Background
Proposition 13 drew its impetus from 1971 and 1976 California Supreme Court rulings in Serrano v. Priest,Serrano that a property-tax based finance system for public schools was unconstitutional. The California Constitution required the legislature to provide a free public school system for each district, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution (which includes the Equal Protection Clause) required that all states provide to all citizens equal protection of the law. The court ruled that the amount of funding going to different districts was disproportionately favoring the wealthy. Previously, local property taxes went directly to the local school system, which minimized state government's involvement in the distribution of revenue. This system also allowed a wealthier district to fund its schools with a lesser tax rate than the rate a less affluent district would have to set to yield the same funding per pupil. The Court ruled that the state had to make the distribution of revenue more equitable. The state legislature responded by capping the rate of local revenue that a school district could receive and distributing excess amounts among the poorer districts. As a result property owners in affluent districts perceived that the benefits of the taxes they paid were no longer enjoyed exclusively by the local schools.
Moreover, the state's increasing population resulted in increased demand for housing, resulting in greater residential property values and, consequently, greater taxes for residences. Many older Californians with fixed incomes had difficulty paying increasing property taxes. Due to severe inflation during the 1970s as a result of the 1973–75 recession, reassessments of residential property increased property taxes so much that some retired people could no longer afford to remain in homes they had purchased long before. Government spending had also increased dramatically during the years prior to 1978. Between 1973 and 1977, California state and local government expenditures per $1000 of personal income were 8.2 percent higher than the national norm. From 1949 to 1979, public sector employment in California outstripped employment growth in the private sector. By 1978, 14.7 percent of California's civilian work force was state and local government employees, almost double the proportion of the early 1950s.
During the early 1960s, there were several scandals in California involving county assessors.
Read more about this topic: California Proposition 13 (1978)
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