California's property tax mess

A history lesson. According to some critics it all started in 1978 with Prop. 13, the landmark measure passed by voters that put a cap on property taxes - and reduced them by an average 57 percent. Due to the measure, "the state now relies heavily on income tax and, secondarily, on sales tax" for its revenue stream, and those are "highly cyclically sensitive," Noll said.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, agrees. "Until we tackle that intended or unintended consequence of Prop. 13," he said, "we won't fix the system." But Jon Coupal, who heads the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association - the nation's largest taxpayer association, named after the author of Prop. 13 - said Steinberg and his fellow Democrats are "still in a state of denial." "Not only did Prop. 13 not slow down the tax burden" on California landowners, he argued. "We're not a low-tax property tax state. We're in the middle." He said efforts to rework the measure - a so-called "split roll" that could recalculate and possibly increase commercial rates - would be exactly the wrong message to business and job-creators in the current fiscal crisis.

And all that property tax billing software will have to be reconfigured.