Will California voters decide tax limits in November? It’s up to the Supreme Court

Get the news that matters to all Californians. Start every week informed.The California Supreme Court will decide in the coming weeks whether to kick a measure off the November ballot that would make it more difficult to raise taxes. The case pits Democratic leaders and unions against business and taxpayer groups.

At an hour-long hearing this morning in San Francisco, the justices grappled extensively with a provision that would require the Legislature to seek approval from the voters for any new or higher state tax. Currently, lawmakers can raise taxes by a two-thirds vote of both chambers. Justice Goodwin Liu pressed the lawyer for the initiative’s proponent, the California Business Roundtable, about that idea repeatedly during the hour-long hearing. He asked at one point whether giving voters authority over state taxes would create a fourth branch of government.

The proposed initiative would broadly make it more challenging to raise taxes in California, including by also increasing the margin to pass a voter-initiated special tax at the local level, to two-thirds from a simple majority. At this morning’s hearing, attorney Prinzing argued that the proposed overhaul to how governments can raise revenue would hinder their ability to respond quickly to fiscal emergencies and might change the nature of what taxes are even possible in California, by transferring those decisions away from experts who can consider them within the full context of budgets and spending priorities.

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