Do you have a practical example of that influence actually mattering to you personally?

The thing about the property taxes is that if you move to someplace like Austin where the property values are skyrocketing, your property taxes can jump a ridiculous amount in a single year. You're completely insulated from that in CA (once you _own_ property, which is obviously the hard part in the SF Bay Area etc).

I donno. Local governments get hooked on those revenues but are extremely susceptible to revenue shocks, as they have a much smaller tax base. So things like a single business closing can cause budget shortfalls. And I've seen a common go-to for increasing revenue is by policing for profit.

I've also lived in towns with corrupt local governments, and you can't do shit about it. Good luck getting people to come out to vote. And when the good ol' boys club takes the mayor and sheriff offices, and fills the roles with their friends/family, it can be hard to oust them. Prove that the tickets you're getting are due to running against they mayor on a platform of change, and not because you were speeding for the 7th time this week.

It got so bad in the town I grew up in that people were pushing to dissolve the police and local government. Even my hardcore right-wing, retired police officer uncle was in favor of dissolving the police department.

I can't agree, considering that California's major problems stem from "my city over everyone else" politics. Cannot build a functioning public transit system if every microcity along the way has different opinions. People need affordable housing? Can't build them here, it should be some other city's problem.

California would have been in a much better shape if the state government could tell these cities to shut up.

If your comparing major metro areas it can make a huge difference - lots of people talk about moving from California to metro areas in Texas and (assuming they are trying to be homeowners in both places) their tax burden will likely actually be higher in Texas due to the higher property taxes (just the base percentage). And then of course if you own your home in CA for a long time you will end up paying a ridiculously low tax on a high value home (which is another whole can of worms)

Outright repealing Prop 13 would cause chaos; there are too many voters who benefit from it and it stabilizes things considerably for those who are bought in. But you could rebalance things: completely remove the cap if the residence is non-primary, for example.

I voted this year for the amendment to it basically that mainly involved inheritance - I do not have a huge problem with it for the first generation but when you get to things like homes inherited three times over and the grandkids are paying absolutely nothing on a home worth 4 million dollars then it seems totally ridiculous. The amendment though that passed seems to be a nice middle ground (for now)

The real shitty part about prop 13 for me is not the residential tax rates but commercial/industrial - some giant corporation owning a giant warehouse that has an insane value should NOT be paying a super low tax rate.