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Endorsement: Yes on Proposition 43, make it harder to raise taxes

August 9, 2026

On the California Secretary of State’s website describing qualified statewide measures for the November ballot, voters will see a three-word reference to Proposition 43 referring to “Local taxes: limitation.” It’s ironic the initiative that has sparked the most backroom drama in years is depicted with such little fanfare.

Prop. 43 was placed on the ballot by a panicked California Legislature after a last-minute deal was struck with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to pull the association’s more sweeping Local Taxpayer Protection Act from the ballot. Despite the complicated inside-the-Capitol machinations with lobbyists and lawmakers, the resulting measure is rather simple.

If voters approve it, Prop. 43 would close a court created loophole that allowed some local special taxes to evade the two-thirds vote requirement — taxes for specific items such as transit, housing, flood control and parks. Specifically, tax increases that are placed on the ballot by citizens via signature-gathering.

This change would restore the threshold to the design of 1978’s tax-limiting Proposition 13. Since then, a series of bone-headed court decisions determined that voters could approve citizen-driven special tax increases by a simple majority, while maintaining the two-thirds rule for special tax increases directly placed on the ballot by local governments. This loophole led to abuses, as unions served as the cat’s paw for local officials by gathering signatures to place tax increases on the ballot and pass them with less than a two-thirds vote.

So, the bottom line: Vote yes on Proposition 43, as it will impede local governments from getting around the two-thirds vote for special taxes to bail themselves out of endless budget debacles. As the economy has stumbled and local governments have burned through “free” COVID money from Washington, D.C., municipalities increasingly are turning to bonds and tax increases.

Money is fungible. If voters approve “special” taxes, that leaves more money in the general fund to spend as usual. That typically means bigger paychecks and pensions for powerful public-employee unions. The two-thirds vote threshold is one of the few ways that California taxpayers can at least try to force their elected officials to live within their means.

That said, we’re disappointed that the final measure doesn’t include a ban and rollback of local transfer taxes. For instance, Los Angeles’ disastrous “mansion tax” not only imposes astronomical rates on Angelenos who sell pricey homes (currently a 4% tax on homes priced above $5.4 million and 5.5% on those priced above $10.9 million) — but applies to apartment and commercial properties. Predictably, that has quashed housing production in Los Angeles.

The original initiative by HJTA banned real estate transfer taxes above a minor documentary transfer fee. Proponents ultimately pulled that initiative from the ballot at the last minute after the Legislature passed the compromise measure that deals only with the two-thirds vote issue. The Legislature also agreed to pull a separate ballot measure designed to make it harder to pass all future tax-limitation efforts, including this one. This deal to remove the transfer-tax portion of the initiative led to a split within the business coalition that had supported it.

Complicating matters further, the key Democratic lawmakers who placed the current measure on the ballot are calling for voters to reject it. They placed it there simply as a means to derail something that they viewed as far worse because it protected taxpayers even more from the predations of government and allied special interests. But voters needn’t get caught up in the back story, however interesting as insight into Sacramento’s sausage-making process.

As it stands, the final measure is praiseworthy, as it puts the brakes on local governments’ ability to collude with special interests to more easily raise your taxes. Vote yes on Prop. 43 to make it harder to raise taxes.

Orange County Register

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Endorsement: Yes on Proposition 43, make it harder to raise taxes

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