No new taxes? Tax initiatives draw the ire of skeptics

Voter led tax initiatives, like Sonoma County's Measure I, have been criticized taxpayer groups like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

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There’s no shortage of new tax measures going before Sonoma County voters this November.

One is an effort to expand funding for childcare in Sonoma County via a new quarter-cent sales tax - Measure I.

The Our Kids Our Future campaign has lots of support locally, but that doesn’t mean everyone sees a new tax as the best way to make room in local budgets.

But there’s little organized opposition to them, with Sonoma County’s taxpayers association having gone dark since 2021.

One group that’s never shy to oppose California taxes: the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association .

Susan Shelley, Vice President of Communications of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, is, like her organization, no fan of ballot initiatives like Measure I - which have been dubbed “Upland taxes."

"These are citizen initiative tax increases that are getting through a loophole that the Supreme Court of California created in 2017 in a case called California Cannabis Coalition versus City of Upland," Shelley said.

So what’s Shelley's concern with the state supreme court’s ruling?

"[The California Supreme Court] said maybe if a tax increase is put on the ballot by a citizen's initiative instead of by the board of supervisors or a city council, maybe the Constitution doesn't apply, and therefore a special tax, which would require a two thirds vote," Shelley said. "What the Supreme Court did with open a loophole where maybe these things could pass with a simple majority instead."

Shelley and other fiscal conservatives argue it should be local governments’ duty to balance their book, and make funding available for social spending like childcare programs, not the duty of the taxpayer to keep ponying up more at the cash register.

"They're not going to put something on the ballot to say, we want to raise the sales tax to pay for retirement benefits for city workers," Shelley said. "They're going to put something on the ballot that polls very well. Childcare polls very well."

"What are they spending money on in the budget that's more important than childcare," Shelley said. "The answer is not to say, we are going to spend as much as we want and then go out for a tax increase because we don't have enough revenue. The answer is more responsible budgeting to the genuine projections of revenue without a tax increase."