Martin comment feb09

Serrano and Proposition 13: Comment on Isaac Martin, “Does School Finance Litigation Cause Taxpayer Revolt” William A. Fischel Department of Economics Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755 Bill.Fischel@Dartmouth.Edu draft of February 2009 Dartmouth College Economics Department working paper. Because this draft is subject to revision, please note month and year in any citations. I thank without implicating Isaac Martin for his data and his comments. Abstract: The California Supreme Court’s 1976 Serrano decision, which required equalization of school spending and property-tax bases, was followed in 1978 by Proposition 13, which severely limited property taxes. This comment explains that evidence supporting a causal connection between the two events is not flawed by the problem of ecological inference. The Serrano decision applied to school districts, not individuals, and so the behavior of voters grouped by school districts is appropriate for testing the connection. Additional evidence presented here emphasizes the need to contrast a rejected property-tax limitation in 1972 with the overwhelming support for Proposition 13 six years later. 1 In a recent issue of the Law and Society Review, Isaac Martin (2006) challenged my thesis that the Serrano decision was responsible for the passage of Proposition 13. My story, which I first advanced in Fischel (1989), is that the 1976 Serrano decision so thoroughly ...