MAUREEN CAVANAUGH (Host): I'm Maureen Cavanaugh, and you're listening to These Days on KPBS. And Prop 13 is our topic, too. As California struggles to pinch together the funds to cover one huge budget shortfall after another, as state services are strangled to the point that entire programs are on the chopping block and state workers are furloughed, some say now may finally be the time to re-evaluate Proposition 13. Prop 13 was passed by voters back in 1978 to limit increases in property tax and reduce legislators’ ability to raise any tax with a simple majority. Its impact on California has been dramatic and lasting, and some claim Prop 13 ushered in a nationwide backlash against government spending. As part of our Envision San Diego project, we’re taking a look at Prop 13, the biggest tax revolt in California history. I’d like to welcome my guests. Joanne Faryon, KPBS Envision reporter. Good morning, Joanne.
JOANNE FARYON (KPBS Envision Reporter): Good morning, Maureen.
CAVANAUGH: And Isaac Martin is professor of sociology at UCSD, author of “The Permanent Tax Revolt” about Prop 13. Welcome to These Days, Isaac.
ISAAC MARTIN (Professor of Sociology, University of California San Diego): Good morning, Maureen.
CAVANAUGH: And we’re inviting our listeners to join the conversation. Do you remember the arguments for and against Prop 13? Do you think it’s a good idea to continue making it hard to raise taxes in California? Join our discussion by calling us at 1-888-895-5727 or post a comment at KPBS.org/thesedays. So, Joanne, as I said, over 30 year ago this has been in place. Why now? Why did you decide to focus on Prop 13?
FARYON: Well, a number of reasons. First, as you know, Envision looks at various issues throughout the year. We spend a number of weeks investigating, reading and talking to people. And it just seemed as though in the last couple of years, whether we were looking at education, unemployment, jobs, housing, the economy overall, every road led us to Prop 13. We heard from so many people, well, you know, it might because of Prop 13, or blame it on Prop 13. So we wanted to find out if, in fact, can we blame some of our, you know, economic woes on Prop 13, and that’s sort of the question that we set out to answer. Especially now, 32 years later, it seems every year now for the last few years we hear from the state that there’s not enough money and we hear that education is faced with smaller and smaller budgets.
CAVANAUGH: So when the – Prop 13 came up in those conversations, what aspect of Prop 13 were people pointing to and saying, you know, that might be the problem after all.
FARYON: Yeah, that’s a great question. So let’s look at education, for example. Before Prop 13, property taxes were the way that local municipalities, school boards, could raise money. So if you were, say, San Diego Unified and you needed more money to hire more teachers, really, you could – you would go and raise property taxes. That was the main source of revenue for education. What happened after Prop 13, the – it limited the amount of property taxes that jurisdictions could raise. It limited to 1% of your purchase price of your home. So immediately that ability to raise money, as much as you needed, was taken away. It also changed the way cities looked at development. If, before Prop 13, cities could raise money through property taxes, there was more of a motive to have more homes built. Right? It was a revenue source. Well, if that’s taken away, it’s like, well, are you going to build more houses or are you going to expand tourism where you can get hotel tax revenue? Are you going to expand things like the convention center, you’ll see more sales revenue, because those became the new sources of revenue for cities. So we saw municipalities sort of even changing the way they zoned things, whether they did it deliberately or not, but this was a way of getting, you know, getting revenue from other places. So when we looked at things like even employment in San Diego County, we were told, well, the reason we have so many low paying jobs is because that’s the way the city gets money. If you build more hotels and you expand the convention center, you get more sales tax receipts and you get more hotel tax revenue.
CAVANAUGH: Now, some people say an even wider impact of Prop 13 besides property taxes was the fact that it limited legislators’ abilities to raise taxes with a simple majority. And, you know, we hear so much about gridlock in Sacramento, do people point to Prop 13 and say that’s the reason we have gridlock?
FARYON: Most people don’t because they don’t know that that was part of Prop 13. Yes, you’re right. That’s why there is gridlock but in terms of do people know that? No, they don’t know that. And we have a sample ballot from the newspaper from 1978, one of our homeowners hung onto it, and in the description of Prop 13, it doesn’t even mention that. It doesn’t even mention the two-thirds majority. We’ve spoken with so many people who, you know, lived in their homes back in ’78 and most of them are not aware of that. If you look at the campaign literature in terms of the proposition, if you look at the advertisements, nobody talks about it.
CAVANAUGH: Wow. We are talking about Prop 13, the legacy of Proposition 13, inviting you to join us. 1-888-895-5727 is our number to call. Let me bring Isaac Martin in on the conversation. He’s professor of sociology at UCSD and author of “The Permanent Tax Revolt” about Prop 13. Now Joanne told us a little bit about what the ballot looked like back in 1978 but let’s take a look back at the history. What was the environment like in California in 1978 that gave rise to this huge tax revolt?
MARTIN: Well, in 1978 people’s property taxes were increasing really rapidly and California was filled with a lot of homeowners who were very anxious that they were actually going to lose their homes because their property taxes were going up. Another important thing to note about this is that in 1978 the reason for these big property tax increases was not that politicians were suddenly voting to increase the property tax rate, it was that home prices were going through the roof and people were getting taxed on the value, the current value of their homes. And so in consequence, people were casting about pretty frantically for solutions that would break that link between the prices of homes on the current market and the property taxes that they had to pay.
CAVANAUGH: If I remember correctly, there was a lot of talk about someone who maybe had bought a home for, you know, $20,000 30 years ago and now it was worth $200,000 or more and literally could not afford to pay the property taxes and were losing their homes. Was that just propaganda or was that really happening?
MARTIN: No, it was really happening. Absolutely it was happening. And it was an issue particularly for people who didn’t have plans to sell their homes or move. A lot of folks who treated their homes, not as an investment asset, but instead as where they planned to live out the rest of their days, well, this was a real and very serious problem. You might think that when the value of your home goes up from $20,000 to $200,000, you know, you should party, it’s a great increase in your wealth, right? But if you’re not actually planning to realize that money by selling your home, well, gosh, at the time all it meant was a big increase in your tax burden and for folks on fixed incomes who weren’t planning to move, it was a serious economic squeeze in for some folks, something like a catastrophe.
CAVANAUGH: And, Isaac, remind us, who was pushing this forward? What organization rallied to this cry of these homeowners being strangled by property taxes?
MARTIN: Well, you know, there was a whole laundry list of organizations that got involved from all over the political spectrum, and this is one of the most interesting things that we’ve forgotten about this period. So, on the one hand, some of the earliest groups to get involved were the California Tax Reform Association, some groups on the left that really included a lot of activists who had experience organizing in the civil rights movement and the welfare rights movement. And they said, you know, we see low income people getting taxed out of their homes while big business gets tax breaks. We think that’s unfair. And so there were a lot of groups on the left pushing for reforms to the property tax that would’ve made it more progressive. Then there were also groups with much more conservative ideas about what to do about the problem and here Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, the authors of Proposition 13, were from that side. Howard Jarvis was part of an organization called the United Organizations of Taxpayers. It was a group of Los Angeles area homeowners associations. And Paul Gann had an organization of his own in the Sacramento area. But, really, all kinds of organizations were involved. There was a real ferment.
CAVANAUGH: We are talking about Prop 13 and taking your phone calls, 1-888-895-5727. Let’s speak with Yvonne in Rolando Park. Good morning, Yvonne. Welcome to These Days.
YVONNE (Caller, Rolando Park): Good morning, ma’am. How are you today?
CAVANAUGH: I’m quite well. Thank you for calling.
YVONNE: Yes, my pleasure, thank you. Actually, just a brief history, my grandparents came out from Michigan and purchased a home in the El Cerrito area, which is off of College/University in 1947. And then my parents had purchased the home that I live in in 1958. Our home then was $16,000 and I believe our grandparents’ home cost all of $14,000 many years ago. And our families are all passed away. I inherited our mother’s home and my sister inherited our grandparents’ home where she lives with her wonderful husband. And all I can say personally and I’m no expert on Prop 13 but it’s been a true blessing for us.
CAVANAUGH: And – Go ahead. I’m sorry.
YVONNE: No, that’s all right. It’s just been a true blessing for us because our property taxes are quite low and we’re very appreciative of that.
CAVANAUGH: Thank you for calling. I appreciate that, Yvonne. Tell me more about that, Joanne.
FARYON: Yes, actually Prop 13 allows for a couple of things. You can transfer your property tax base on that house from parent to child and from grandparent to grandchild if the parent is actually deceased. It’s a one-time only transfer but you can do it. There are all kinds of loop – well, I don’t want to call them loopholes but these allowances in Prop 13. Also what a lot of people don’t know, I realized in working on this, is if you are 55 or older and you want to downsize, buy something worth less or the same as your current value of your house, you can take your property – your prop tax – your property tax base with you as well. Because I spoke with a lot of people who are 65 years old and they think they can never move because they’ll have to pay higher property taxes. That’s not the case. And, in fact, over at the County Assessor’s office, they deal with this daily, people having these types of questions. So it is – you can actually take these property tax bases with you.
CAVANAUGH: Now, I understand, Joanne, you’ve spoken with a number of people who really love Prop 13. Is that correct?
FARYON: Yes, some who love it and some who love it and hate it. And it’s interesting, you’re talking about was it true at the time where house values were really going up and people were losing their homes, we heard from those people and it wasn’t just the little old lady. I mean, we spoke with a lot of people who were raising young children at the time, they were young families buying their first home, and I want to read you just a couple of e-mails I got from some of them. And this one is from Lorraine who says she bought her house in Bay Park for $29,000 back in 1974. Six months later, the house had doubled in value and the taxes doing the same. Nine months later, the value had tripled and the taxes along with it. Each of us, a firefighter and teacher, were making under $9,000 a year. We were not sure at the time if they could hold onto their house because values were escalating so dramatically. And we heard that story over and over and over again. And this is why people said yes. And it’s funny, they were getting their – at the time, it was June of 1978 when they actually voted and just before that they were getting their new assessments. And their new assessments were showing that their homes were worth a lot more. Actually, yesterday, we interviewed David Butler, who’s the County Assessor. He was one of those assessors who was walking the streets of San Diego County assessing home values at the time and he said, yes, they were going up and then once Prop 13 was passed, he remembers working overtime trying to figure out what were they going to do now? They had to throw all those new assessments out the window and, in fact, Prop 13 called for them to roll back taxes, to go back to assessments, I think, that were from 1976, am I right?
MARTIN: 1975, 1976.
FARYON: 1975. Yeah, so they were actually, you know, lowering them.
CAVANAUGH: I read that property taxes actually plummeted 57% after this particular Prop 13 was enacted. And I’m wondering, let me ask you, Isaac, did anybody foresee this? I mean, did anyone foresee the consequences of so dramatically curtailing a revenue source that was so heavily relied upon by municipalities and the state?
MARTIN: Absolutely. Although, the people who foresaw that there would be dramatic consequences didn’t quite guess what those consequences would be precisely. But the campaign against Proposition 13 was filled with predictions that it would have really dire consequences for state and local government services. And it proved to be an argument that just didn’t have much purchase with people who were concerned about keeping their homes. You know, if the tradeoff is, well, the schools are going to get a little worse but I don’t have to be on the street, people decided they were going to, you know, let the schools get a little worse. The long term impact has been quite dramatic but in the short term, immediately after Prop 13, people thought they’d actually sort of dodged a bullet. The headlines from the time were all about how, you know, the impact of Proposition 13, not as dire as people predicted. And it’s because the state really stepped in and spent down a big state budget surplus to bail out local governments that were suddenly strapped for cash because of Proposition 13.
FARYON: Producer Andy Trimlett’s been working on a video about the history, about 1978 and in his video you can see the actual ballot does warn people that if you say yes to this, it does – it’s a potential $7 or $8 billion loss to the state. We will lose revenue. And as Isaac says, there was a surplus at the time so the state could come in after it passed and kind of fill in the gap but year after year that doesn’t happen anymore. We’re not sitting on a big surplus and so we end up with this structural deficit in our budget.
CAVANAUGH: Let’s take some calls. We are taking your calls, inviting you to participate in this conversation on the legacy of Proposition 13. Our number is 1-888-895-5727. Let’s hear from Rick in Mission Valley. Good morning, Rick. Welcome to These Days.
RICK (Caller, Mission Valley): Good morning. Actually, you touched on my topic just briefly which was – I mean, I remember Prop 13 and I remember that one of the issues was that property taxes were going up, you know, to pay for things and in the meantime there was this large budget surplus. I believe it was around, at the time, you know, it was quite high, it was like about $2 billion. And so I think those two things, the fact that property taxes were going up, we had this surplus, and people were wondering, well, you know, the politicians are just, you know, going to the trough too often. And another little aside is the governor at the time, who, you know, who was Jerry Brown…
CAVANAUGH: Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you for that history lesson. I appreciate it. Let’s hear from Jim in Vista. Good morning, Jim. Welcome to These Days.
JIM (Caller, Vista): I remember I was young at the time and we studied Proposition 13 in a group and after studying it, I was really frightened about it. And the long term consequences seem to me like what’s happened is, it’s destroyed our school system because basically you have a school system that was funded on property taxes and what’s happened is businesses that stay in the same location forever and people that stay in their same homes forever, their property taxes go up almost not – nonexistent. And new people that buy new homes make up for those property taxes, the people at least have the ability to make up for higher property taxes, pay them when they buy their new homes. And the problem is, you go back to bonds to try to raise monies for our schools and those older people who are in those homes have no interest, because their kids aren’t in school, in raising the funds to pay for schools any more. So you had – this is just one of the many aspects of this proposition that were just a total disaster.
CAVANAUGH: Okay, well, thank you, Jim. Thank you for that. So we’ve had a couple of negatives, a couple of positives. We have to take a short break. When we return, we’ll continue taking your calls about the impact of Proposition 13 and learning a little bit more about the history and how Prop 13 has worked out to – in – to create a budget problem for the State of California. Our number is 1-888-895-5727. You’re listening to These Days on KPBS.
CAVANAUGH: Welcome back. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. You're listening to These Days on KPBS, and we’re talking about our new Envision San Diego project, Prop 13, looking at the impact of the biggest tax revolt in California history. I’d like to welcome my guests, Joanne Faryon and Isaac Martin, and remind you that we are taking your calls at 1-888-895-5727. And you can post your comments online at KPBS.org/thesedays. Let’s go right to the phones and take a call from David in San Diego. Good morning, David. Welcome to These Days.
DAVID (Caller, San Diego): Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to point out that, you know, Proposition 13 has actually saved more people from losing their homes than they realize. I know some people that pay up to $5,000 a year in property taxes and have no idea how they’re going to make those payments. If the government’s going to be needing money to pay for other things, they’re going to have to come up with a better way on how they spend the money that they have now because the bottom line is, is that I don’t think anybody realizes that Proposition 13, if it was to go away, not only would people lose their homes but future generations would have a hard time being able to buy a home.
CAVANAUGH: David, thank you for that. I think we can hear from David’s comment why Prop 13 is sometimes called the third rail of California politics?
MARTIN: Absolutely. Very few politicians will dare to touch it, the metaphor of the third rail suggests, because it’s electric and it’ll kill anyone who…
CAVANAUGH: Exactly.
MARTIN: …who dares to tinker. I want to pick up on another thing David’s suggesting, which is that in the absence of Proposition 13 a lot of people would be losing their homes. I think that’s true if nothing else were done to provide people with protection from tax increases that would come from rising property values. California’s always had this boom/bust cycle in real estate and during the boom phase, boy, those values do sometimes climb. But there were a lot of alternatives on the table so Proposition 13 wasn’t the only way that we could’ve protected people and really saved people’s homes. And it came with a lot of other provisions like this two-thirds super majority provision that Joanne talked about that people didn’t know much about and maybe wouldn’t have cared much about if they knew because they were so focused on saving their homes, but that the longterm consequences of which have been really, at best, a mixed bag for California.
CAVANAUGH: Let’s take another call if we can. Dan is calling from La Mesa. Good morning, Dan. Welcome to These Days.
DAN (Caller, La Mesa): Well, good morning. I suppose I have a little different perspective because I’ve bought and sold homes over the last few years and I pay substantial property taxes. Where I live currently, I have persons who live on either side of me who bought many, many years ago and actually, literally, 40 years ago, and it seems as if I’m subsidizing them. I pay a large amount of taxes that is seemingly related to services provided to the property and they’re paying substantially less. And that’s also a result of, you know, Prop 13. It’s a substantial inequity. And, you know, we need to address taxes in a broader way than just simply attacking the assessed value because, like I said, I’m supporting, I’m subsidizing my neighbors.
CAVANAUGH: Thank you, Dan. Thank you. We have a caller on – calling from San Clemente with a similar question. James, welcome to These Days.
JAMES (Caller, San Clemente): No, it’s not exactly the same question. On average, 20% of all Californians move every month and the proposition was passed over 30 years ago. Everybody on our block has moved since then, and I’m just wondering how many people are still in their homes paying the Proposition 13 tax rate.
CAVANAUGH: Great. Thank you very much.
FARYON: I can tell you, 8%. We have about 8% of San Diego County homeowners who are at that original 1978 rate. However, there are a large majority – well, a majority of homeowners who are still paying less than market value in terms of their property tax base. And the Assessor, Dave Butler, again provided me with the chart to show the breakdown in terms of how many homeowners are paying – there’s about 29% who bought their homes between 2003 and 2008 and those are the people who are going to be paying at the higher end, right when markets were higher. However, again, the assessor will reduce your property tax bill if the value of your house is lower than what you paid for it. But other than that 29%, there’s another large chunk, they’re paying maybe – they’re paying less than what their house would be sold for today, so less than 1% of their market value. And then 8% paying that very, you know, small amount based on the 1978 price. You should know that California has one of the lowest effective property tax rates. That means that if you added up all of the property in California and you determined its market value, we together, as a state, pay less than 1% of that market value in our taxes. So, yes, homes change hands but not enough to actually make up for this way of taxation. We still pay less than 1% together of our home’s market value. And also, I mean, I’m hearing things about a $5,000 property tax bill. To give you a little perspective, New Jersey – New Jersey schools rank at the top of the list in terms of how much money they spend on students. California’s at the bottom of the list. And we hear about this all the time in education circles. But New Jersey has the highest tax rate. Their counties always rank in the top when it comes to property taxes. Their property tax bills are $6,000, $7,000. Our average property tax bill is just over $3,000 and our home values are much higher.
CAVANAUGH: It’s interesting. I wonder, Isaac, if you could address this, what a caller referenced as the fundamental inequality of this freezing, basically, your property tax rate because the value of your home is the same as your neighbor’s basically but you may be paying an enormous amount more in property taxes if your neighbor has been living there for quite some time.
MARTIN: Well, that caller’s absolutely right, that this is pervasive and this is one of the fundamental questions we have to ask about Proposition 13 is, is that fair? There are some really interesting studies that have been done about this to look at the magnitude of that inequality and – in property tax bills between people who’ve owned for a long time and people who haven’t. And there’s a professor in the planning department at University of Southern California named Dowell Myers who’s done wonderful research on this, showing that it’s a real – creates real generational inequities. So younger home buyers, in particular, end up paying through the nose, in effect, to subsidize the property tax breaks enjoyed by people who’ve lived in their homes for a very long time. Another interesting thing to note is that this inequity between, you know, your property tax bill and your neighbor’s property tax bill, how big that inequality is is going to wax and wane depending on changes in the housing market. So it’s actually been shrinking now. As housing prices decrease, the benefit of Proposition 13 to longtime homeowners has also been decreasing. But during boom times, that inequality grows and if you think that’s unfair, then the unfairness grows, too.
CAVANAUGH: I see. Let’s take a call. Rand is calling from La Jolla. Good morning, Rand. Welcome to These Days.
RAND (Caller, La Jolla): Thank you for taking my call and thanks for this discussion. I would just like to put two issues on the table. The main one is something that really shocks me, never comes up in these types of discussions, which is the distinction between commercial properties and homes. Of course, nobody wants homeowners to be taxed out of their homes but Prop 13 also holds down the property taxes paid by shopping malls, office buildings, all kinds of commercial properties. And they have a loophole that homeowners don’t have, which is that they can sell the holding company that owns the property and then someone else can take ownership of that property but, theoretically, it hasn’t changed hands, just the company has changed hands. And so there’s many commercial properties in the state that have not been reassessed for many years and they’re not paying the cost of the essential services that they need to stay in business. And I think that that aspect of Proposition 13 is very unfair and needs to be changed.
CAVANAUGH: Rand, my two guests are nodding furiously to your comments, and they both want to get in. So go ahead, Isaac, first.
MARTIN: Sure. I want to thank Rand for bringing this up. It’s a very important issue and it’s one that Californians don’t know about. There’s actually a survey, research on people’s opinions of Proposition 13 that shows, of course, a vast majority of Californians like Proposition 13 very much but a small minority of those people who like Proposition 13 actually know that it also applies to commercial property. Rand’s absolutely right that it does. The other interesting thing to note is that when you ask people, okay, what parts of Proposition 13 might you be willing to reform, this is one that actually a majority of some people in polls say that they’d be willing to rethink. When they’re told about this, people are really eager to keep the protections on homes but, you know, a little less concerned about protecting the leases of longterm commercial businesses.
CAVANAUGH: And, Joanne, what have you found out about that…
FARYON: Well…
CAVANAUGH: …dichotomy?
FARYON: …our caller will be happy to know we’re looking at those numbers. In fact, in San Diego County, commercial property, it’s less than 8% in terms of how many still retain their original 1978 property tax base. And commercial property is changing hands in this county at the same rate as residential, which is actually not the norm. In the state, commercial tends to change hands less frequently. Yes, there is a loophole. If you are a corporation and you sell your corporation and there’s no majority interest, yes, you can keep that same property tax base. How often is it happening in our county? We don’t know. The assessor really doesn’t know also. It’s something they look for. It does happen in the state and there’ve been some highly publicized cases up in Northern California. Is there a move to suggest, hey, why don’t we split the tax roll and, like Isaac says, why don’t we keep Prop 13 for homeowners but maybe commercial you get reassessed or why don’t we just change the tax rate. It’s 1% for residential, maybe it’s one and a half percent for commercial. Those things are being talked about in Sacramento right now. That’s come up with the assessor here in San Diego County and you can look forward to some of our reporting, which will address this issue as well.
CAVANAUGH: Let’s try to sneak in another call. Tony is calling from Lemon Grove. Good morning, Tony. Welcome to These Days.
TONY (Caller, Lemon Grove): Yeah, thanks for my call. Thanks for taking my call. I remember when this debate was going on back in the ‘70s when I was in elementary school. And I remember that before that – the law was passed, we went on field trips every Friday, and after that, we never went on field trips maybe once or twice a year. That was the only thing that changed. I’m a political liberal. I voted for Obama. Taxes are a good thing. They pay for police, they pay for fire. But on the other hand, my mom would’ve lost her home years ago—years ago—had this law not been enacted. And the fear that taxpayers have, the gentleman who suggested we should maybe look at it, tinker with it, the problem is the Pandora’s box effect. Slippery slope, little by little, death by a thousand cuts.
CAVANAUGH: Tony, thank you. I think you just summed up the crux of this whole debate about Prop 13. It’s people, Joanne, people know that there are problems connected with this shrinking revenue and California desperately needs more revenue right now but people are also terrified at the idea of pricing themselves out of their own homes.
FARYON: Look, I mean, I like it, too, in terms of my personal finances. I own a home, and I’m paying less taxes. I’m paying less than 1% because I bought my house nine years ago. Wow. I think that’s great for me. But there’s also a bigger problem, right? What do we do in terms of raising enough money to pay for our schools, our cities, our county, fire, police and so on? So I think that’s really the problem. It’s what’s good for the individual versus what’s good for the community. Is there maybe some balance? Is there some meeting point in the middle and I think, Isaac, you talked about this earlier as well. I mean, maybe there are other alternatives. Maybe Prop 13 wasn’t necessarily the best solution at the time.
MARTIN: Yeah, I mean, I take Tony’s point that we absolutely needed something, right, to I mean, take his mom as an example. To keep her in her home, some policy needed to happen and Proposition 13 was the first one that provided enough tax relief for enough people to really make it stick. But there were other ways to do it, there were a variety of proposals to provide property tax breaks to low income people, you know, people who really were feeling the financial squeeze hardest. There were other proposals to actually split the roll and…
CAVANAUGH: And I think that those are the types of things that you’re going to be exploring in – as your Envision story develops. What, if you could briefly tell us, where are you taking this, Joanne?
FARYON: Yes, so we are going to look at education and we want to give people real information, real statistics, real facts. I mean, and there’s some things people aren’t going to want to hear and just a little preview, we’re going to explore the idea that in states that have tax caps like this, property tax caps like this, test scores are actually lower among students. So we’re going to explore education. We’re going to explore in terms of how it’s affecting cities and counties and their budgets. And, of course, the whole idea of the split roll in the corporations as well.
CAVANAUGH: We look forward to it. Thank you so much. My guests have been Joanne Faryon and Isaac Martin. Thank you for coming in and speaking with us.
MARTIN: Thank you, Maureen. It’s been a pleasure.
CAVANAUGH: I want to let everyone know to see a timeline of the history of Prop 13, you can go to KPBS.org/prop13 and if you want to express yourself—I know so many people called and we couldn’t get you on the air—please post your comment online, KPBS.org/thesedays. You’ve been listening to These Days on KPBS. Stay with us for hour two coming up in just a few minutes.
