Santa Clara County Local Transportation Authority v. Guardino

I respectfully dissent.

The majority in this case, and in another recent case (Rossi v. Brown (1995) 9 Cal.4th 688 [38 Cal.Rptr.2d 363, 889 P.2d 557]), has seriously undermined the ability of local government to finance sorely needed projects and improvements through local tax measures. In the past, the constitutional prohibition against using the referendum process to annul “tax levies” (Cal. Const., art. II, § 9, subd. (a)) assured that a proposed new tax could not be *262nullified by submitting the tax measure to the voters before it could take effect. In Rossi, however, this court allowed the…