Governor Agrees to New Tax Initiative to Limit Competition Between Initiatives
The governor apparently has negotiated a deal with groups pushing for an alternative to his tax initiative slated for this coming November. A new initiative has been filed and signatures must now be gathered within a limited time frame since we are already in mid-March. The chart above – which was apparently drawn up hastily for release – indicates that the sales tax increase proposed by the governor has been cut from a half cent to a quarter cent for four years. The offset is more of an increase in the upper brackets of the state income tax with the income tax extended for 7 instead of 5 years. No word yet on the trigger issue. The governor’s January budget included a trigger aimed mainly at K-12 if his initiative did not pass.
The article from which this chart came is at:
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/mar/14/governor-millionaires-tax-backers-reach-compromise/
The new initiative is at:
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i1057_12-0009_governors_initiative_v3.pdf?
Finally, the so-called Munger tax initiative is not part of the deal, at least so far. So there could be two tax initiatives if the revised governor’s plan gets the needed signatures in the limited time frame available.
Update: There have been numerous analyses in the news media about how limited the time frame is:
Example: http://www.californiascapitol.com/blog/2012/03/to-qualify-his-new-initiative-for-the-november-ballot-gov-brown-faces-an-almost-impossibly-tight-deadline/