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By Jon Coupal – February 26, 2026
To all our valued members, supporters, volunteers and everyone who signed the petition,
We did it! Today we are delivering more than 1.3 million signatures to the 58 county offices, well above the 874,641 needed to qualify the Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Proposition 13 for the ballot.
Thank you for your support and your efforts to make this happen! It’s thanks to you and our coalition partners in the business community that we will be able to close the court-created loopholes that have made it easier to raise taxes in California. Our initiative, when approved by the voters, will restore the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass local special taxes. And it will finally close the loophole that has allowed excessive real estate transfer taxes (sales taxes on real estate) to be enacted in city after city.
Today we are taking a giant step toward restoring Proposition 13 after years of seeing the courts erase its strong protections. Proposition 13 required the approval of two-thirds of voters to pass local special taxes and, equally important, it banned real estate transfer taxes higher than 0.11%. With voter approval of our initiative, all transfer taxes statewide that are higher than 0.11% will be repealed automatically in two years.
The next step is the counting and verification of signatures by the 58 counties. A random sample will be checked for validity, and we’re optimistic that at this early stage we will meet the threshold that qualifies our initiative for the November ballot, without having to wait for a full check of all signatures.
Now the rest of the work begins: the campaign to educate all California voters about the importance of restoring our constitutional taxpayer protections.
As you can imagine, our campaign to get the Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Proposition 13 on the ballot was an all-out effort that used up a lot of our resources, and now we must look ahead to a costly campaign to pass it.
We have a very limited amount of time to raise the money we need for a successful campaign this fall.
That’s why we hope you will consider donating right now to help us buy yard signs, radio ads, billboards, social media advertising and everything needed to reach the voters with our message to protect local taxpayers and Save Proposition 13.
A donation of $25 pays for 5 yard signs. A donation of $100 buys a radio ad. Any amount that you can give right now helps us plan the campaign and make it successful.
As excited as we are to have reached today’s important milestone, there’s no time to lose.
Please consider making a donation to the HJTA campaign committee, Protect Proposition 13, today if possible.
Thank you!
Gratefully,
Jon Coupal
President of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
