Efforts to reform Prop 13.

SF Gate reports that the legislature is moving toward a consensus on closing a loophole in Prop 13 that allows commercial property owners to avoid higher property taxes.

The law says that if a single purchaser buys more than 50 percent of a property, it’s a change of ownership. Some commercial property buyers structure transactions to list multiple individuals or entities and avoid the 50 percent ownership rule and higher taxes.

“There was an institutional feeling that this is untouchable and a feeling any change to Prop. 13 has to go to the ballot,” Ammiano said. “This loophole was done by the Legislature. We broke, it and we can fix it.”

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, whose namesake was the architect of Prop. 13, removed opposition to Ammiano’s bill, giving the proposal a clear shot at earning a two-thirds majority vote to pass the Legislature. READ MORE.

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

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