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In reverse order of probability: (5) oil severance tax, (4) Sales tax on services, (3) split property tax rolls (separate rates for homeowners than businesses), (2) cigarette tax, (1) Extension of Prop30.

It’s okay, the 1 percent only pays 41 percent of California’s income taxes. And half the state pays no income tax at all. No one will even notice they’re gone. Prop. 30, approved by voters in November 2012, raised state income taxes retroactively to Jan. 1, 2012, on singles making more than $250,000 and married couples making $500,000. It raised rates by one, two or three percentage points through 2018, bringing the top rate on incomes above $1 million to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Bryan Goldberg, who founded the Bleacher Report sports website and sold it to...

California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget. Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis. Passage of Proposition 30 set off euphoria and...

California Governor Jerry Brown hailed his signature tax-hike to fund education—known as Proposition 30—as a towering achievement that will ensure educational excellence in higher education and spare those trapped in poor and failing K-12 California public schools from budget cuts. But a new study by five UC Berkeley doctoral students titled “Swapping Our Future: How Taxpayers And Students Are Funding Risky UC Borrowing and Wall Street Profits” says that millions of dollars of the freshly raised revenues won’t go to California’s school children.

Millions of dollars in new tax revenue earmarked for the University of California system as part of the state’s recently passed Proposition 30 will instead be routed to major financial firms, because of bad bets made by a Wall Street-influenced UC Board of Regents. Proposition 30 was passed last week by California voters in part to stem the tide of perpetual tuition hikes and the rapid decline of public higher education in the state. But because of the Regents’ predilection for gambling with student tuition money, much of that new tax revenue will be routed away from tuition relief and...

In approving a ballot measure sought by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise taxes for several years, Californians took a step toward improving the state's fiscal situation and avoiding education cuts. According to the California Secretary of State's website, 53.9% of voters backed the measure, Proposition 30, while 46.1% voted against it, with all votes counted except for provisional and some mailed-in ballots.

California will avoid deep spending cuts to public schools and universities, and be able to to pull out of the fiscal swamp without slashing other services further, after voters handed Gov. Jerry Brown's signature tax measure a decisive victory Tuesday. Proposition 30 had a clear lead Wednesday morning, with 95 percent of precincts around the state counted. Voters handily rejected a rival measure, Proposition 38. Brown's tax measure has been his central focus since his election two years ago and will have major implications for the state's finances. If it had been defeated, nearly $6 billion in automatic spending cuts,...

Americans for Job Security, a conservative, pro-business national group, is the true source of the $11 million last-minute infusion of campaign cash into a California political committee that supports an antiunion ballot measure and opposes Gov. Jerry Brown's tax proposition, state campaign finance regulators announced early Monday. But the hard-fought disclosure, which comes just one day before the election, creates more questions than it answers, because under federal law, Americans for Job Security does not have to reveal its donors.

LOS ANGELES - The choir sang, morning announcements were made and Mildred Rodgers watched as Gov. Jerry Brown took the pulpit at West Angeles Church of God in Christ. She has grown accustomed to politicians visiting in elections years. "Every voting season," Rodgers said. "It's really funny when we get two running for the same (office)." This morning there was only Brown, campaigning in four traditionally black churches here for his ballot initiative to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The churches Brown visited in Los Angeles' poorer neighborhoods have hosted Brown before, and...

Gov. Jerry Brown has framed it as a simple choice for voters: Pass Proposition 30 or schools will suffer early shutdowns and college students will pay higher tuition. But education leaders privately have discussed fallback efforts to spare schools from some of the worst consequences, especially after the initiative fell below 50 percent in recent polls. School groups are expected to lobby hard to reverse or ease budget reductions headed their way if voters reject Proposition 30. They have two main paths: the Capitol or the courts. "The education community will use every tool at its disposal to fight the...

FIELD POLL: Tax measure support drops below 50 percent SACRAMENTO – A new Field Poll shows that support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax-increase ballot measure has dipped below 50 percent for the first time this year, with the initiative’s fate hinging on supporters’ ability to win over undecided voters. Today’s Field Poll shows that 48 percent of voters support Prop. 30 and 38 percent oppose it. Fourteen percent of voters are undecided. In mid-September, 51 percent of voters backed Prop. 30 and 36 percent opposed it, with 13 percent undecided. The survey found a sharp decline in support for Prop....

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom two weeks ago criticized Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative approach, suggesting to KGO Radio in San Francisco that the governor was slow to hit the campaign trail and that he was telling college students "something that's not true." Newsom spoke to KGO on Oct. 17, a day after Brown appeared at UCLA in the first of several appearances at state colleges and universities. But the interview got little statewide notice until Bee columnist Dan Morain referenced Newsom's caustic words for Brown in today's Bee. Though both Democrats who support Proposition 30, Newsom and Brown have endured...

As the political odds turn against Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure, political insiders are turning their attention, however reluctantly, to the fallout should, indeed, voters reject the sales and income tax hike on Tuesday. The measure would deliver $6 billion a year in new revenues and should it fail, Brown and the Legislature have already passed $6 billion in so-called "trigger cuts" that would be imposed, overwhelmingly on K-12 schools. So that would seem to be that. But it's not. As Brown campaigns – with increasing desperation – for the measure, he insists that were it to fail,...

In TV commercials and campaign stops, Gov. Jerry Brown has told Californians that voting against his tax-hike measure, Proposition 30, will mean devastating cuts for public schools. Yet the governor's finance team concedes that state spending will go up next year regardless of your vote.So what's a voter to think? Does the state of California really need more of your money?This newspaper's review of state budget figures found: The estimated $6 billion in extra revenue annually from Proposition 30 quickly would put the state on track to return to peak spending levels before the Great Recession. The inflation-adjusted tax burden...

Superintendents Paint Dire Picture If California's Prop. 30 Fails As Gov. Jerry Brown's revenue-raising proposition loses support, school superintendents say class sizes could grow, cherished programs could die and jobs will be lost. What we face is the biggest challenge in public education since the state of California was founded," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times October 26 As children peered at them through an elementary school fence in Cerritos on Friday, about a dozen school superintendents explained the consequences they will face if California voters fail to approve Proposition 30. In...

Do the wealthiest Americans have a "moral" obligation to pay higher taxes? California Governor Jerry Brown thinks so. Under Prop 30, the two-time Democratic Governor is calling for a 3% tax hike on the state's richest 1% to help pay for the cash-strapped state's education system. "It takes a refined theory to say to billionaires that it's easier to take three weeks of school away from kids in Los Angeles than it is to take 3% away from people who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year," said Brown in an interview with The Financial Times. Prop 30 calls...

Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative that would raise taxes to help pay for schools and local public safety programs continues to lose ground among likely voters, slipping below the all-important majority approval mark for the first time in a new poll. The survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released Wednesday night found that support for Brown’s Proposition 30 stands at 48 percent, posing a challenge for the governor to win over a majority of voters with less than two weeks before they go to the polls Nov. 6. Forty-four percent are opposed.

Gov. Jerry Brown continues stumping today for his tax initiative, Proposition 30, as a new Public Policy Institute of California poll finds that support for it among likely voters has dropped below 50 percent. The outlook for Molly Munger's rival measure, Proposition 38, is even less bright, as David Siders reported last night.

As he began his second governorship last year, Jerry Brown warned that California faced a potential "war of all against all" if the state budget was not fairly balanced, or as the former Catholic seminarian put it in Latin, "bellum omnium contra omnes." Brown now has the war he didn't want as Proposition 30, the tax increase ballot measure upon which he has staked his governorship, and perhaps his place in political history, is hammered from the left and the right by two very wealthy siblings, Charles and Molly Munger. Republican Charles, a Stanford University physicist, is giving millions to...

Prop 30: Your Wallet or Your Kids. NO Either approve $36 billion in higher sales and income taxes or else Gov. Brown threatens to shoot the schools. Don't worry, the income taxes are only on the "very wealthy," but it turns out the "very wealthy" include many small businesses filing under sub-chapter S, meaning lower wages, higher prices and fewer jobs. California already has one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country and yet has just approved a budget to spend $8 billion dollars more than it's taking in. Moral of the story: it's the spending stupid. Prop...