It’s not easy to qualify an initiative for the ballot. It wasn’t easy for Howard Jarvis, who succeeded at getting Proposition 13 on the ballot on his fifth try.
The advocates of higher taxes in California, whether in government or special interest groups, are well aware of how challenging it is for a grassroots organization like HJTA to collect enough signatures within the short time allowed by law. So if they can erode taxpayer protections through legislation or court decisions, they feel pretty confident that taxpayers can’t fight back.
But we can.
The Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Proposition 13 is HJTA’s latest initiative campaign to protect taxpayers. It will close loopholes the courts have carved into Prop. 13, restoring the two-thirds vote requirement for all local special taxes and banning the insidious “sales taxes on real estate” known as transfer taxes.
Before Prop. 13, state law allowed a minimal documentary transfer tax of 0.11%. Prop. 13 banned any further transfer taxes. But then, due to court decisions in the 1990s, charter cities were granted permission to enact transfer taxes for general purposes. Today, many property owners in cities including Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco are required to pay a percentage of the sale price of their property to the city treasury.
Those taxes would end two years after voter approval of the Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Prop. 13.
HJTA’s initiative would immediately close the infamous Upland loophole, named for the 2017 California Supreme Court decision that created it. In California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, the court suggested that if a tax increase is placed on the ballot by a citizens’ initiative, the constitution (including Proposition 13) might not apply.
As a result, lower courts have allowed all kinds of “citizens’ initiative” tax increases to pass with less than the required two-thirds vote. Special interests can now write their own tax increase, direct the money to themselves, and not have to meet the two-thirds vote requirement.
HJTA must collect a minimum of 874,641 valid signatures by February 25. The initiative would appear on the November 2026 ballot.