Governor Moonbeam hasn’t seen a tax he doesn’t like.
Via Fox News:
When Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies urged voters to adopt a temporary income tax on the wealthiest Californians and a statewide sales tax on everyone four years ago, the deal was billed as a short-term salve for a state mired in debt and on the verge of insolvency.
The taxes were needed to stave off $6 billion in so-called “trigger cuts” to schools and social programs baked into the state budget by Democrats as a threat to voters. Lawmakers also threatened to cut three weeks off the school year if Proposition 30 didn’t pass.
“Each of us need to do what we can, and for those who’ve been most blessed, we’re going to ask you for seven years. The biblical seven years,” Brown told an audience at the Commonwealth Club in November 2012.
Voters bought the pitch.
Now, with the sales tax set to expire at the end of this year, and income taxes on earnings above $250,000 a year set to end in January 2019, the California Teachers Association and other labor unions want to keep the income tax, which they say is again needed to prevent $4 billion in cuts to schools.
Proposition 55, they say, does not raise taxes on anyone; it simply maintains the current income tax rates. The measure would extend the income tax for another 12 years, raising from $4 billion to $9 billion a year, according to the independent state Legislative Analyst’s Office. The sales tax would expire as planned in January.
In 2012, ballot arguments for the initial measure promised that “the money raised for schools is directed into a special fund the Legislature can’t touch and can’t be used for state bureaucracy.”
Brown also vowed in campaign ads that money from the initiative “must go to the classroom and can’t be touched by Sacramento politicians.”
The wording wasn’t exactly true. Although money raised for schools has gone to school districts, which are required to post annual audits, only about half the funds from Proposition 30 have gone toward school funding, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The state budget mandates that about half of general revenues are dedicated to education.