PROP 43: Two-Thirds Vote for Local Special Taxes

• Who? Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) authored ACA 22, but she did so as the vehicle for a negotiated deal rather than as a personal cause, and she has since said she opposes the measure. The policy behind it belongs to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and its president, Jon Coupal, who had qualified a broader citizen initiative and agreed to pull it once the legislature placed this narrower version on the ballot. Opposition comes from transit, housing, and local government advocates who rely on majority-vote initiatives to fund services.
• What? A two-thirds vote requirement for voter-initiated local special taxes, plus a bar on using the initiative power to impose ad valorem property taxes beyond the existing 1 percent limit.
• Where? Statewide in effect, but it governs local taxes, so its bite is felt in the cities, counties, and special districts where citizen tax initiatives appear.
• When? On the November 3, 2026, ballot. The requirement applies to taxes beginning January 1, 2027.
• Why? Supporters argue that a special tax is a special tax no matter who puts it on the ballot, and that letting initiatives pass earmarked taxes by a simple majority is an end run around a taxpayer protection that has stood since Proposition 13. Opponents argue that the citizen initiative is a core democratic tool and that a supermajority requirement lets a minority of voters block services the majority wants.

For roughly two decades after Proposition 218, most people assumed every local special tax needed two-thirds approval. The California Supreme Court unsettled that assumption in California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland (2017), holding that the procedural limits Proposition 218 placed on local governments do not automatically bind voters acting through the initiative. The court itself called the change modest and left the two-thirds question open. Lower courts then took the next step, upholding several citizen special taxes that had passed with a majority rather than a two-thirds vote. That line of cases is what Proposition 43 would overturn.

The trade-off is real on both sides. The measure closes what supporters see as a loophole that lets organized campaigns pass targeted taxes with less consensus than the state constitution otherwise demands. A two-thirds rule protects the minority who bear the tax, and it forces broad agreement before money is committed to a single purpose. But the same rule is a powerful brake. Supermajority requirements let roughly one-third of voters defeat what a majority supports, and the taxes that have passed by majority under the current rule are not abstractions. They have funded things like fire protection, health services, and open-space preservation in specific counties. Under Proposition 43 several of those recent measures would have failed despite winning majority support.

There is also a worthwhile point about scope. Proposition 43 is deliberately narrower than the initiative it replaced. The original Howard Jarvis measure would also have restricted certain charter-city real estate transfer taxes and would have reached backward to invalidate some taxes already in place. ACA 22 drops both of those features and applies only going forward. Voters weighing this measure are voting on the prospective threshold change and the ad valorem limit, not on the more sweeping version that was withdrawn.

A special tax funds one specific thing, and the state constitution has long asked for two-thirds approval before a city or county can levy one. Should the same two-thirds rule apply when voters put that tax on the ballot themselves, or should the citizen initiative be a path to a simple-majority tax that elected officials could not pass on their own?

Ask which risk worries you more: A supermajority rule that lets one-third of voters block services the majority wants, or a majority rule that lets an organized campaign commit a community to a targeted tax with less consensus than the constitution otherwise requires?