upholding, against a single-subject challenge, a proposition generating tobacco tax revenue and distributing it, inter alia, to general healthcare for indigents and improvement of state parks and wildlife habitat
How later courts described this case
- upholding, against a single-subject challenge, a proposition generating tobacco tax revenue and distributing it, inter alia, to general healthcare for indigents and improvement of state parks and wildlife habitat
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*256 MOSK,J.
—I concur in Justice Panelli’s well reasoned opinion.
However, I am concerned about a worst case scenario that is conceivable if the subject of taxes can be considered by initiative. For if a tax increase is permissible through the initiative process, a tax decrease would also be upheld.
It is not within the realm of fantasy that an initiative proposal to repeal state income, sales and related taxes could, with a seductive public relations campaign, obtain sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot and possibly prevail in an election. The adoption of such a measure would render state government virtually impotent.
Indeed, initiative attempts were undertaken to repeal the personal income tax in 1936 and 1942 and to reduce the sales tax in 1958. (Walker & Smith, California Corporation and Personal Income Taxes (1960) 12 Hastings L.J. 1 , 2-3.) All three measures failed, but, of course, the same result is not necessarily assured in the future.
My purpose is not to sound a strident alarm, but merely to express a suggestion that the Legislature consider the issue and perhaps propose a constitutional amendment that would appropriately deal with the manner in which taxes may be created or eliminated, increased or decreased.