The main objection is that it’s unfair because homeowners — and especially businesses — that have held their properties for decades pay less in property tax than new property owners. Prop. 13 assesses taxes at 1 percent of value, plus a maximum of 2 percent more per year due to property value increases and inflation. Property is reassessed when it changes owners, meaning new owners pay at what usually is a higher valuation.

However, currently the longstanding commercial property tax gap created is being rapidly reduced by the natural turnover of properties in the market. That is what the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Annual Report for 2013 indicates.  (See the graph on p. 12 of that document.)

The percentage of commercial properties with old base-year assessments has dropped from 75.5 percent in 1980, to 33.0 percent in 1990, and to 16.3 percent in 2013. 

This would make superfluous the calls for more initiatives on the ballot that would create a “split roll” tax.  It would also avoid future politically charged over-assessments from a split roll tax. A split roll property tax is where commercial properties are reassessed more frequently or at higher tax rates than residential properties. 

Trend

If this trend continues, the percentage of old assessments for both single family residential properties and commercial-industrial properties would reach 0 percent by 2020; and  residential income properties that have old reassessments would be reduced to less than 2 percent (see table below).

This trend is still reducing the percentage of properties in Los Angeles County with old base-year assessments. From 2012 to 2013, the percentage of commercial properties with old-base years dropped a full 0.5 percentage point, from 16.8 percent to 16.3 percent. Similarly, single-family residential properties with old base year assessments declined from 13.6 percent to 13.1 percent from 2012 to 2013. It should be understood that this is an extrapolation of the data trend over the last 33 years and not a guarantee of any future natural increase in property tax revenues.

Percentage of Properties With Old Base Year Assessments – LA County

Market and Prop. 13 resulting in rising property taxes

The factors causing assessed property values to rise in 2012 were as follows:

• Properties sold/ transferred — $20.28 billion (38.6 percent);
• Inflation adjustment under Prop. 13 — $17.23 billion (32.8 percent);
• Decline in value and other adjustments — $10.37 billion (19.7 percent);
• New construction — $2.95 billion (5.6 percent);
• Special property use types — $1.59 billion (3.0 percent);
• Business, personal property and fixtures — $0.90 billion (1.7 percent). 

Increased real estate market sales, new construction, and the value adjustment provided by Prop. 13 comprised 77 percent of the rise in assessed values. Thus, the market and Prop. 13 are making any split-roll property tax proposal unnecessary.

Additionally, the impartial California Legislative Analyst has forecast that local property tax revenues will rise from $16.8 billion in fiscal 2014-15 to $24.6 billion in 2019-20, a $7.8 billion “windfall” due to the housing market recovery.  The LAO has also forecast a $2.2 billion state general fund budget surplus for the 2013-14 fiscal year.

Third rail

A third rail powering electric trains carries hundreds of volts of electricity. Anyone who touches the third rail usually dies from electrocution. “Third rail” political issues are similarly “charged.” And for three decades, Prop. 13 has been the biggest third-rail issue in California.

Despite that, state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, has vowed to bring a bill to create a split-roll property tax in 2014. Such a bill likely would put the matter before voters as an initiative. Ammiano insists Prop. 13 is no longer the third rail for politicians. Instead, he maintains, “It’s more like the bad guy with the mustache who has tied California to the rails with the fiscal train wreck coming.”

That seems to be confirmed by a public opinion poll released in May 2013 by the Public Policy Institute of California. It found that 58 percent of voters favored a split-roll property tax.

But that was without any real initiative on the ballot; and without the intense campaign against such an initiative that inevitably would be launched by such anti-tax groups as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Should a split-roll initiative appear on the November ballot, the anti-tax groups would have some heavy ammunition on their side, including: The emerging state budget surplus and LAO forecast of a “windfall” in property tax revenues by 2019 from a housing market recovery.

And the trend in assessed property values in Los Angeles County, showing that a split-roll wouldn’t bring in much higher revenue.

With the serious issues facing California today, it’s interesting Brown gave this bill even a moment’s notice.

This law requires California public schools to allow students, as young as kindergarteners, to use bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, and other facilities based on their “gender identity” and not biological sex.

AB 1266 will also allow transgender children to participate in school sports teams of the sex in which they identify.

“More specifically, Assembly Bill 1266 would allow a male high school senior who identifies himself as a female, not only to play on the girl’s basketball, volleyball or field hockey team, but also to change, dress, and shower in the girl’s locker room,” Breitbart.com said. “Conversely, the law would provide identical rights to females who self-identify as males.”

“This is terrific. The Governor’s signature represents an important victory, not just for my bill, but for a whole movement for the rights of transgender people,” Assemblymember Ammiano said in a statement. “We had children testify in the Assembly and Senate that this law will mean they no longer must hide who they are, nor be treated as someone other than who they are.”

I’m not so sure this is terrific. Even the Los Angeles Unified School District  acknowledged Ammiano’s “legislation cannot anticipate every situation that might occur with respect to transgender and gender variant students.”

I wrote about Washington State, which already has a law similar to AB 1266 in, “Bill advances ‘civil rights’ claims on gender-neutral bathrooms“:

 “Washington State passed such a law in 2006, and has run into a big problem.

“Parents in Washington state became outraged last year when their young daughters, who participate in their local swim club, discovered a male sitting naked in the sauna ‘displaying male genitalia,’” the Christian News Net reported last fall. However, police and school representatives of Evergreen State College alike said there wasn’t anything they could do about the situation because of state law.

“The transgender ‘student’ is 45 years old.”

What about non-transgender students?

“Foremost among the bill’s many shortcomings is its complete disregard for the privacy of the vast majority of students who are not transgender or gender-questioning,” Pacific Justice Institute said. They waged a fight against AB 1266.

“These students (and their parents) have reasonable expectations that they will not be forced to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite biological and anatomical gender. There are no safeguards whatsoever in the legislation that would allow responsible adults, including coaches, teachers, chaperones, school administrators and others to act in the best interests of all students.”

“We at Pacific Justice Institute stand ready and willing to defend anyone who will be victimized as a result of this new law,” said Brad Dacus, President of Pacific Justice institute. “That includes someone whose privacy rights are violated in the bathroom, in the locker room, in the showers, or someone who is prevented from playing on a sports team because someone from the opposite gender took their place.”

Many legal ramifications

I covered many of the legal reifications in “Bill advances ‘civil rights’ claims on gender-neutral bathrooms.”

Ammiano’s bill establishes no standard to determine the veracity of a pupil’s claim to a particular gender identity. Without establishing any standard, the determination will be left to the pupil who may claim any gender identity at any time for any reason.