Whats the link between Proposition 13 and the “two-thirds vote protection”?
A. Proposition 13 protects homeowners — and all taxpayers — by requiring a two-thirds vote to pass certain tax increases, including the state sales and income tax. The intention of the supermajority requirement is to have a system whereby taxes cannot be raised too easily, or too often. The two-thirds vote protection is particularly critical when it comes to property taxes. Since local taxes are approved by local voters, it’s obviously unfair if a tax can be passed by people who don’t have to pay that tax. Yet that intense unfairness is becoming possible as a pro tax coalition makes inroads into the two-thirds vote protection. In 2000, Proposition 39 was narrowly approved after a massively expensive campaign put on largely by a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires who might well have been trying to get homeowners to pick up the slack for their own high-tech corporate tax breaks. Proposition 39 changed the two-thirds vote for certain bonds to 55% — making it far too easy to pass these
