Sacramento, CA — Tuesday Senate and Assembly Republicans joined the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in filing a lawsuit to invalidate the $10.8 billion in higher taxes that was passed by Democrats last month with a simple majority vote.
The Republicans maintain that plan violates Prop. 13 and the State Constitution. The Democrats attempted to circumvent the two-thirds vote requirement by using a complicated maneuver to try and pass billions of dollars in new taxes by labeling them “fees” instead of taxes.
Vice Chairman of the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee Senator Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga commented, “These are more of the same kind of gimmicks that we´ve done in the last five years since I´ve been here. It´s actually put us in an even worse position than better. We´re got to face the hard fact reality that we have to change the way we do business. We need to restore fiscal responsibility to the budget process and doing an end run around the constitution is not the way to do it.”
Written by Bill Johnson
This post was last modified on 01/31/2009 1:29 pm