Long-running saga over local tax measures might return to the ballot

Last week, a state appellate court declared that a 2020 ballot measure to increase hotel taxes in San Diego is valid even though it did not receive the two-thirds approval that voters had been told it would require. The decision was the latest skirmish in a years-long political and legal wrangle over voting requirements for local tax increase proposals.

To begin at the beginning, in 1996, California voters approved Proposition 218 which, among other things, required two-thirds voter approval for local taxes designated for specific purposes. Proponents described it as an extension of Proposition 13, California’s iconic tax limit measure approved in 1978.

In 2017, the state Supreme Court hinted that while the two-thirds vote requirement applied to taxes proposed by local governments, it mi