Official Arguments (click ▸ to expand)
✅ San Francisco Chronicle
"For more than 40 years, California has endured a contorted property tax system that punishes home buyers, chills housing construction and rewards businesses who skate by when assessments are set. Proposition 15 would ease the worst of these abuses while protecting homeowners and small businesses. It sets a path that should continue in overhauling an out-of-whack tax code. … Prop. 15 offers a solution to this unfairness. It calls for splitting the rolls, with residential property staying within the present protections while it sets more timely assessments for large business holdings. The heart of the original law that protects homeowners from sharp tax boosts will be saved. Businesses won’t get an undue break."
🚫 The San Diego Union-Tribune
"This is a horrible idea for reasons that go beyond the insanity of imposing the largest property tax hike in state history on employers during a deep recession — and beyond the fact that the cost of the tax hikes would be largely passed on to consumers during a deep recession. Approving Proposition 15 is not about preserving essential government services, as advocates assert. It is about preserving generous government pensions that threaten to bankrupt government agencies across the state."
✅ American Civil Liberties Union SoCal
"Vote to put schools and communities first.
Prop 15 will reclaim $12 billion every year for California’s K-12 schools, community colleges, and critical local services by closing corporate property tax loopholes — all while exempting homeowners and renters, small businesses, agricultural land, and commercial properties with a combined value of $3 million or less. The wealthiest and largest 10% of corporations would generate 92% of Prop 15’s reclaimed revenue. Vote YES on Prop 15 to advance racial justice and reverse decades of disinvestment so we can all have healthy and thriving communities."
✅ Los Angeles Times
"The other way that one could, and we argue should, view Proposition 15 is through a lens of hope. At long last there is a tangible fix in sight for one of California’s most intractable problems: a wildly unfair and lopsided property tax system that for four decades has starved local governments of the revenue they need to provide services and that has distorted the cost of buying a house and starting a business, to the detriment of young families and entrepreneurs. ... Indeed, much of what ails California — crumbling roads, under-resourced schools and inadequate social services — can be traced to Proposition 13 and related anti-tax measures. Proposition 13 also shifted the local tax burden, as cities, counties and school districts increasingly turned to other levies, such as sales, hotel and utility taxes, to make up the lost revenue."
🚫 The Mercury News
"California’s property tax system is a mess. Proposition 15, the “split roll” measure on the Nov. 3 ballot, attempts to fix it. Unfortunately, it only makes matters worse.
The solution is not to apply more Band-Aids and layer more complexity onto an already-broken system. And it certainly doesn’t make sense to increase taxes on businesses when many of them can least afford it.
Rather, we should create a new system that taxes all properties in direct proportion to their values. Proposition 15 fails to do that. Voters should reject it."
🚫 Orange County Register
"Proposition 15 does not raise residential property taxes, but if voters signal that Proposition 13 no longer is sacrosanct, it might not be long before tax-hike supporters come after those protections, too. The measure’s supporters dismiss that possibility, but the foundation of their argument is that Proposition 13 is fundamentally unfair in the way that it assesses a higher rate on newer owners than older ones. Consider yourself warned."
🚫 The Desert Sun
"We agree California taxation needs restructuring, and Proposition 13 most likely must be part of that rewrite — but when the time is right. A clearer vision on how 'split roll' might be phased in over a longer period of time to smooth out potential shocks would help, as would clearer language that ensures promised protections won’t magically vanish or be undone by needed additional legislative action. For now, the vote should be “no” on Proposition 15."
✅ California Democratic Party
"Balanced reform that reclaims $12 billion for our local schools and communities."
🚫 Republican Party
"Largest Property Tax Hike in State History
Prop 15 is an $11.5 billion-a-year property tax increase – the largest in state history. It will increase the cost of living and result in higher rents for small businesses when they’re already struggling to survive."