HOW TO PASS A PARCEL TAX

A Parcel Tax is essentially a “voluntary tax;” it is not imposed by Royalty or Bureaucrats on High. A Parcel Tax is imposed by “We the People” that is to say: the very people who will wear the yoke. A Parcel Tax requires a super-majority i.e. two thirds of the people voting must approve it. Given these two conditions, the likelihood of passage would seem remote to impossible. Given the abysmal odds, a Machiavellian approach might be needed. To gain voter approval, the following deception could be implemented. Tell voters that they will only pay $120 annually on their residential property. Also tell voters that the same Tax Measure will gouge the business class. In fact, tell voters that businesses might be forced to drop as much as $9500 annually into the coffers, while the well-intended proletariat is only dropping in $120 annually. As an inducement, many publicly funded organizations, like KQED or NPR, have matching events where the private contributor donates $100 and a deep-pocketed, philanthropic business entity matches it with another $100. If the Parcel Tax is for the benefit of Public Education, maybe one member of the School Board will have legal experience—say for example Trish Spencer—and resist the measure as improperly formatted. So what? With sufficient goading, the more ovine Board Members will approve the Parcel Tax Proposal, as written, with the burdensome tax bite for businesses included. To the voting public, this plan appears even better than KQED’s mere matching contributions schema; given that there nearly 800 businesses in Alameda, some forced to participate possibly to the tune of $9500. The public— sensing the convenience of this seemingly legal extortion racket—will approve the measure believing they are getting much more than matching contributions from local businesses. Two possible outcomes emerge. Case One: Business does not successfully contest, it pays a disproportionate amount and the tyranny of the majority prevails; successfully exploiting the minority business community. Case Two: The business community, gets a favorable verdict from the California Supreme Court, and is not unduly punished for providing the bedrock on which a solvent, liberal society rests; meanwhile the School District still collects its $120 per residential parcel; which might have been its unpublished target amount in the first place. Even after the $7.4 million received from the invalid portion of Measure H is redistributed, and the legal fees of $0.6 million have been paid, the District still has the remaining revenues collected. The good news is that an outsider, i.e. the State Supreme Court, looks like the villain, we feel like victims, the District gets lavished with additional revenue and nobody is the wiser. Sounds like a farfetched plan, but would it work? Jeffrey R Smith