Opinion

Referring to the Public Notice you published in today's edition about the proposed tax/fee increases by county board, please find attached my memo written while serving on two chambers' (Gilroy and Hollister) Government Review Committees about the taxation power in the wake of the California Supreme Court's decision holding that a government imposed fee was not a tax, and thus taxpayers in California lacked constitutional protections from government fees which we had against government taxes. Well, as you know the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled just the opposite: a government imposed fee is a tax. But Californians were stuck with our Supreme Court's interpretation, and my predictions in my memo have come true.

In the movie “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray is a weather reporter who nightmarishly relives the same Groundhog Day, day after day. Like Bill after his first cookie-cutter Groundhog Day, you probably thought we had survived Congress’s New Year’s Day fiscal cliff-hanger hangover.

Aside from the fact that the joint power authority, VTA-wannabe COG, lacks legal capacity to inflict taxes/fees on the citizens of SBC, taxpayers would be better off if our local elected leaders abolished COG, privatized transit, and let Public Works Department do the streets and roads, like they used to do.

Like your family, we’ve sadly turned the calendar-page from the Blessed Holiday Season of Sharing. To the Cursed January Season of Scraping-up the Minimum Payments on Our Credit Card Bills. But can we still “share” with you a true story of life - or death?