Expect more tax increases and fewer results from Los Angeles County

On Monday afternoon, firefighters were called to the Sepulveda Basin to respond to a brushfire at a homeless encampment. Ten firefighters were injured, one very seriously, when something exploded in the encampment.

Officials said the cause of the fire and the explosion are “under investigation.”

How suspenseful. Maybe they’ll find out that a hot-headed squirrel finally had all he could take. Or maybe, wait for it, maybe the fire and explosion were caused by a homeless encampment in the Sepulveda Basin.

How much of the budget of every fire department in California is spent fighting fires in and around homeless encampments?

As always in California, the answer from government officials is, “This is why you have to pay higher taxes.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to place a new sales tax increase on the November ballot for voter approval. The measure is an initiative, and proponents collected signatures from voters in L.A. County to place it on the ballot. The supervisors technically had two choices on Tuesday. They could vote to put on it on the ballot now, or they could  vote to request a report to be returned to them in 30 days and then vote to put it on the ballot.

They voted to put it on the ballot now. Waiting 30 days would likely have caused the initiative to miss the deadline for the November election, and the Board of Supervisors has been battling to get this tax increase on the ballot since June 2023. They pushed for legislation to allow L.A. County to raise the sales tax above what state law allows, specifically to raise the sales tax for homelessness programs. That was Assembly Bill 1679, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 10.

The supervisors’ problem was that voters approved a 0.25% sales tax increase for homelessness programs in 2017 but it was temporary, only for ten years. The crisis of homelessness has grown worse since taxpayers started showering the county with hundreds of millions of dollars every year in extra sales taxes, paid by people who are buying what they need to live.

Measure H was expected to take about $355 million per year from L.A. County residents, but by the 2022-23 fiscal year it was taking $527 million. Inflation raises both prices and sales taxes.

But inflation is a piker compared to L.A. County officials and their army of associates in the nonprofit and developer communities who are richly funded by your tax dollars. These groups fashioned the initiative tax-increase proposal that would double the Measure H sales tax to 0.50% and eliminate that pesky sunset clause so the tax continues forever.

Here’s why it’s an initiative. The state constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the electorate to pass a “special” tax increase, meaning the money is dedicated to a specific purpose instead of general government expenses. But in 2017, the state Supreme Court suggested, in California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, that if a tax increase is put on the ballot by a citizens’ initiative, the state constitution may not apply. So a simple majority vote would be enough to pass an “initiative” tax increase.

The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act would have closed that loophole and reinstated the two-thirds vote, but last Thursday the same state Supreme Court took the measure off the ballot to prevent voters from passing it.

So the fix is in, a simple majority vote on the new tax-increase measure will raise the sales tax in L.A. County again for homelessness programs. That’s on top of the 2% the county already collects in local sales tax to fund the endless construction of the crime scene known as Metro.

None of the revenue from the old or new version of the Measure H tax may be spent on firefighting or on Metro’s expenses for its homeless passengers, so L.A. County voters can expect more tax increase proposals in the next election cycle for fire departments and transit.

Thanks to your elected officials and the California Supreme Court, taxes move in only one direction: Up. And more and more residents are moving in another direction: Out.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley