Between the Pigs and the Swill

A California taxpayer revolt threatens official bankruptcy "A gift-wrapped time bomb," says Los Angeles District Attorney John Van De Kamp.

"A disaster," says California State Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy.

"A chaotic disruption," says Los Angeles School Superintendent William Johnston.

"No matter how you slice it," says San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, "our police, our libraries, our fire department and schools would be crippled."

The reason for all these cries of alarm is Proposition 13, a measure that would limit California property taxes to 1% of the market value of all real estate, about one-third of current average rates. If approved by the voters on June 6--a strong possibility--the proposition would cost California officialdom about $7 billion in annual tax revenues at the present level. It would also make it harder to raise other revenues because it would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature to impose new taxes.

Leader of the grass-roots campaign behind the amendment is Howard Jarvis, 75, a jowly, pipe-smoking ex-businessman who has made tax cutting a personal crusade for the past 15 years (he claims to have blocked 33 different local bond issues). "People just can't handle the burden any more," says he. "This is a government of, by and for the people, not the Government." A year ago, he and his Los Angeles-based United Organization of Taxpayers fell short by 1,200 names of the 500,000 signatures needed to put their property-tax amendment on the ballot. Last May he formed an alliance with the People's Advocate, headed by retired Real Estate Salesman Paul Gann, and tried again. By the end of the 150-day signature-gathering period prescribed by law, the petition papers were covered with a phenomenal 1.2 million signatures. Another 300,000 signed later to bring the total to 1.5 million--24% of the number of all those who actually voted in California in 1974.

The upsurge reflected increasing voter outrage over constantly rising property taxes, which climbed 48% to 120% in 1976 alone. "Let the politicians sweat to get their money from somewhere else," says Hal Rolfe, a Los Angeles real estate agent whose own taxes rose from $900 to $2,017 on his Topanga Canyon home and from $540 to $1,913 on his nearby office. A divorced housewife in Van Nuys, Phyllis Waldman, now pays $ 1,568 rather than $750; the home she purchased nine years ago for $32,000 was revalued last July at $ 100,000. A retired engineer in Sacramento, Don Hickman, pays $600 rather than $360. The house he bought for $11,200 in 1952 is now valued at $42,000.

"The Constitution talks about the rights of life, liberty and property, not food stamps, illegal aliens and welfare," Jarvis preaches at meetings up and down the state. He claims that although his 1% property-tax limit would not pay for social improvements, it would more than cover all property-related services, such as waste collection and fire protection. Reactionary? Jarvis doesn't mind the charge. In a 28-year career as head of a series of enterprises, the Utah-born Jarvis ranged from making electric irons to demagnetizing the hulls of combat ships to protect them from mines. Today Jarvis works out of a one-room office in downtown Los Angeles and has no organized political support. Says he: "I've been called a right-wing conservative, a tax gadfly, a tax protester, and now just plain radical." He dismisses his critics as "popcorn balls." Says he: "We have to have someone between the pigs and the swill bucket."

Democratic Governor Jerry Brown warned that the Jarvis amendment would replace "one monster with another." In an effort to avert this, he sponsored a rival proposition that would restrict tax cuts to homeowners, not commercial landowners, and the state legislature last week passed a bill that would compensate for such tax cuts with a subsidy from the state treasury. All the same, Howard Jarvis' monster kept spitting fire.

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