L.A. County wants to raise your taxes even more

HOMELESSNESS

Los Angeles County Supervisor-elect Lindsey Horvath is sworn in by Abbe Land, former mayor of West Hollywood, on Monday, Dec. 5, 2022 at Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in Los Angeles. She is officially on the L.A. Metro Board of Directors, as of Dec. 13, 2022. SARAH REINGEWIRTZ — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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One day soon your phone is likely to ring and the voice on the other end will be a pollster. The questions will be designed to figure out how to trick voters into approving more tax increases to pay for more of the same failed government policies to address homelessness.

Roughly five years after Los Angeles voters approved Measure HHH and Measure H to borrow more than $1 billion to build housing and raise the sales tax to provide services, the problem is worse than ever. So preparations are well underway to ask voters to approve even higher taxes for more of the same.

On July 12, during a hearing of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee in the state Capitol, lobbyists for homeless service providers, unions and government agencies lined up at the microphones to express their support for Assembly Bills 1679 and 1607. AB 1679 authorized an additional one-half percent increase in the sales tax in L.A. County, already above 10% in many places. AB 1607, authored by the same Wendy Carrillo who was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving earlier this month, empowered a new affordable housing agency to put tax increases on the ballot to raise money for homelessness programs and then transfer the money to L.A. County.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed both measures into law in October.

Our elected officials are very open about their desire to raise taxes. In July, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath introduced a motion of support for AB 1679 that read in part, “With Measure H set to expire in 2027, the County of Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles, nonprofit organizations, business organizations, homelessness service providers, labor, and various advocacy organizations are discussing options to extend and possibly expand the stream of revenue for funding solutions to homelessness.”

“Stream of revenue” means “tax increase.” The motion also noted that in 47 of the 88 cities in L.A. County, the sales tax rate is already at the current maximum of 10.25%. Without authorization from AB 1679, it couldn’t be raised any higher.

Given the long list of organizations and government agencies lusting for more tax money, L.A. County also lobbied for AB 1607, a measure that enables even more tax increases, specifically, increases in taxes that the county itself is not legally authorized to collect.

During the state Legislature’s summer recess, the Office of County Counsel explained these potential new taxes in a presentation titled, “Overview of Assembly Bills 1607 and 1679.”

AB 1607 allows the recently created Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA) to put tax increase proposals on the countywide ballot to fund homelessness programs, a power that originally was withheld from it in the legislation that created the agency. AB 1607 also allows this sneaky workaround: LACAHSA can propose taxes that go beyond the county’s powers of taxation and then transfer a portion of the revenues raised by those taxes to the county.

Here’s how the Office of County Counsel explained it: “AB 1607 makes tax measures available that the County is not separately authorized to put forward, including a special parcel tax, a special gross receipts business license tax, and a special documentary transfer tax.”

“Special” means the money is dedicated to a specific purpose. These require a two-thirds vote of the electorate, but there will be a tricky measure on the November 2024 ballot that could drop the threshold for passing them down to 55%. It’s a legislative constitutional amendment known as ACA 1 (its proposition number on the ballot is TBA).

LACAHSA’s taxing powers are free from certain restrictions that limit the county’s tax proposals. LACAHSA’s parcel tax doesn’t have to be “uniform,” so it can be crafted to slam businesses and exempt certain taxpayers or classes of property. Its new business license tax can apply to the entire county, not just unincorporated areas. And its documentary transfer tax (essentially a sales tax on real estate) has no limit on the tax rate.

If ACA 1 is approved by voters, any of these taxes on the same ballot would pass with 55% of the vote instead of two-thirds.

These are your government’s proposed “solutions” to homelessness. Don’t fall for it again.

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