The California Supreme Court has ruled that the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, duly qualified for the November ballot, must be removed from the ballot. This was “to prevent voters from passing it,” according to John Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who explains:
The seven justices of the Supreme Court yielded to the wishes of the political branches, handing them the victory they sought over the will and the rights of 1.4 million California voters who signed petitions to qualify the TPA initiative for the ballot, as well as the tens of millions of Californians who would have benefited from its protections.
The court put politics ahead of the state Constitution. It is now obvious that all three branches of California’s government — executive, legislative and judiciary — believe the government may decide how much money it needs and raise taxes accordingly, and the voters may not constrain them.
Defying legal precedents and plain common sense, the court declared that the Taxpayer Protection Act was an impermissible “revision” of the state constitution, beyond the power of the voters to enact. Revisions, the court said, may only be enacted through a constitutional convention that is called by the legislature itself.
Since 1911, Californians have had three powers of direct democracy as a check on the power of the government: the initiative, the referendum and the recall. Now the court has effectively declared that the people’s power to amend the constitution through initiative is subject to the approval of the government.
In a brief to the court, recurring Gov. Jerry Brown argued that the Taxpayer Protection Act was
a constitutional revision, rather than an amendment, basically a distinction without a difference. Gov. Gavin Newsom argued that the measure would “effectively block the state’s ability to quickly respond to major challenges,” which is nonsense.
As Coupal notes, the court’s decision would have would likely have prevented Proposition 13 from passing in 1978 and “it’s the clear intent of the state government to block voters from limiting tax increases at all.” The Golden State has become the Government Greed State. That is primarily the work of Jerry Brown, who transformed California from a place people wanted to live to a place people want to leave.
