Santa Cruz is revolting against authoritarianism — and I'm joining the rebellion

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

I want to move Santa Cruz to join the rebellion. Wanna come along?
The city of Santa Cruz has established a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sodas — in defiance of a 2018 state law that prohibits local governments from imposing such levies.
This Santa Cruz Rebellion might seem small. But in a dark moment of deepening authoritarianism, California — heck, the whole damn world — needs a new age of local defiance in which we frontally attack the extortionists who run American society these days.
In Washington, President Donald Trump, the Sith Lord of blackmail, is nullifying laws and the Constitution in a relentless ransoming of countries and institutions unless they support his policies and fatten his wallet. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is threatening to strip cities of housing and homeless funds unless they adopt the local homelessness policies he wants..
But in Santa Cruz, on matters of soda, the people are clapping back and saying: We won't compromise on local democracy.
This story begins back in 2018. After some California cities, including Santa Cruz, pioneered soda taxes to fight obesity, the beverage industry qualified a ballot initiative that was pure extortion. It said that if cities didn't drop their soda taxes, they would lose the power to raise other kinds of sales taxes.
Facing that dire prospect, state leaders wrote a new law barring local taxes on groceries, including soft drinks, until 2031. One awful provision required the state to withhold local sales tax revenue from any city with its own soda tax — even if a court found that such a tax ' is a valid exercise of a city's authority.'
'This industry is aiming a nuclear weapon at government in California and saying, 'If you don't do what we want, we are going to pull the trigger and you are not going to be able to fund basic government services,'' state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, said in 2018.
At first, Santa Cruz dropped its soda tax. But in 2023, a state appellate court threw out that awful provision withholding funds from cities with soda taxes. The court said that such a penalty could not be applied to cities with their own democratic local charters, or constitutions.
Santa Cruz has a charter. So, under the court's decision, the city wouldn't lose funding if it imposed soda taxes. Last November, the city persuaded voters to approve a soda tax, which went into effect this spring. The beverage industry, calling the action illegal, could sue. But Santa Cruz is not backing down.
'It's about democracy and standing up to special interests,' said Santa Cruz City Council Member and Vice Mayor Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson about the law. 'It's about having the independence to generate revenue for our community.'
'The independence to generate revenue' might seem a dull phrase. But if Santa Cruz and other California cities were to protect their democratic right to collect taxes, it would be revolutionary.
Since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which took away local governments' control over their property taxes, fiscal power in California has been increasingly centralized in state government. Most local governments, limited in their ability to raise their own revenues, have become beggars and lobbyists who must travel to Sacramento to ask for money.
Santa Cruz's rebellion suggests that now might be the time for localities to stop begging and instead seize back power over taxation, whether state law allows it or not. Trump's misconduct also makes this case. With the man in the White House lawlessly withholding funding to California cities and counties, why should localities bow to laws that limit their ability to boost funding?
After all, Trump's dismantling of the federal government means that more problems are going to fall on local governments. They need to find money where they can.
Local defiance isn't always good, especially when it involves culture war issues. But when it comes to the fundamental capacities of local governments, our communities should assert themselves and stand up for democracy, now under attack worldwide.
Localities should collaborate with each other to roll back anti-democratic structures that limit their sovereignty. This should include demanding new, modern constitutions for our state and our nation. New government systems should give local governments broad authority to decide citizenship, set taxation and make policy in any area that affects local people. That's already how government works in two rich and peaceful countries, Switzerland and Canada.
Let's start this rebellion right away. See you in Santa Cruz.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square, and is founder-editor-columnist at Democracy Local, a planetary publication.