☆ Marin CO$T’s Mimi Willard: Prop 5 to unleash a “tax tsunami” for local and regional bonds

Image by Wikimedia Commons

Proposition 5 will blow a massive hole in Prop 13 and Prop 218 protections, said Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers' Mimi Willard to North Bay residents this summer. She warned that cutting voters’ threshold from two-thirds to 55% to pass housing and infrastructure bonds would trigger a tidal wave of tax hikes, with nothing to stop them except, perhaps, voter fatigue. Prop 5 could also let Fairfax property owners get slammed with a 30-year road bond. Will Sherman reports in this Opp Now exclusive.

Mimi Willard took specific aim at Proposition 5 in August, when she spoke before a packed meeting of concerned Marin County residents to share her organization’s November voter guide.

The founder of Marin’s Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers (CO$T) explained that this constitutional amendment would cut down to 55% the current two-thirds voter approval required to pass most local and regional bonds.

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“Approaching us is a tax tsunami,” Ms. Willard told the standing-room-only audience at Novato’s Trek Winery. “We are expecting a very large number of new taxes on the fall ballot in November and continuing into the subsequent cycles—until people essentially choke on it.”

She continued: “The central thing that will fuel the tax tsunami is Proposition 5.”

While Prop 5 targets so-called affordable housing and infrastructure bonds, Willard pointed out that the term infrastructure itself can often be used as a catch-all.

Furthermore, Prop 5 would affect any other local bonds already on this November’s ballot.

“It takes only a majority to pass Proposition 5; and if it passes, everything else that's on the ballot would qualify instantly,” she said. “They would no longer need a two-thirds vote—only a 55% vote.”

Willard continued: “This in turn has emboldened a number of agencies that would like to get money to come forward and position themselves onto the November ballot.”

In Fairfax, CA, for example, voters will decide on an $18 million road repair bond that would tax property owners $30 for every $100,000 in assessed value. If Californians vote in Prop 5—with just a simple majority—then Fairfax’s road bond will only need 55% to win.

“If Prop 5 passes, it will be a generational change and further blow a giant hole in Proposition 13," said Willard, who predicted that Prop 5 could also invite even further corrosion of taxpayer protections.

“I expect that we will see follow-through in another election or two to take the other thresholds down to 50 or 55 percent,” she said. “They almost went on this ballot until proponents realized that they were overreaching.”

More on Marin CO$T here.

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Related:

• Opp Now exclusive: Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver tackles BART extension, Prop 5, hot local issues

• Gilroy City Council opposes Prop 5

• Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association: Prop 5 would be an aggressive debt-making machine

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