SB 51: the California politics thread

Ab5’s heart is in the right place but I think the consensus is it’s a badly written law with a lot of unintended consequences (most of which have been fixed?)

Prop 22 sucks.

did you see how they changed it this year? https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/california-assembly-moves-to-loosen-gig-worker-law-for-some

I like the succinctness of Ned’s linked tweet regarding 22: “…gig companies trying to rewrite labor law”

why are they hard to poll?

I will say this about GOTV efforts on 22 -- as a Teamster (yes, I know -- anyway, your kneecaps, etc.) I'd been receiving regular messages by text or voicemail once a day from either them or associated groups (including MoveOn? politics, strange bedfellows) for a couple of weeks now, reminding me about that and voting in general. After I turned my ballot over the weekend I responded to the next text after that confirming I'd voted and voted against 22 -- got a quick thank you note back and I haven't been contacted by anyone since. Which is good! It means they're running an operation that appropriately takes people off their contact list once they don't need to be contacted again and can concentrate elsewhere.

as a Teamster (yes, I know -- anyway, your kneecaps, etc.)

The teamsters have taken over/absorbed a lot of library-related workers unions in the Bay Area, haven't they? The UC bindery/printing services workers have become teamsters in the past 10 years I think.

As for 16

MY LATEST @LATIMES COLUMNA: Latino ambivalence about affirmative action could doom Prop. 16. RT, porfas! https://t.co/QWLhXpbgP9

— Col. Gustavo Arellano (@GustavoArellano) October 30, 2020

The teamsters have taken over/absorbed a lot of library-related workers unions in the Bay Area, haven't they?

I don't know about library jobs in specific though it's not surprising -- I'm part of it in the UC context, where the old UC clerical workers union, CUE, which includes library assistants like me as opposed to actual librarians who have their own union/org, chose to affiliate with the Teamsters about a decade back. Absolutely the case that the Teamsters have made getting public employee unions on board and a handy part of the drive has been further incorporating other nonrepresented employees via state labor decisions and so forth, and maintaining a high paying membership (consistently over 80%) even after Janus -- and keep in mind before the Teamster affiliation actual paying membership was down in the mid-20s. Anyway, it's been good to be part of this larger whole, though of course other public employee unions also means affiliation with, how you say, certain people known currently for their uniforms, firearms and the like when carrying out legal responsibilities. The reckoning has not yet come there.

oh right -- I forgot you were UC affiliated.

This morning I found out that I pay four times as much property taxes as my local South Pasadena Trader Joe’s.

My Trader Joe’s is four times the size of my home, so I am paying 16 times more per square foot than TJs.

They are literally paying $400 a month in property taxes. pic.twitter.com/QmGsmIqnfI

— Josh (@JalbyMD) July 26, 2020

I'm sure they pass those savings on to you, the customer, tho… right?

— Aaron 🥑🚈🌲🏀 (@aceckhouse) July 27, 2020

lol no doubt

So if I'm reading this correctly this guy (JalbyMD) buys a house in South Pasadena last year for $1.5M and is now complaining about the property taxes he's levied versus those of the very first location of Trader Joe's (est. 53 years ago)?

that's not the first trader joes, and yes.

his argument is not that his taxes should be lower.

i suspect his argument is that:

- if you are a business doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue

- and you own a piece of real estate worth, conservatively, $10m

- that benefits enormously from the literal billions of dollars the public spent putting a metro right line next to it

- and you have wealthy customers attracted to south pasadena by some of the best schools in the state of california

you should pay more property tax to fund services like schools and transit than, for example, a nearby three bedroom house.

Not defending Prop13 in the least, but a few things:

1) Proximity to Trader Joe's is known to boost residential real estate values (and also lily-white suburbs but that's... for another time) so there's a bit of a fortuitous synergy happening there.
2) The Metro Line is for employee transportation, those massive parking lots outside packed with hybrid SUVs & Teslas? Those are the customers' transpo.
3) In my research I found that 4 of the largest employers in the city of South Pasadena are grocery stores (well, as of 2016: Ralphs, Vons, Trader Joe's and Bristol Farms RIP).
4) Why is it always the biggest YIMBY-brigaders tend to be recent transports to some of the lowest-density hamlets in the burbs? (who then relocate elsewhere within 10 years)
6) Tax everyone more, but especially whiners like JalbyMD (and Trader Joe's too I guess).
7) Bulldoze single family residences/neighborhoods within 10-mile radius of downtown centers and replace them with more sensible solutions with more equitable tax-structures.

(I'm running)

with more equitable tax-structures

what are these?

6) Tax everyone more, but especially whiners like JalbyMD (and Trader Joe's too I guess).

lol "I guess".

i get that someone who can afford the downpayment on a house worth ... checks notes ... twice the median LA county price is not particularly sympathetic, but they should pay less property tax than a trader joes!

Why is it always the biggest YIMBY-brigaders tend to be recent transports to some of the lowest-density hamlets in the burbs?

why do people who want to build more housing move to south pasadena? it's a good place to live for the same reason it is literally the best place to put more housing in LA county. it would absolutely rule to put a bunch apartment buildings there.

why do people people who move to south pasadena complain about their property taxes? i would imagine it's pretty frustrating to live next to people with 10x their wealth who pay 1/10th what what they do.

actually, i don't have to imagine. i own 20% of a house in california so i know how that feels too.

did you post the link to the map app that shows the property tax info? There's one someone posted about that shows Oakland taxes, but maybe it was on fb.

Bristol Farms is closed? All of them or just the SP one?

This one?

https://www.taxfairnessproject.org/map

that’s the one. pretty much convinced me that even if I could afford a house here I’d be an idiot to buy on general principle, and if I did I would immediately become like NIMBY #1 bc prop 13 ensures that.

part of what’s happening here is that every n+1 year beyond 1978 the distortions get that much worse. something’s gonna have to give.

If you think the prop 13 residential map is bad, you should see the commercial real estate situation. And of course that's what Prop 15 is about. So that's one answer for what's going to give, assuming it passes.

But as a YIMBY homeowner here in CA, I don't follow the rest of what you said: yes I pay way more property taxes than the previous occupant (who had owned it since the 60s), but I also have gained a lot of value in the decade I've owned. I actually don't see that value substantially at risk with neighboring increase in density, because I think that if something doesn't give we have significant systematic consequences.

(Bristol Farms here in the SF Westfield Center closed years ago)

No if you can afford a house then you should buy one and never sell it. I mean you might be an idiot for other reasons but unless prop 13 is repealed and we start building housing home ownership is a no brainer from a financial POV. The best time to buy your house was 1976 but now is also pretty good.

unfortunately i might sell mine because I need just one more room :( Yes this will cost me 10s of k forever.

geez caek you are starting to convert me to greater pessimism about ballot measures -- the more I read some of these, the shittier and stupider they are. It's like, "oh, this would be a good change," and then you read the rest of it, and realize, "actually, this would also do something bad that is also stupid."

The best time to buy your house was 1976 but now is also pretty good.

My parents bought their first in 1977, and I admit, we're all grateful for that. Sold it in 1994 which enabled them to get the house in Carmel.

Via Elections Project, meantime: 12 million voters already voted as of yesterday, more than half the registered electorate, and almost 83% of the 2016 vote total, not bad. You all figure they'll do send-a-ballot-to-everyone for the big biannual races going forward? Seems like a no brainer given how smoothly it's gone from what I can tell.

haha xxp

i mean there are bad laws passed in the legislature too. but i think ballot measures are on average a little worse, and the are much much harder to repeal.

I'm guessing that a lot of the progressive property tax reform energy went into Prop 15 (which I support) and so Prop 19 ended up with not much effort to oppose it, which is too bad, because it sucks. It's not as horrible as Prop 22 or Prop 20 are. But still, it's basically allowing old/er people to keep their low property taxes if they buy a home of the same or lesser value (the taxes get pro-rated up if the new home value exceeds the old one) ... which is stupid. These people are already property owners and will likely net a lot of money from the sale of the house, for one. Then, they will get to exclude a significant amount of gain from their taxable income because of the way the tax code works. In other words, the ads are all about "close loopholes for rich people" but really, the proposition is creating a big loophole for even more rich people.

And honestly, I don't understand, why, even though we are the state that is home to big corporations focused on data collection and integrating databases and such, why the state cannot take information from tax returns that show a house is being used as 100% rental and integrate that with property tax info, and treat residential rental property akin to commercial property in the context of Prop 15.

xp Ned - my grandfather sold his house in Carmel right around 1994 and was able to buy a house in Monterey for all cash/no mortgage. He's dead now, but his son by his second wife lives in the Monterey house now.

My parents are still living in their tract home bought in 1975, which is worth probably about $650k now (it fluctuates between $600k - and $700k) -- and paying property taxes that are about as much as my monthly rent ... on a rent-controlled apartment I have lived in since 1997. ... basically the lesson is to stay put and not move.

i think the logic on prop 19 is that it weakens the only good argument against repeal of prop 13, which is "granny loses her house when her taxes go up". i.e. ignoring prop 19 (or even advocating for it's passage) is praxis.

but yeah it's a weird one.

of course, we could implement a system akin to that of New York that gives refunds of property taxes based on income, such that poorer people pay less.

If Granny is Dianne Feinstein, I kinda think she can afford to pay higher property taxes?

i'm with you. but i think prop 19 makes prop 13 politically weaker.

The Howard Jarvis Foundation (or whatever they're called) is against both 15 and 19.

yeah, I had to do a lot of soul searching to agree with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assoc. ... but I think Prop 19 is too flawed.

prop 19 looks bad prime facie bc realtors are for it, but iss actually good bc it lets olds downsize without penalty and move the f out of their empty nests

They can already do that if the place they buy costs less than the place they sell.

um...

are you factoring in their shiny new property tax bill?

They can take the old bill with them, just like 19 proposes. There are more restrictions - the new place can't cost any more, it can only be done once, and the county they buy in has to be taking part in this plan.

Decided to look up the local precinct results for Prop 22 using @chrisarvinsf's new precinct chart.

Look at the Marina.https://t.co/jzM2953aE9 pic.twitter.com/JwHoGYGePR

— Sasha Perigo (@sashaperigo) November 4, 2020

Lyft and Uber and Doordash employees have to live somewhere.

are you factoring in their shiny new property tax bill?

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Tuesday, November 3, 2020 4:48 PM (five hours ago)

they can also do something super weird and like, you know, there's this thing that exists where you live somewhere that you don't own, but you pay a certain amount of $ on a regular periodic basis and not have a property tax bill at all ... i think it's called "renting"

prop 19 looks very much like it's going to pass.

prop 15 is tight now but these things usually trend left (who knows this year though)

prop 22 and the entire ballot measure system can fuck right off though

also another total failure for michael weinstain, that useless rich dude who doesn't talk to anyone else about his dumb ballot masures, on rent control (prop 21)

19 is kinda close -- it isn't that big a spread with less than 70% reporting? ... seriously fuck 22