Sales Tax Hike

Five of the seven candidates seeking to represent a major portion of South Los Angeles on the City Council said Saturday they oppose the sales tax hike on the March 5 ballot, arguing it would disproportionately harm low-income residents. Appearing at their first candidate forum, the contenders seeking to replace Councilwoman Jan Perry staked out positions on public safety, economic development and Proposition A, which would bring the city's tax rate to 9.5%, among the highest in the state.

Hoping to garner voter and political support across Los Angeles County for a possible half-cent sales tax increase, transportation advocates gathered downtown Friday to unveil a proposal for a 2016 ballot measure that could fund a range of new transit projects, including a toll highway and rail line through the Sepulveda Pass. The tax proposal, announced by the advocacy group Move L.A., could raise an estimated $90 billion over 45 years and cost the average resident 25 cents to 30 cents a day, proponents said.

Alameda County shoppers have begun to pay an additional half-cent sales tax to fund public health services. In March, 70.8% of voters approved the tax hike to 8.75% to generate an estimated $90 million a year for the county Medical Center and private healthcare providers serving indigent and Medi-Cal patients.

One year after Los Angeles voters rejected a sales tax increase, the City Council is looking at trying again - this time by tying the money to the repair of the city's deteriorating network of streets. Two high-level City Hall policy advisors recommended Tuesday that lawmakers place a half-cent tax hike on the November ballot that would generate $4.5 billion over 15 years. The proceeds, they said, would pay to fix the most severely damaged roads and sidewalks. Passage of a tax could add momentum to Mayor Eric Garcetti's "back to basics" campaign, which focuses on upgrading basic services.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's eyes always have been bigger than the state's wallet when it comes to healthcare expansion. It's the main reason why he and the Legislature can't agree on a plan to insure every Californian. How do you pay for it? Especially when the state is looking at a projected budget deficit for next year that grows by the week. It's now up to $8.6 billion, largely because of the housing slump.

The state Legislature passed a 1-cent sales tax increase late Wednesday, ending a partial government shutdown and giving Tennessee its biggest tax hike in state history. It now goes to Gov. Don Sundquist, who said he would sign it. The stalemate over an income tax and how to resolve an $800-million deficit resulted in lawmakers failing to meet the deadline to pass a balanced budget by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

I just returned from One Gateway Plaza, where Metro Chief Executive Roger Snoble spent an hour talking with the news media about the effort to ask voters in November to raise the sales tax in Los Angeles by half a cent on the dollar to pay for more road and mass-transit projects.

Giving new momentum to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca's proposed half-cent sales tax for law enforcement, the Los Angeles Police Commission and Mayor James K. Hahn endorsed the initiative Tuesday. Baca has proposed raising the sales tax in the county to 8.75%, to generate $500 million annually. The Los Angeles Police Department would receive 34% of that money, the Sheriff's Department would get 33% and the rest would be split among small agencies.

The effort to put a half-cent sales tax increase on the Nov. 4 ballot in Los Angeles County has been like a movie action hero of late -- dodging bullets and hanging onto the edge of a cliff while people stomp on its fingers. But it keeps surviving. On Wednesday, the effort got a boost when a key state bill, AB 2321 by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), was unanimously approved by the state Senate Appropriations Committee.

In a major concession to Democratic legislators, Gov. Pete Wilson is expected to abandon his long-held opposition today to extending a temporary half-cent sales tax beyond its scheduled expiration June 30, The Times has learned. Wilson apparently will propose extending the sales tax through the end of 1993 and shifting most if not all of the revenue it raises from state use to local government, Capitol sources said Wednesday.

Los Angeles voters rejected a plan to hike the city's sales tax two months ago, but the battle over that measure lives on in a hotly contested City Council race. In multiple mailers sent to voters in the 13th council district, candidate John Choi and his backers in organized labor contend that Choi's rival, Mitch O'Farrell, supported the layoffs of 500 police officers. In one mailer, a downcast O'Farrell is pictured next to a crime scene and the words: "Votes to cut 500 cops. " Choi and his backers base the claim on O'Farrell's opposition to Proposition A, the March 5 ballot measure that was promoted by city leaders and others as a way to avoid reductions in police staffing.

In a city reeling from earthquakes, riots and a deep recession, Tim Leiweke emerged as a powerful force in Los Angeles. He made his mark in 1999, opening Staples Center in a moribund section of downtown. Then the L.A. Live complex, which changed the downtown skyline for the first time in a decade. Leiweke's departure Thursday as head of entertainment giant Anschutz Entertainment Group sent ripples through not only L.A.'s business community but also its civic and political circles.

Two days after Los Angeles voters defeated a sales tax hike that officials had said was vital to reducing the city's budget crisis, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said stronger revenues and an improving economy could cut this year's financial gap by more than half. Villaraigosa, who endorsed the plan to take the sales tax from 9% to 9.5%, said Thursday that he now expects a brighter financial outlook to take a looming deficit from $216 million to a much lower number, possibly less than $100 million, for the fiscal year that starts July 1. "The economy's getting better," he said.

Two veterans of Los Angeles politics, Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel, pushed ahead of six other candidates in initial election returns Tuesday and appeared to be well-positioned to advance to a May runoff to become the city's next mayor. Former council President Garcetti and his onetime council colleague Greuel broke to a significant lead over Councilwoman Jan Perry, entertainment lawyer Kevin James, former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez and three lesser-known candidates.

Five of the seven candidates seeking to represent a major portion of South Los Angeles on the City Council said Saturday they oppose the sales tax hike on the March 5 ballot, arguing it would disproportionately harm low-income residents. Appearing at their first candidate forum, the contenders seeking to replace Councilwoman Jan Perry staked out positions on public safety, economic development and Proposition A, which would bring the city's tax rate to 9.5%, among the highest in the state.

At a time when taxpayers are being asked to dig deeper to resolve Los Angeles' chronic budget crisis, city employees are receiving raises that will cost tens of millions of dollars within a few years, according to records obtained by The Times. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, an assortment of City Council members and Police Chief Charlie Beck are urging voters to approve a sales tax hike on the March 5 ballot that would boost the city rate to 9.5% , one of the highest in the state. At the same time, thousands of police officers, firefighters and civilian employees are in the midst of receiving a two-year series of raises that were backed by the mayor and council.

Illustrating how politically difficult it is to tackle traffic in Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors failed Tuesday to back a proposed half-cent sales tax increase that could raise up to $40 billion for roads and mass transit. The supervisors' surprising inability to muster a simple majority to place the proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot does not kill the tax effort, but makes it more complicated and perhaps more costly.

The 4th District Court of Appeals in San Bernardino affirmed a ruling that a half-cent sales tax hike in San Diego County was unconstitutional but left the possibility that some of the $380 million collected might still be used to build courts and jails. The court struck down a plan to refund the money through a sales tax cut and indicated instead that consumers should get refunds from the state Board of Equalization.

One of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's former high-level budget advisors says that city officials are using "fuzzy math" to overstate the size of the projected budget shortfall, even as they press voters for passage of a sales-tax hike in the March 5 election. Matt Szabo, who served until last summer as Villaraigosa's No. 2 policy aide, said a new financial report indicates the budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year is less than half the $216-million figure that has been used repeatedly by officials in recent months.

The top budget official at Los Angeles City Hall warned Thursday that a defeat of a sales tax hike on the March 5 ballot could lead to a wide array of budget cuts, including closures of city swimming pools, elimination of crossing guards, reductions in graffiti cleanup and 500 fewer police officers. In a 48-page report titled "City at a Crossroads," City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana described cuts to public safety as "unavoidable" if Proposition A is rejected. The city is facing a budget shortfall of nearly $220 million and Proposition A, if passed, would erase the vast majority of it. Santana repeated a warning from LAPD Chief Charlie Beck that staffing could be rolled back to roughly 9,500 officers if Proposition A is rejected.