CA Supremes' anti-TPA decision foggy, dubious, says nat'l press
The Wall Street Journal editorial page rips the court's rejection of the TPA initiative from even appearing on the ballot, putting a dent in CA's previous commitment to direct democracy.
Earlier this month, California’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Governor and chucked a Nov. 5 ballot initiative that would have limited Sacramento’s ability to raise taxes.
“The changes proposed by the [initiative] are within the electorate’s prerogative to enact, but because those changes would substantially alter our basic plan of government, the proposal cannot be enacted by initiative,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote. The Court will “typically review constitutional challenges to an initiative after an election in order to avoid disrupting the electoral process and the exercise of the franchise,” he notes. But the Court made an exception in this case. Hmmm.
The Court tried to parse a distinction that’s foggier than San Francisco between constitutional amendments and revisions. An amendment to the Constitution can be placed on the ballot by voters or the Legislature. But the court ruled that a revision may only be proposed to voters by the Legislature or a constitutional convention convened by the Legislature.
In other words, the Legislature must agree before voters can limit its taxing power. {Editor's note: compare this to the creation of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority which was gifted the authority to create tax initiatives, without voter approval.} How was this initiative different from Prop. 13, which the state’s high court upheld against a similar challenge? Judge Liu writes that Prop. 13’s tax limitations operated “functionally within a relatively narrow range.” Sorry, the only real difference is that the state’s high-court judges are now uniformly progressive.
Read the whole thing here.
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