CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2016, OR
THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PROGRESSIVE REGION HEADING FOR
ULTRA-REGRESSIVE TAX”
If
all goes according to the plans of a relatively new environmental agency, the
most progressive part of California will soon inflict the most regressive tax
known to America upon all its residents.
Because
the wetlands around San Francisco Bay are fast drying up, with many thousands
of acres developed and wildlife habitats threatened and shrinking, the
seven-year-old Bay Restoration Agency wants to add $12 a year to the tax bill
for each parcel of land in nine counties surrounding the Bay.
That’s right, the owner of a one-room
shack deep in the Hamilton Range of Alameda and Santa Clara counties would pay
the same $12 assessed against the billion-dollar complexes of companies like
Google and Apple Computer in the heart of Silicon Valley. Yes, they are
each built on several parcels, so their parcel tax levies each might total $120
or so, still as unfair as it gets.
But parcel taxes have gradually become
the rage in California over the last 40 or so years. This happened largely
because of the 1971 Serrano v. Priest decision of the California Supreme Court,
which sees more than half of most new property tax assessments by school
districts sent to Sacramento for dispersion among the poorest districts in the
state. Parcel taxes are the only kind whose take stays completely at home, to
be used for local purposes where it is raised.
In some cities, this sees factories
and luxury hotels paying the same amount as owners of small houses or
one-bedroom condominiums. Renters see all or most of such levies passed through
to them.
Even backers of many parcel tax plans
often admit the levy is inherently unfair, taxing the poor the same amount as
wealthy corporations. That’s one reason some parcel taxes exempt property owned
by senior citizens.
As with schools, which use the money
for everything from construction to curriculum, the cause for the proposed new
20-year Bay area parcel tax is admirable. The levy will be up for a vote in the
June primary election in all nine counties involved, with a two-thirds vote for
approval needed for passage.
It would raise about $500 million over
two decades, funding clean water projects, pollution prevention and restoration
of about 35,000 wetlands acres along the shores of the Bay. That would just
about double the land area now available to the approximately 1 million shore birds
in the area, which contained about 200,000 wetland acres at the time of the
Gold Rush. It would also improve commercial fishing for herring and other
species.
Much of the land to be restored can
easily be seen from airplanes landing at San Francisco International Airport –
the salt flats once owned by the Leslie and Cargill companies, which are now
available for restoration with no funds available for the work.
Another aim of the project would be to
protect the wetlands and nearby cities from rising sea levels predicted by most
climate scientists. The Restoration Authority operates on the belief that
rising oceans could push water levels in the Bay up by more than three feet
before the end of this century, with shoreline areas in Marin County and the
East Bay most vulnerable to the flooding. Schools, airports, seaports,
freeways, electricity generation and much more would at peril under that
scenario, which the new money is supposed to mitigate.
“This parcel tax will bring in more
money…and could be used as a leverage for federal matching funds,” said a
scientist for the environmental group, San Francisco Baykeeper. He complained
that other wetland areas like the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and the
Everglades now get far more in federal conservation funds than the Bay area,
which gets only about $5 million a year in federal water quality improvement
funds.
The money would also build new hiking
trails and improve availability of swimming and boating.
That’s all admirable, as are the
improvements to public schools now largely paid for by parcel taxes. But it
doesn’t make parcel taxes equitable.
While the Bay area parcel tax proposal
is supported by the likes of the Save the Bay, the Silicon Valley Leadership
Group and Ducks Unlimited, there is no significant opposition, largely because
the amounts at stake seem insignificant to wealthy interests.
But it remains to be seen if a
two-thirds majority of voters even in the ultra-liberal,
environmentally-friendly Bay area will vote to tax themselves unfairly for
decades to come.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
