The San Francisco Court of Appeal issued the third landmark local government finance decision in two days today in City and County of San Francisco v. All Persons Interested in the Matter of Proposition C. [A blog post on one appears here and we’ll have one up on the other shortly.] The case
The San Francisco Court of Appeal upheld a victory for the Bay Area Toll Authority (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission “wearing another hat”) today in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. Bay Area Toll Authority (HJTA v. BATA). The case is a challenge to 2018’s Regional Measure 3, authorizing a $3 hike in tolls on
Cities around America are looking at yawning budget deficits due to the sudden economic slowdown arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Politico, a news source covering the federal government, has this piece suggesting many California cities are looking to tax cannabis commerce to close the gap.
The deadline to place measures on the November
Last week, The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved moving forward with study of a “vacancy tax” it might add to the November 2020 ballot. The Los Angeles vacancy tax would likely be modeled after Oakland’s Measure W — which voters approved in 2018 by a 70%–30% margin, meeting Proposition 218’s two-thirds threshold for special
The “validation statutes,” Code of Civil Procedure sections 860 to 870.5, are a powerful tool public agencies (and the plaintiffs that sue them) might overlook when defending challenges to legislative acts. They provide a short statute of limitations — 60 days — and allow agencies to sue for a court ruling validating an action,
The Los Angeles Court of Appeal issued a recent ruling clarifying a long-established — but often contested — rule of tax litigation procedure: to have standing (the right to raise a claim in court) to challenge a government revenue measure, you must be among the people who are legally obliged to pay it, not merely
AB 2570 (Stone, D-Sta. Cruz) would amend the False Claims Act (FCA) to allow private litigants to enforce fraudulent underpayment of State personal and corporate income taxes and, of interest to local government, sales and use taxes and transactions and use taxes (i.e., local-option sales taxes), too. The FCA allows a private litigant to identify
