kumar’s would-be predecessor.
“I told him flat out to his face that that was illegal and somebody running for assessor should not be promising things that are illegal,” Stone told San José Spotlight.
Stone dismisses the idea for a number of reasons, namely that you don’t need to be an elected assessor to push for a ballot measure. Kumar said as assessor, he would have a special platform to advocate for the state law change.
“I don’t know why it was so alarming to my opponents,” Kumar said.
He points to states like Virginia as evidence his idea is possible. In 2010, the state passed a constitutional amendment that granted counties and cities the authority to exempt or defer property taxes on the primary residence of certain older adults and disabled people. He argues his proposal echoes trends closer to home. In 2023, Alameda County Assessor Phong La publicly vowed to lower the tax bill for more than 8,300 homeowners because their homes’ value dropped more than 5% below what they paid.
Darien Shansky, a state tax law expert and professor at UC Davis, points out Kumar, if elected, would then have to balance the task of campaigning for the tax measure with his office’s bureaucratic and ministerial duties.
“You would need to get around 900,000 signatures for the ballot measure and run a statewide campaign,” Shansky told San José Spotlight. “It would be a very major undertaking.”
Still, the fracas has exposed clashing views on whether the assessor’s office should be a political position.
“The job of the assessor is totally different from any other elected official,” Stone said. “Fair market value is fair market value. I understand you can file an appeal, thinking your property is less and sometimes it is and we adjust — but it’s not like a mayor where there’s politics involved. Anything I do from day one has nothing to do with politics whatsoever. In fact, you would not have any trust in the services we provide.”
Kumar disagrees.
“If it was not a political role, you would be appointed,” he said. “Anyone who is in an elected leadership role should create policies. That’s what the people expect. And I think people expect more — a reformist who will fight for their interest and make changes happen, and send money back into the pockets of people.”
He said his policy proposal is inspired by his time fundraising for older adult services in Saratoga. His interest in the issue developed further during his unsuccessful Congressional District 16 campaign in 2024, which ultimately put former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo in office.
“Many seniors struggle once you don’t have a source of income. They’re trying to survive,” Kumar said. “We have received hundreds of emails and messages back to us — thousands, who say, ‘My god this will make a big difference to me.’”
One organization that’s receptive to the idea: the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County.
“Although the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County has not made an endorsement in this race, we are glad to see one local politician campaigning on actually reducing the tax burden on some of his constituents, instead of the same old story of how government needs more and more,” Party Chairman Joe Dehn told San José Spotlight.
Kumar accepts that his proposal would lead to funding losses for services such as schools, libraries and parks by reshaping budget governance in the entire state. But he said the onus is on localities to “trim the fat,” and criticizes Santa Clara County for passing higher tax rates to cover ballooning costs for services such as health care.
Stone argues that, as a result of Prop. 13, older adults may be the population least in need of property tax exemptions.
“Seniors have the best property taxes of anybody. If you would buy my house, you would pay $36,000 in property taxes. I pay $3,000,” Stone said. “The people that need property tax reductions the most in this valley are not senior citizens. This proposal is a sham.”
The historically anti-tax Santa Clara County Republican Party welcomes the idea on paper. But Party Chair Dave Johnson isn’t holding his breath.
“This scheme may help him become the assessor, as it is a popular idea,” Johnson told San José Spotlight. “But — and it’s a big but — what if … the state says no.”
This story was written by Brandon Pho for San José Spotlight. The original version of this article can be viewed here.
Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X.
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I would doubt that this is truly a popular idea to exempt property owned by ages 60 and over from paying property tax. It has its constituency but overall there is a lot of concern holding that Prop 13 is already keeping property taxes too low. I disagree with this but plenty of people feel that way as it is. Exempt ages over 60 and the chances of a Prop 13 repeal increase, greatly.
For one thing 60 is pretty young really. Most people are not even retired at that age, and those who are have quite a bit of income in general to be able to do that. Ages over 65 can already potentially get a reduction in Property tax if their income is low. Beside that, they can enter a program where Property tax owed is deferred until the property is sold.
A big thing to consider is that Rishi Kumar doesn’t talk about how much of a revenue hit this would cause to exempt ages 60 and over blanket. He has no proposal to replace the revenue and says government should cut spending to compensate. So if the cut to revenues is 15%, he’s saying that schools should lay off 15% of their teachers. Schools get 65% or so of the Property taxes collected state-wide. It’s From Kindergarten to Junior College. Cities and counties each get less than 20% of the property taxes collected and they have other revenue sources, but schools only get revenues from property taxes and contributions from the state. The state only adds fund some some school district, and not to others. Current formulas would require the state to increase what funds it provides schools to make up for the reduced property taxes but not in all cases, only for the lower funded districts that they are already needing to supplement. The local districts that collect funds from high value real estate property taxes would not get any make up funds. It would help reduce the funding in Mountain View down to what you see in the poorer districts found in parts of San Jose, etc.
This guy has run for so many different offices over the years. He’s just desperate to get elected to something, and will say anything to get there. You have to wonder why….
He’s a politician of the worst type, always raising a stink about something to attract attention.
What is the job of the Tax Assessor (TA)? Most voters don’t really understand it, but the TA is really “the money guy” for the county. Sadly, this creates a situation that is ripe for abuse. Most voters think the TA is just a boring old, nothing position. The truth is being kept from them, which allows them to be manipulated into voting against their own self interest.
The Annual reports issued by the TA are kind of like an annual paycheck given from property owners to Santa Clara County politicians. The best part of an annual paycheck? The raise! How much more is the County (and local governments) getting “this year” in comparison to “last year” – that is eagerly anticipated information. Once “the paychecks are issued”, local governments and the county itself then make plans on “how to spend” the money. When the raise is good, as it has been for many years in wealthy Santa Clara, the TA is almost like Santa Claus! Larry Stone has savored that role.
Did you know that over the past ten years, the “Assessment Roll” (/paycheck) for Santa Clara County has almost DOUBLED? In 2015-2016, the value was $388.3 billion. In 2025-2026, it rose to $725.7 billion. That represents an annual raise of about 6.5% every single year. For most working people, that kind of annual pay increase would be very lovely indeed.
But in the 2025 Annual Report, Stone reports that “the County faces a billion-dollar deficit”. Wait, what? How can that be, when property tax revenues have essentially DOUBLED over the past ten years? The Truth is, the County Supervisors have a spending problem. And instead of cutting out wasteful spending, they prefer to raise EVEN MORE taxes. That is why the bait-and-switch Measure A was put on the ballot in 2024. Instead of cutting out wasteful spending, County Supervisors prefer to lie to voters in order to get even more money
For those who say that “it’s not the job” of the TA to advocate tax policy, be aware that in 2020, there were 2 items put on the ballot affecting tax policy: Prop 15, and Prop 19. Larry Stone opposed the former, supported the latter, and was not at all shy about using his platform as TA to express his views.
Regarding Prop 19, the 2021-2022 Annual Report from Stone states: “Hosted 8 community webinars addressing Prop. 19, reaching over three thousand stakeholders, including realtors, the California Bar Association, and title companies.” It also includes “we helped draft enabling legislation for Prop. 19, and we advocated for augmented state funding of Assessor’s Offices throughout the state.”
You got that? Assessing inherited properties required additional resources. Larry Stone was supportive of the idea. He asked for additional resources, and got them.
Regarding Prop 15, the 2021-2022, the Annual Report is completely silent. Prop 15 would have closed the giant loophole in Prop 13 that provides Billions of dollars in “tax relief” to some of the rich corporations on the planet (including Google, Meta, and Apple), companies who are not in need of such tax relief, but whose shareholders benefit from the enormous tax cuts.
When it came to increasing taxes on rich and powerful corporations, Larry Stone was the “loudest critic” of the idea. He said it would be impossible to implement because his office did not have sufficient resources. Did he ask for more resources? No. Did he honestly not understand that some of the BILLIONS of dollars in new revenue could have been diverted to hire more assessors?
Meanwhile, Rishi is expressing support for tax policies that will help ordinary homeowners (and especially seniors). He is being denounced with accusations of “that’s not his job”.
It is clear to me that those who support tax relief for the rich and powerful, as Larry Stone did, want to elect Neysa Fligor.
I am voting for Rishi Kumar. I want protection of wildly increasing taxes to continue for homeowners. I want Google, Meta, and Apple to pay their fair share to fund schools and local governments, instead of imposing new REGRESSIVE taxes on those who are least able to pay them.
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, tax exemption for seniors is a terrible idea. Every corporate executive approaching the age cutoff would want to invest in real estate, quick, because it would be tax-free for life thereafter!