California’s Proposition 13 had a big impact on American government and public policy because it put to vote the reduction of property taxes. This Proposition had a great impact as it swept the county and made headlines in newspapers around the world. People used this initiative process to gain a greater control over their lives. The California taxpayers stood up and said no more to excessive taxes because they were tired of out of control property taxes and losing their homes because they could not pay property taxes while the government did nothing to help them. This in turn hurt the schools, cities, counties and special districts. From this proposition, we have a few others like proposition 218 and proposition 37.There are two sides to every Proposition because there is some good and some bad from voting or not voting this in to effect. Some Californians thought Proposition 13 was a very good idea because it restricted property taxes to the maximum rate of 1 %, which made some people happy because they were in fear of losing their house because they could not pay the taxes. This in effect took away from the schools that were in desperate need of funds for programs like music, art and other programs. I talked with a teacher of mine at Chapman University by the name of Les Clements, PhD, to see how he felt about Proposition 13 and he had a lot to say. He felt that this was an idea whose time had come. He also felt that it was totally outrageous to cut programs like music, art and everything except the essentials. “What got me was that it so favored the landlords and the big business owners they got away with paying only one percent so it saved them a bunch while the homeowners saved only a few dollars. All this happened because the people got fed up with the government misusing their tax dollars. I would have rather paid a measly 200.00 to the government than to have Proposition 13. This is a slap in the fac...
