pay its bills for this year much less pay its legacy costs and costs of needed new prisons. So you can't trade one tax increase at the cost of reducing another tax. You have to live with the higher taxes until you can pay for the things you have already bought.

      So you and St. Croix need to stop with the "we are the highest taxed state in the nation" theme song. I get it - but you still can't come close to paying your bills so you have to keep taxes high while you cut spending and grow the economy to have any chance of avoiding fiscal disaster.


As to "the vast majority of houses in CA transfer ownership every year"
a. can you give a link that supports that statement? and
b. I bet if you include commercial properties your number would go way down.

      I think you missed my post last month where I pointed out that the Trader Joes building in Menlo Park is still being taxed at the 1979 assessment plus - as St. Croix pointed out - with the increases for inflation permitted by Prop 13. Commercial property owners in California run a lot of scams to keep transfers that would trigger a reassessment from showing on the land records.