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Two polls were issued last week, and while quite different in the territory they covered, both contained one question that examined the same issue – a split-roll property tax. In one way the results on that one question were quite different. In another way they reflected a probable similar outcome — altering the property tax system will be a difficult task.

In the Public Policy Institute of California poll, which was quite extensive and touched on many issues, the split-roll question (taxing commercial property differently than residential property) came within a series of questions dealing with state revenue and other potential tax increase proposals.

PPIC asked the question this way:

Under Proposition 13, residential and commercial property taxes are both strictly limited. What do you think about having commercial properties taxed according to their current market value? Do you favor or oppose this proposal?

The response: 50 percent of likely voters favored the proposal while 44 percent opposed.

The California Business Roundtable revealed results of a poll conducted for the organization by M4 Strategies. The M4 Strategies survey using mobile phones and online polling was much shorter and asked respondents to read the following pro/con arguments and register their support:

We should change our property tax policy and tax commercial property based on the current market value of the land because it will ensure businesses pay their fair share and generate $6 to $10 billion in new revenue for state and local government, including schools.

We first should focus on closing loopholes in out property tax law before raising property taxes on every small business in California. Closing just the loopholes will generate $70 million in new revenue for the state and California schools, but won’t drag down the state’s rebounding economy and won’t hurt small businesses and the thousands of jobs they create.

The response: 21.4 percent favored the first answer in supporting a split roll; 63 percent agreed with the second answer opposing a split roll.

The PPIC poll question suggested a close contest on the measure; the M4 explanations produced a one-sided result.

There is not much context to the PPIC question. It doesn’t suggest how much money a change in the property tax system would bring in; nor did it raise any issues about effects on the economy and jobs.

The M4 statement focuses on small businesses exclusively in the con argument, no mention of big business or even using the term “commercial property” in painting a negative picture.

While a campaign for and against a split roll would flesh out arguments for the voters, there is something to be taken from these two polls that seem to show different results. While the Roundtable/M4 poll indicates that a split-roll initiative will face daunting odds, the PPIC poll also indicates it would be difficult to pass a split roll measure.

Most experts agree that an initiative that doesn’t have 60 percent support well before a campaign gets started would face long odds. Put into the equation the massive campaign that would be unleashed against a split roll initiative and that would only increase those long odds.

PPIC notes that the 50 percent mark on the side of reassessing commercial property is the lowest a PPIC poll has seen on this issue. In fact, the number dropped from 54 percent support just last January.

In summing up the results on all the tax issues tested in his poll, Mark Baldassare, pollster and PPIC president said, “Most efforts to make changes to our state’s tax system face difficult hurdles even in the favorable climate of an improving economy.”

While the numbers in both polls are many percentage points apart they both indicate the same thing – a hard road for a split roll.

The PPIC poll can be found here. http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_515MBS.pdf

The Business Roundtable/M4 Strategies poll is here. http://www.cbrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CaliforniaStatewideProp13.Topline.pdf

By Steven Greenhut

Democrats and Republicans in the California Legislature have once again broadcast this troubling fact: they are far more concerned about the ever-expanding demands of a relatively small group of public sector union members than they are about the public welfare of the citizens of our state.

On May 17, the state Assembly voted 68-0 to support the most despicable piece of legislation that’s come through the halls in a while, which is saying a lot given the foolhardy proposals routinely on display in Sacramento. (It still requires approval by the Senate and the governor.)

The bill, AB 2299, allows a broad swath of public officials — police, judges and various public safety officials — to hide their names from public property records. It is based on the unproven notion that criminals use such records to find the homes of law enforcement officers, then track them down to commit harm. This could theoretically happen, but even the most overheated advocates of the bill can’t point to specific instances. Lots of things can happen, theoretically.

The Sacramento Bee editorial page, hardly a font of anti-government-worker thinking, made the obvious point: “None of the testimony presented in committee indicated criminals seeking to harm law enforcement officials actually got information about where their targets lived from property records. Most just followed them home from work.”

An open invitation to fraud and theft

The state is about to destroy the most significant source of public records, and create an open invitation to fraud and theft in order to combat a phantom threat. The bill was introduced by a legislator who ought to know better — Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles. Not long ago, Feuer argued that openness is the key to stopping abuse in his city’s terminally troubled children’s court system, but now he is the champion of secrecy.

“AB 2299 would bar journalists and the public from investigating the situation unfolding in Los Angeles where the assessor is accused of collecting campaign contributions from property owners in exchange for lowered property assessments,” wrote the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Jim Ewert in a letter to Feuer. “The bill would completely insulate and protect any public safety official who might be involved in this type of scheme …”

Public officials and their family members will be able to hide their identities, which will undermine the reliability of property transactions. Dirty officials will pull off real estate scams without scrutiny. If an assessor did mistakenly release a record, those officials could receive financial judgments paid by the taxpayers. As the Bee asked, “If names are redacted, could law enforcement officials prevent their estranged wives or husbands from asserting a legitimate legal interest in the property?” The property system will become far less reliable. Buyers will be less able to guarantee that the title they receive is free and clear.

What a mess we are creating, all because union officials are constantly pushing for new and expanded privileges for their members, and because legislators never have the courage to say no. Law enforcement advocates constantly trumpet the dangers their members face, but they often exaggerate such dangers. They ignore that many other people who work outside government face dangers, too. Bail bondsmen face potential dangers from criminals, as do various attorneys and average citizens going about their lives. It’s not right to bolster the idea that public officials are members of a separate caste with rights and protections that exceed those enjoyed by the citizenry at large.

Historical government fraud and abuse

It’s fundamental to our democratic society that government officials are held to the same standards as the rest of us. Yet we see many scandals involving public officials, many crimes committed by duly sworn officers. Do we really need yet another privilege that exempts “them” from the standards that apply to the rest of “us.”

One can be sure that the number of protected categories will expand rapidly and quietly. Even the original list is fairly broad. Within weeks, lobbyists for other public-sector unions will insist that code enforcers, billboard inspectors and milk testers receive the same protections given the dangers these officials supposedly face. If you think I’m overstating this, then consider that the latter categories made that same argument to gain expanded “public safety” pensions.

Many officials will abuse this, just as police and their families routinely abuse the “professional courtesy” granted by other officers to evade traffic tickets and DUIs. In 2008, the Orange County Register published an investigation about a special license plate program “designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, [that] has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees — from police dispatchers to museum guards — who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too. This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.”

The newspaper found that these public servants often run red lights and drive on toll roads without paying the tolls because the agencies cannot access the addresses, which are in a protected database. When these scofflaw government employees are pulled over by police officers, the newspaper reported, they often are let go with a warning because their protected plate status signals that they are part of the law enforcement fraternity. After the Register article, the Legislature actually voted to expand the number of categories of employee eligible for the program.

Now this two-tier craziness will expand to our property ownership system, undermining public records and allowing corrupt public employees to exploit other people. We know from history that free and open societies are the ones least susceptible to corruption. Yet the California Assembly has decided to cast aside those time-tested lessons and put the demands of unions above the needs of the public. So what else is new?

(Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.)

New American Poultry, a family owned Sacramento poultry processor with 30 employees, has outgrown the plant it has used for the last 10 years – and what a nice problem to have.

Trying to plan ahead, the owner, Harry Cheung, purchased a piece of land in an industrial area of the city. But when he got to the Sacramento planning commission for plan approval, Cheung found out that not everyone was enamored of his business.

Planning to relocate to the industrial, heavy commercial area of Florin-Perkins Road, Cheung discovered that his new neighbor, the Sacramento SPCA, has a certain distaste for the poultry processor.

“Having an organization that has a mission of saving animals next to a business that kills them is just not a good fit,” said SPCA director Rick Johnson, reported in the Sacramento Bee today.

And oddly, earlier this week, the Sacramento planning commission just couldn’t muster enough votes to approve Cheung’s plan.

What will happen to the 30 New American Poultry employees, or the additional 25 employees Cheung planned to hire?

The SPCA organized a petition, and got other businesses in the area circulate it amongst employees, which was then presented to the planning commissioners at the March 10 meeting. With a final 5-3 vote, the planning commission claimed it passed Cheung’s plan, but bylaws require six “yes” votes, leaving Cheung unable to secure his special-use permit, reported city planner Greg Bitter.

What a load of chicken poop.

New American Poultry provides chickens “for tens of thousands of people,” according to Cheung, and is one of very few in the state to be granted a “Chinese Buddhist religious exemption” by the USDA, allowing the heads and feet of slaughtered birds to remain intact. USDA inspectors appear at the Broadway plant daily, Cheung said, “watching our every move.”

The USDA exemption code for ready-to-cook poultry, reads, “religious exemptions based on religious dietary laws, such as Buddhist, Chinese Confucian, Halal, and Kosher, on certain types of poultry will change certain defect criteria.”

With the push for more urban gardening and raising small animals for food in downtown backyards, the city planning department is not only out-of-touch, they are bending to the will of some of the more extreme animal activists.

I’m an animal lover. And my four rescue cats and two dogs would agree. But loving animals shouldn’t have anything to do with infringing on a food processing business. Just because some people don’t eat animal meat and rescue animals, doesn’t give them the right to trample on the property and business rights of others.

Urban farming representatives say that far too many people today don’t know where food comes from. Children think that meat comes in little cellophane packages from the grocery store, and don’t make the connection of cows to hamburger, pork chops to pigs, or Kentucky Fried Chicken to feathered birds.

The New American Poultry Company is said to be a unique chicken processor, with an impeccable facility, and uses a safe, sane and humane processing technique.

Cheung said he would appeal the planning department’s decision to the City Council — and he should. The small business owner has successfully grown his business. And, the new property is properly zoned for his business.

But the question remains – How can the city justify its denial of his plans because a neighbor has taken offense to the nature of his business because he processes chickens for human consumption?

With the number of business closures in Sacramento, as well as the growing numbers of businesses moving out of the state, anyone but a statist would see that encouraging New American Poultry to expand is good for everyone – the poultry processor operates within the laws, and the business is growing and plans to employ 55 people from the area.

What’s the beef?

Did the planning commissioners ever consider the existing 30 people employed by the poultry processor (and the additional 25 he plans to hire), or the hefty property taxes, employment and sales taxes Mr. Cheung will pay at his new property — or the tens of thousands of people who count on Mr. Cheung’s chickens for food?

As I have written many times before, most of the local people in positions of authority are small thinkers, obsessed and mired in emotional minutia. City and county commissioners exercise almost dictatorial powers over property owners, without any consideration of constitutional rights, or even of the good a thriving business does for the entire city.

Instead, a few loudmouth extremists – the violent minority –  seem to hold sway over a small business owner who pays his own way, and supports 55 other Sacramento families. I hope Cheung fights the city. I’ll help him… and I don’t even eat meat. But, this ‘beef’ is not about meat.

MAR. 12, 2011