By Scott Kaufman, Legislative Director
It’s okay. You can come out now. The Legislature is out of session. They can’t hurt you anymore.
So, how did we do? Well, our report card is designed to help Californians gauge how their
state representatives are performing on taxpayer-related issues, including, but not limited to, tax increases, attempts to gut the recall and referendum process that gave us Proposition 13 and direct attacks on Prop. 13.
As with last year, we only considered floor votes. This allows all legislators to vote on a bill at the same time and removes the potential risk of grade inflation. We also gave bills that have made it through both chambers greater consideration in our scoring. It is those bills that were most likely to hurt (or help) taxpayers. Abstention votes on legislation count as half credit.
Here are the bills we scored:
Assembly Bill 245 (Support):
Provides victims of the Los Angeles fires additional time to rebuild their home or business without experiencing a property tax increase and ensures property owners are not forced to pay taxes on the higher, undamaged assessed value of their home for 2025.
Assembly Bill 418 (Support):
Requires a public hearing and specific findings before the sale of tax-defaulted properties to ensure that property owners are justly compensated.
Assembly Bill 632 (Opposed):
This bill would strip away the due process that protects property owners from mistaken or improper liens on their property when local governments or agencies seek administrative fines or penalties.
Assembly Bill 699 (Opposed):
An anti-transparency bill that exempts a measure that imposes or increases a tax with more than one rate, or authorizes the issuance of bonds, from existing law that requires the ballot to include in the statement of the measure the amount of money to be raised annually and the rate and duration of the tax to be levied.
Assembly Bill 761 and Senate Bill 333 (Opposed):
These bills would allow two transportation districts (in Monterey and San Luis Obispo) to adopt, with voter approval, a one percent transactions and use tax (sales tax) that would, in combination with other taxes, exceed the state’s two percent cap.
Assembly Bill 1223 (Opposed):
This bill allows the Sacramento Transportation Authority to impose a tax in specific areas for transportation projects, develop toll facilities, and expand the allowable expenditure categories to widely sweep in “infrastructure.”
Senate Bill 63 (Opposed):
Creates a special district with operations in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties and allows it to place a transaction and use tax on the ballot and specifies that the sales tax would be exempt from the state’s two percent transactions and use tax cap.
Senate Bill 87 (Support):
This bill removes a sunset clause that would have repealed a tax exemption for all-volunteer fire departments on January 1, 2026.
Senate Bill 255 (Support):
To protect property owners from fraud, this bill requires counties to establish a notification program for recorded property documents by 2027, with provisions for mail and electronic notifications, fee collection, and exemptions for government-granted documents.
To see the current status of these bills, go online to leginfo.legislature.ca.gov and type the bill number in the search box.