Category: Media Coverage

Grocery bills will get more expensive, the cost of living will rise, ranchers will go out of business and our state’s economic recovery will move at a glacial pace.

Small businesses that rent space note that landlords would pass on the tax hike in lease agreements. Less affected will be tech titans that recently purchased properties or are planning to down-size office space as they allow more employees to work remotely. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is Prop. 15’s second biggest donor.

As pastor of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and president of the San Francisco NAACP Branch, I can tell you Prop. 15 is bad for the Bay Area and for all Californians.

But a tax on big businesses will in many cases just result in property owners passing along the increase to small businesses that lease or rent their space.

Proposition 15 comes with a hefty title: “The California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act of 2020,” that tries to hide what it really is: a huge tax hike.

A potential pitfall is noted in the definition of the small business exemption, and how it might be interpreted to effectively exempt no businesses, or very few.

Proposition 15. Commercial Property Tax (split roll). No. This measure is a huge property tax hike that would affect all of us — not just commercial property owners.

The other day, we read with open-mouths that the world’s fourth richest person, Mark Zuckerberg, made another contribution to the Yes on Proposition 15 campaign, bringing his total contributions to more than $10.5 million.

Prop. 15, the split-roll initiative on the November ballot, would impose one more economic burden, especially on small businesses.

For public employee unions, Proposition 15 on the Nov. 3 ballot is the preferred solution to California’s pension crisis: a steep tax hike on someone else.