{"slug": "prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay", "title": "Prop. 43 would make some local taxes harder to pass. What’s at stake in the Bay Area?", "summary": "California's Proposition 43 would require a two-thirds vote to pass special taxes via citizen initiatives, closing a loophole created by a 2017 state Supreme Court ruling. The measure, backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, would take effect Jan. 1, 2027, and could block future local revenue for services like schools and parks, as seen with recent Bay Area measures that would not have met the new threshold.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...Following a wave of new voter-approved tax increases that [reached the ballot](/tag/california-ballot-measures/) through the signature-gathering process in recent years, a statewide initiative before voters in November aims to make it more difficult to pass special taxes.\n\nKnown as [Proposition 43](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/07/what-is-proposition-43-before-california-voters-in-the-2026-election/), the measure would set the threshold to impose or extend a tax earmarked for specific purposes at a two-thirds vote. The new rules would apply to special taxes driven by the citizens’ initiative petition process, which currently can be approved by a simple majority — special taxes placed on the ballot by a local government already require the higher threshold. If the proposition passes, it would take effect Jan. 1, 2027, and would not impact taxes that have already passed.\n\n**RELATED: Election 2026: All 14 propositions before California voters this year, explained**\n\nAdvocates of the measure say it would close what they consider to be a “loophole” created by a 2017 California Supreme Court ruling, while opponents are sounding the alarm that it will make it more difficult to raise local revenue for schools, libraries, parks, affordable housing and other critical services.\n\nIn the Bay Area, several recently approved taxes, such as 2025 Measure B for healthcare and 2020 Measure C for childcare in Alameda County, as well as 2026 Measure D for open space preservation in Santa Clara County, would not have met the proposed bar — a signal that Proposition 43 could make it nearly impossible for these types of revenue measures to pass in the future.\n\n“We need the ability to fund our local services and we need to be able to do that with a simple majority like they do everywhere else,” said Ben Grieff, the executive director of the nonprofit Evolve California that is campaigning against the measure. “We don’t want to have this tyranny of the minority where 34% of the voters can vote down something that 60-plus percent of their neighbors support.”\n\nVoters, however, have approved special taxes government agencies had put on the ballot requiring the two-thirds threshold. Those include Santa Clara County sales taxes in 2000, 2008 and 2016 for BART to Silicon Valley and other transportation needs, and Peralta Community College District parcel taxes in 2012, 2018 and 2026.\n\nThe original version of the measure, which was proposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, sought to go further than what eventually made it on the ballot, prompting the governor’s office, the state legislature and other groups to scramble to reach a compromise with the anti-tax group before last month’s deadline.\n\n“There was a lot of pressure on the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to pull it off the ballot,” HJTA spokesperson Susan Shelley said.\n\nThe group had spent nearly 10 years in court fighting a state Supreme Court decision that ruled special taxes placed on the ballot through the signature-gathering process need a simple majority to pass. Shelley said they saw it as a clear violation of Proposition 13 — the landmark 1978 law that capped property taxes and also required special taxes levied by local governments to receive two-thirds approval.\n\nThe initial measure aimed to retroactively cancel all special taxes approved that hadn’t met the two-thirds threshold. It also would have severely limited local transfer taxes — a tax on the sale of real estate — and voided past transfer taxes that were above the proposed cap. In San Jose, the city feared that it could [lose out on more than $100 million annually it receives through a 2020 measure](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/18/california-ballot-measure-cities-tax-hit/) that has funded interim housing for homeless residents, potentially sending more than 2,000 people back on the streets.\n\nAssemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, ended up authoring the compromise that became Proposition 43 and quickly registered her opposition. Wicks was not available for an interview, but said in a recent social media post that “politics doesn’t always give you good choices. Sometimes the choice is between bad — and much worse.”\n\n“I authored (Prop. 43) not because I wanted it to become law — but because it was the only path left to get the more dangerous initiative off the ballot before time ran out,” she wrote.\n\nThe nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a recent memo that if it passes, it would make it harder for local governments to pass certain taxes, however the revenue impact is “unknown.”\n\nSanta Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said she worries about the trickle-down effects of Proposition 43 as the county has already maxed out its ability to increase the sales tax locally. California has a 7.25% statewide sales tax base and then caps each county or district at an additional 2%, though state legislators can author legislation to increase that cap. Santa Clara County used up its last available increase in November when it passed Measure A — a 0.625% general sales tax increase.\n\nEllenberg said that if local governments can’t raise their own revenues, they might have to look more toward the state.\n\n“They are not doing an excellent job of backfilling losses, for example right now H.R. 1 losses,” Ellenberg said of the state and lost Medicaid revenues to counties from President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” “We’re only getting some one-time money for public hospitals, there’s no money for indigent care, they’re not stepping in to solve for that, which frankly is the state’s responsibility.”\n\nAdina Levin, the executive director of the pro-transit group Seamless Bay Area, said in an interview that the proposition “poses a big risk to the ability to support the infrastructure it takes for our communities to thrive in the future.”\n\nHer organization has been backing a regional transit measure on the November ballot that would increase the sales tax in five Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties — to fund struggling transit systems. While Proposition 43 wouldn’t impact the threshold it needs in November since it would go into effect next year, it’s the same type of initiative that it aims to make more difficult to pass.\n\nMarc Joffe, the president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, cited the transit measure as one he believes should be subjected to a two-thirds approval, accusing special interests of controlling the measure and paying for the signature-gathering campaign. He said there aren’t any “organic citizens groups” looking to tax themselves more.\n\n“I just think it’s very unfair to the average taxpayer that special interests are able to pretend to be citizens groups and be able to pass tax increases at a lower threshold,” he said.\n\nLevin said Joffe’s remarks would come as a “big surprise to the 1,000 volunteers who were out gathering signatures and talking to community members at farmers markets, train station and bus stops.”\n\nFor government agencies that are increasingly feeling the pinch of their budgets, Joffe said “they need to live within that (sales tax) envelope, which is ever-expanding, it’s just maybe not expanding at the rate that they would like.”\n\nShelley, with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said her message to the critics is that they can always pass general taxes with a simple majority.\n\n“We’re talking here about special taxes where the money is earmarked for a particular purpose, and they don’t have to pass special taxes,” she said. “They can pass general taxes and then they can appropriately prioritize the budget to fund the fire department and street repair and healthcare and whatever else is a top priority.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/27/california-proposition-43/", "published_at": "2026-07-27 11:00:49+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-27 11:05:57.309561+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association", "Evolve California", "Ben Grieff", "Susan Shelley", "Buffy Wicks", "Alameda County", "Santa Clara County", "Peralta Community College District"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/prop-43-would-make-some-local-taxes-harder-to-pass-whats-at-stake-in-the-bay.jsonld"}}