From San Francisco to San Diego, voters are done writing blank checks

For years, the playbook was simple.Wrap a sales tax in the language of crisis, line up the labor endorsements, outspend the opposition 10-to-1, and watch the measure sail through.As chairman of the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Association, I felt like we were shouting into the wind.This June, in three of the bluest counties in arguably the bluest state, the playbook collapsed.

Voters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Contra Costa County took the tax hikes their own elected officials placed before them and voted them down.That isn’t a protest.It’s a verdict.

It should stop every Sacramento legislator, county supervisor, and city council member cold. In Los Angeles County, voters were asked to approve Measure ER, a half-cent per dollar countywide sales tax increase projected to generate roughly $1 billion annually.Supporters dressed it up in the language of health-care crisis and federal funding threats: compassionate on its face and urgent in its tone.Our association opposed it and ran “No Blank Checks LA,” the grassroots opposition campaign. The latest results show Measure ER trailing, with “no” leading 52.3% to 47.7%.

In a county where Democrats hold every lever of political power and tax measures routinely sail through on the strength of organized labor and well-funded campaigns, this is unprecedented, and a sharp reversal for an electorate that had previously approved three countywide tax increases in successive elections. The measure of any tax proposal isn’t the cause it claims to support.

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Never miss a story Right now, it hasn’t.LA County has not demonstrated fiscal discipline, has not proven existing revenues are managed responsibly, and has no...