Activists taking aim at California’s tax-cutting Proposition 13 say their proposed ballot initiative is about correcting 40 years of California history during which big business shirked paying its fair share of state property taxes.
The ballot measure would be the first to ask California voters to overhaul a popular 1978 proposition that capped property taxes—and instead regularly tax big business properties based on the fair market value.
“We’re asking for companies like Disneyland or Universal Studios that make huge amounts of money to pay property taxes based on fair market value—the same thing that homeowners and, frankly, most businesses have to do,” said Josh Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, which is part of a broad coalition that’s backing the measure.
In a series of press conferences Tuesday, the group, which calls itself Schools and Communities First, announced it had turned in more than 860,000 signatures—far more than the 585,407 needed to put the proposition on the November 2020 statewide ballot.
