Blast From THe Past:

"When I first came up here I was assigned to the Assembly Revenue and Tax Committee. We met over at (the University of California at) Berkeley, as a matter of fact, with the people in the economics department over there. We issued a report on tax reform that had any number of recommendations there. In fact, I think it's the best tax study I've seen before or since. If even half of those recommendations had been enacted, there would have been no Prop. 13. But legislation of that sort takes a two-thirds majority, and we could never get a two-thirds majority. Prop. 13 was primarily the fault of local government. They sat there fat and happy while the assessed valuation of residential property just kept skyrocketing, and they never once thought about lowering their tax rate. They just kept spending that extra money like there was no end to it. Of course, the average homeowner was seeing his property tax going up every year, and naturally became concerned. To somebody on a fixed income, taxes became almost confiscatory."

– Former State Senator Alfred E. Alquist, quoted in the California State Archives Oral History Interview, 1987.

Cal-TaxReports, March 8, 2010