This conference on the thirtieth anniversary of the passage of California's Proposition 13 examines the political, economic, and fiscal legacy of this revolutionary amendment to the state constitution. Proposition 13 imposed a 1% cap on the local property tax rate for Californians and launched a national tax revolt movement. The one-day conference will consist of three panels, with a mix of academic, policy experts, and journalists, that will assess the varied fiscal, economic, social, and political ramifications of this watershed tax movement. The conference is free, open to the public, and no advance registration is required.Program Schedule
Jack Citrin, Director, Institute of Governmental Studies and Heller Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Also: New release of survey data from the Field Poll on voter attitudes on taxing and spending in California
David Gamage, Assistant Professor of Law, UC Berkeley, "Coping through California's Budget Crises in Light of Proposition 13"
Isaac Martin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC San Diego, "Proposition 13 Fever: How Tax Limitations Spread"
Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee, "Thirty Years of Sausage from the Rube Goldberg Machine"
"30 Years After the Revolution: What Howard Jarvis Might Say?"
Joel Fox, Past President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
William Fischel, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, "Why Has the Serrano-Prop. 13 Connection Become the Conventional Wisdom?"
Terri Sexton, Professor of Economics, California State University Sacramento, "Proposition 13 and Residential Mobility"
Steven Sheffrin, Professor of Economics, UC Davis, "Re-Assessing the Fairness of Market Value Taxation and Proposition 13"
Jean Ross, Executive Director, California Budget Project, "Proposition 13 Thirty Years Later: What Has It Meant for Governance and Public Services?"
Jon Sonstelie, Professor of Economics, UC Santa Barbara, "Proposition 13 and California's Public Schools"
Kirk Stark, Professor of Law, UCLA, "Proposition 13 as Fiscal Federalism Reform"
IGS Library Reading Room
109 Moses Hall
Participants
Jack Citrin, Heller Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley. Professor Citrin is a scholar of political behavior and comparative politics whose publications include Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982, 1985), co-authored with David Sears; and California and the American Tax Revolt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Professor Citrin has also authored various articles on initiative politics in California. Tax Revolt is the authoritative text on the Proposition 13 vote, and remains a keystone of the literature on public opinion concerning taxing and spending.
Mark DiCamillo, Senior Vice President of Field Research Corporation and Director of The Field Poll. The Field Poll is an independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored survey of California public opinion. As a senior member of Field Research's professional staff, Mr. DiCamillo directs a wide range of market and opinion research projects for foundation, media, government and institutional clients. As Director of The Field Poll, Mr. DiCamillo measures California voter preferences in all major statewide candidate elections and ballot proposition contests in California. He is the author or co-author (with Mervin Field) of over eight hundred separate reports on public opinion, assessing political, economic and social trends in California and state politics. Mr. DiCamillo is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University and holds an MBA from Cornell University's Johnson School of Business.
John Decker, Executive Director, California Debt & Investment Advisory Commission (chaired by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer). The commission conducts research and seminars of particular interest to local governments. Most recently, it published an analysis of local debt entitled, An Overview of Local General Obligation Debt (1985-2005). Decker has been a fellow at the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, and taught public budgeting at the Goldman School of Public Policy. From 1991 through 2003, he advised Republican and Democratic legislative leadership on fiscal issues, including local finance.
David Doerr, Chief Tax Consultant, California Taxpayers Association. David Doerr served 24 years as Chief Consultant for the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee and is widely recognized as the foremost expert on California's Revenue and Taxation Code. His institutional knowledge of California's tax structure is unparalleled. Mr. Doerr is the founding editor of Cal-Taxletter, and the author of California's Tax Machine: A History of Taxing and Spending in the Golden State (2000).
William Fischel, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College. Professor Fischel is an expert on the economics of home ownership and the economics of education. He has written extensively on voting behavior in relation to Proposition 13, most recently in The Homevoter Hypothesis (Harvard University Press, 2001) and "Did John Serrano Vote for Proposition 13?," UCLA Law Review 51:4 (April 2004, 887-932). He is the author of one of the most influential interpretations of the origins of Proposition 13 — the so-called Fischel hypothesis — that court-mandated school finance equalization undermined middle-class support for public schools and thereby caused Proposition 13. Professor Fischel has also been a visiting professor at UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara.
Joel Fox, Joel Fox Consulting; president, Small Business Action Committee. Mr. Fox is principal at Joel Fox Consulting, a public affairs/political consulting firm located in Granada Hills. Mr. Fox also currently serves as president of the Small Business Action Committee, founded in 2003 to battle for small business on important political issues. In May 2008, Fox launched Fox and Hounds Daily, a website that discusses the mix of business and politics in California, and he serves as its Editor-in-Chief. Fox served for 19 years as the President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association from 1986 to 1998. Mr. Fox is an adjunct professor at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy.
John Fund, reporter, Wall Street Journal. Mr. Fund writes the weekly "On the Trail" column for OpinionJournal.com. He is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter, 2004). Mr. Fund joined the Journal in April 1984 as deputy editorial features editor. He became an editorial page writer specializing in politics and government in October 1986 and was a member of the Journal's editorial board from 1995 through 2001. Mr. Fund worked as a research analyst for the California State Legislature before beginning his journalism career in 1982 as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. In 1993, he received the Warren Brookes Award for journalistic excellence from the American Legislative Exchange.
David Gamage, Assistant Professor of Law, Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley. Professor Gamage is currently finishing a two-part project analyzing how state tax systems should respond to fiscal volatility and the resulting budget crises. Previously, he taught at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law as an Emerging Scholars Program Assistant Professor. Gamage has a J.D. from Yale, where he served as a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal and as a Law and Economics Fellow. Additionally, he has an M.A. in Economic and Organizational Sociology from Stanford, as well as a B.A. in Economics from Stanford.
John Kirlin, Director, Delta Vision. Dr. Kirlin has over three decades experience analyzing policies, administration and financing directed at complex public problems, especially in California. His areas of policy expertise include state-local fiscal relationships, land use, and environmental and species protection policies. He is the founding editor of California Policy Choices, and the author of several studies of Proposition 13 impacts on land use and on the public sector. He is a former Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Southern California and at Indiana University, Purdue.
Isaac Martin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC San Diego, author of The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics (Stanford University Press, 2008), an award-winning book that traces the political impact of the property tax revolt in California and beyond.
Jean Ross, Executive Director, California Budget Project. The California Budget Project is an independent Sacramento-based think tank that engages in independent fiscal and policy analysis and public education with the goal of improving public policies affecting the economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians.
Peter Schrag, columnist and editor, Sacramento Bee. Peter Schrag is the author of several books on California politics, including Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future (2nd ed., University of California Press, 2004), a major study of Proposition 13 and its impact on education, government, and politics in California.
Terri Sexton, Professor of Economics, California State University at Sacramento. Professor Sexton is the co-author, with Arthur O'Sullivan and Steven Sheffrin, of Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13 (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Proposition 13 in Recession and Recovery (Public Policy Institute of California, 1998). She has also written numerous articles on Proposition 13 and its impact on the local public sector.
Steven Sheffrin, Professor of Economics and Dean of the Division of Social Sciences, UC Davis. Sheffrin has been a visiting professor at Nuffield College (Oxford), the London School of Economics, and Princeton University. He has also served as a financial economist with the Office of Tax Analysis and the US Department of the Treasury. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Tax Association. Sheffrin also directs the Center for State and Local Taxation. His books include Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13 (Cambridge University Press, 1995, co-authored with Arthur O'Sullivan and Terri Sexton) and Proposition 13 in Recession and Recovery (Public Policy Institute of California, 1998, with Terri Sexton).
Jon Sonstelie, Professor of Economics, UC Santa Barbara, and Adjunct Fellow, Public Policy Institute of California. Jon Sonstelie is the foremost expert on school finance in California. He has written dozens of papers and policy reports on property taxation, school finance, and public budgeting in the state.
Kirk Stark, Professor of Law, UC Los Angeles. Professor Stark has written extensively on "fiscal federalism" — the allocation of fiscal responsibilities among federal, state and local governments. He is the co-author with Jonathan Zasloff of "Tiebout & Tax Revolts: Did Serrano Really Cause Proposition 13?", 50 UCLA Law Review 801-58 (2003). He has regularly served as faculty coordinator the UCLA Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Tax Association, the professional organization whose meetings and journal have provided the major outlet for research on the effects of Proposition 13 and similar tax limitation measures.
Other Links of Interest
Proposition 13 Hot Topic reference resource (Institute of Governmental Studies Library)
Contact Information
For more information about this event, please contact Marc Levin, IGS Assistant Director, at: marcl@berkeley.edu.
Page last updated 9 June 2008