Tax Fighter Takes on City Hall

A Barstow Tax Limitation Initiative is already fostering tension between supporters and City Hall. The Initiative's sponsor asks the city attorney to reconsider the wording of the proposed ballot title and summary.

BARSTOW, CA (PRWEB) April 20, 2004 -- Patrick Aleman, of Barstow, Calif., is trying to do something about high taxes. This doesn't endear him to the folks in City Hall whose tax and spend policies may be affected.

Aleman is the sponsor of a tax limitation initiative that would prevent future city revenue increases without the approval of the voters. The next step, within 15 days from when a proponent submits a proposed measure to the City Clerk, is to finalize the ballot title and summary. Barstow City Attorney Michael G. Colantuono is charged with writing a true and impartial" description of 500 words or less.

Aleman claims in an April 7 letter to Colantuaono that the proposed ballot language is so complicated as to be prejudicial.

Referring to the law describing the city attorney's obligation to the public, Aleman said, I believe that the ballot title and summary is inconsistent with the requirements of Section 9203. Normally, a ballots title and summary is used to take complex legal language and summarize it into a form that is understandable to a lay person. The overly complex language used to describe the purpose of the initiative appears to be intended to confuse people in order to foster a prejudice against the initiative."

While the initiative is couched in legal terms with precise definitions such as Base Year Revenues" and Adjusted Annual Revenues," the idea of the tax limitation initiative is simple enough: A city revenue baseline is established based upon the last fiscal year before its passage. Thereafter, adjustments are made for various reasons, mainly changes in population, cost of living, and voter approved adjustments. Other technical allowances are made for capital divestitures, short term borrowing, re-apportionment of tax districts and the like.

After enactment, City Hall must live within the revenue limit thus automatically established, or get voter approval for increases.

Though arguably it is not easy to condense the initiative's necessarily legalistic language to 500 easily grasped words, it has been done in the past. Aleman offers as proof the ballot language used by the Ojai City Attorney when faced with an identical ballot initiative. The Ojai version is clearly easier to understand than the language proffered by Colantuono in Barstow.

So, while Aleman stops short of accusing Colantuaono of intentionally trying to sabotage his initiative, he may find himself asking the court for a writ to amend the language unless the city attorney lives up to his obligation to create a true and impartial" ballot title and summary.

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The Libertarian Party of California has more than fifty public officeholders statewide. Libertarians believe in personal freedom in both social and economic spheres, and in government small enough to protect those freedoms.
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