Jerry Brown says tax petitions will be submitted this week
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Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that he expects to hand in signatures to county election officials this week to qualify his tax measure for the November ballot.
Brown seeks voter approval for a quarter-cent increase in the state sales tax for four years and a 1-3 percentage point increase on incomes of more than $250,000 through 2018. He says the measure will generate as much as $9 billion a year.
Speaking to reporters after a memorial service for fallen Highway Patrol officers in Sacramento, Brown also indicated that he was inclined to support a proposed change in the term-limits law on the June ballot but was skeptical about a measure aimed at changing the way the state makes its budgets.
Brown sounded unenthusiastic about a constitutional amendment sponsored by California Forward that would create a two-year budget process, give the governor more authority to make unilateral budget decisions and make other changes to the state’s budget process.
‘If you have a two year budget, then if things get sour in the middle, then you can sink very low before you get corrective action,’ Brown said. ‘More constitutional complexity has not generally proved helpful in the past.’
Brown did not specifically address questions about Proposition 28, the June ballot initiative that would allow lawmakers to serve 12 years in one legislative house instead of six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate. But he did say that the limits on lawmakers’ time in office was making it more difficult to govern.
‘The current term limit thing is not helping,’ he said.
Brown refused to say where he spent last weekend, saying only he was taking some ‘R & R.’ His office announced that he had left the state but would not discuss his whereabouts. Brown said people ‘have a legitimate interest’ in knowing where he was but that he was entitled to some ‘moments of privacy.’
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-- Anthony York in West Sacramento