In California, the 2020 elections will feature an epic battle to allow cities to reinstate property taxes

In 1978, anti-taxation extremists managed to get a California ballot measure, Proposition 13, passed, and with it, they managed to effectively end the ability of cities to provide services to their residents, by capping property tax at 1% of their cash values, and limiting property tax increases to the lower of the annual inflation or 2%.

Over the decades that followed, California's cities have been slowly starving, as their ability to fund everyday operations has been whittled away by inflation. Cities were left with stark choices: shutting down libraries and schools, limiting road maintenance and spending on public assistance; instituting regressive sales taxes that punished poor people and created a drag on their local economies; or Read the rest