Senator Gaines on NEW LEGISLATIVE EFFORT TO REPEAL ILLEGAL FIRE TAX

NEW LEGISLATIVE EFFORT TO REPEAL ILLEGAL FIRE TAX

Senator Gaines supports effort to repeal the fire tax.

I reported on this in a “Special Edition” of the Gaines Gazette, but thought it was worth repeating here in case you missed it…

I recently stood with fellow legislative Republicans and California’s rural residents to announce Assembly Bill 1506 (R–Jeffries), a measure to repeal the fire tax.

This $150 fire tax is illegal and unfair– plain and simple. Many rural property owners already pay local fire agencies for protection so it is clearly double-taxation and it is being dumped on the backs of rural Californians when the state has 11–percent unemployment and families are struggling just to make ends meet.

This $150 fire tax is illegal and unfair– plain and simple. Many rural property owners already pay local fire agencies for protection so it is clearly double-taxation and it is being dumped on the backs of rural Californians when the state has 11–percent unemployment and families are struggling just to make ends meet.

This tax will be imposed on the owners of more than 800,000 properties in the state. According to census and CalFire data, my largely rural district includes nearly 20 percent or approximately 160,000 of the properties whose owners will be subject to the fee.

Last summer, I launched an initiative to repeal the fire tax through a referendum. Working with the California Republican Party and other key supporters to fight for taxpayer rights, the effort gathered thousands and thousands of signatures, but ultimately fell short of the number needed to qualify the measure.

The fire tax attempts to sidestep Proposition 26, the initiative passed last June that prevents the Legislature from disguising taxes as “fees” and circumventing constitutional requirements for passing higher taxes.

I will stand with legislative Republicans and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to fight this in every way possible and encourage everyone who might get stuck paying this phony fee to get in the arena and fight it too. The answer to fire protection in California is not illegal taxes, but budgets that invest in core government services that protect every citizen in the state–rural, urban and suburban.

UPDATE: Assembly Bill 1506 passed out of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and has been re-referred to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations.
The hearing date is pending.