Tripling of Car Fee Is Expected

The average car owner can expect his or her annual so-called "car tax" bill to go up by $136. There will be a 30-day reprieve as the state adjusts its computers for the new rate; then the higher bills will begin appearing in the mailboxes of California car, truck, trailer and motorcycle owners.

With state lawmakers deadlocked over passage of a state budget and 11 days left in the fiscal year, the move comes as state coffers are running dry, save for an $11-billion short-term loan secured this week to keep the government operating for a couple of months. Officials with the Davis administration and the office of the state controller interpret the 1998 law that lowered vehicle license fees as saying that when the state reaches the kind of dire financial straits it is in now, that "triggers" the tax to automatically go back up.

Republicans and taxpayer groups called it a legally dubious claim. They released an opinion from the nonpartisan legislative counsel's office Thursday that suggested that hiking the tax now would be illegal without a two-thirds vote of approval from the Legislature. They said they probably will file a court challenge.

"It is ludicrous to suggest some low-level Department of Finance functionary can trigger a $4-billion tax increase," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said he is prepared to rush to the secretary of state's office today to launch a ballot initiative to abolish the car tax altogether within an hour after the fee increase order is issued.

But opponents of the fee acknowledged that state law would make it extremely difficult to immediately stop the increase. The state Constitution prohibits courts from stopping the collection of any tax until the case against it has been fully litigated.

"They know they can collect an illegal tax for at least a few years before the courts can stop them, and that is why they are doing this," McClintock said of the governor and controller.

The ballot measure McClintock is advocating to abolish the tax altogether would not appear before voters until November 2004. For the measure to qualify, McClintock would need to collect 378,000 signatures of registered voters.