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BACKGROUND

I Legal Background The legal context for the District’s claims is long and complicated. It starts, like many tax cases, with the enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978. A. Proposition 13 For much of California’s history, local governments could levy their own property taxes to help finance their activities. (California Redevelopment Assn. v. Matosantos

2 (2011) 53 Cal.4th 231, 243 (Matosantos).) But in 1978, California voters decided that they levied too much and adopted Proposition 13. Proposition 13 amended the state constitution to cap real property taxes at one percent of a property’s “full cash value” and to limit annual assessment increases to two percent a year. (Cal. Const., art. XIII A, §§ 1, subd. (a), 2, subds. (a)-(b).) It also limited who could collect these taxes. (Cal. Const., art. XIII A, § 1, subd. (a).) “In place of multiple property taxes imposed by multiple political subdivisions, it substituted a single tax to be collected by counties and thereafter apportioned.” (Matosantos, supra, 53 Cal.4th at p. 244.) Proposition 13 declined, however, to specify how collected taxes should be apportioned, “leaving the method of allocation to state law.” (Ibid.)…