TG-I wasn’t saying that the “hero” types don’t deserve more pay or a pension. I think they do, my father was a SD City firefighter for 35 years, and I am a public employee as well. But the OP asked where all the additional property tax went during the housing appreciation boom. A great deal of it went to higher salaries and benefits for these local employees. Probably rightly so because for years their salaries were too low. Prop tax goes to schools too, but it doesn’t necessarily result in increased spending because whenever prop tax revenues are up, the state is able to back off the General Fund share of the prop 98 guarantee. That is one of the only ways the state benefits from higher property tax revenues. Now property tax has stopped growing, but the Prop 98 floor will continue to increase, even as the number of kids in K-12 decreases.
I have worked on the state budget for 10 years-through three governors-and one thing that never changes is that the locals always feel like the state is ripping them off. The state didn’t do that, Prop 13 did that. But recently, for once, the locals had more money coming in than the state, and they have much more discretion with which to spend it.
