The dust has settled on Measure EE, the 16-cent per square foot property tax rushed onto a June 4 ballot by the LAUSD board and its union. Following last week’s election results, politicians, pundits and school boards across the state are pondering EE’s meaning – trying to determine whether the parcel tax’s defeat was a fluke or an indicator of something bigger. You be the judge.
Below find lessons learned from the No on EE campaign:
Support for the January teacher strike didn’t translate to support for the tax. The LAUSD and UTLA attempted to capitalize on the strike’s “momentum” by rushing a massive revenue measure onto a June 4 ballot. The No campaign’s research indicated that we could peel away support from EE, irrespective of where voters stood on the strike. Simply by mentioning that EE was a tax on all property and highlighting that the district should reform first and better control run-away finances before asking for a half-billion in taxpayer dollars annually, we could knock support well below the two-thirds necessary for EE to pass.
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