This seems like a pretty sweet way to circumvent Proposition 218.
Proposition 218 was adopted in 1996 and makes sure that cities can't raise property taxes by calling them "fees" without a majority vote of property owners. So, for example, here in San Diego, for the past 100 years, the City has paid for trash pickup from residential addresses. The City didn't feel like paying for that any more, and wanted to start charging fees to property owners for trash pickup. Under Proposition 218, they needed to get the affirmative vote of property owners, which they (barely) did in 2022.
So let's say, for example, that a city currently spends $200 million or so on police services, fire services, road repairs, or whatever -- anything somehow related to protecting or improving access to property in the City. The City feels like raising property taxes to cover the expense, but can't do that under Proposition 218 without a vote. So it lets every property owner vote; say, one vote for every parcel owned, or one vote for every 1000 square feet of space. Whatever.
Here's the rub, though. The City itself owns some property. Lots of it. The City wants the tax to pass, so it votes all its votes in favor of the tax -- a tax that would basically pay itself. (And unlike regular property owners, the City makes sure that it votes 100% of its votes; no forgetting to vote or anything like that.) When the City's votes are included in the total, the measure passes, even though the non-City voters didn't approve the tax.
Is that legitimate?
The Court of Appeal says it is. And that's pretty much exactly what transpired here.
Sacramento wanted to impose a sewer tax to raise $20 million, so it put it to a vote. Everyone with a piece of property got one vote, so the City sent out around 130,000 ballots. Only a fraction of those ballot were actually returned; only around 40,000 of them.
When the final results were tallied, the measure passed: 22,178 ballots were voted in favor of the tax, and 20,229 were voted against.
But that's because the City itself had over 2,000 City-owned properties. And it voted every single one of its ballots in favor of the tax. Without those votes, the tax would have been defeated.
Oh well, says the Court of Appeal. Election is valid. The City will pay the taxes (albeit to itself), so it gets to vote.
That may well be what the text of Proposition 218 permits. But I doubt that anyone actually thought about this issue at the time -- or that, if they did, they'd have allowed the taxing authority to itself vote in the election.
As it stands, it's a pretty effective way for municipalities to tilt the vote in their favor. So I'd very much expect it to be used in the future.
