Public Support for Transportation Sales Taxes in California: A Two County Assessment

Abstract

Voters in California counties have been asked to approve transportation sales taxes on over 75 different occasions, and according to the Legislative Analyst, revenues from local option transportation sales taxes accounted for 15% of all revenues raised statewide for transportation during fiscal year 2005/2006. While many analyses examining public support for such taxes have been undertaken using aggregate-level data, little work has been done examining the individual decision to support a transportation sales tax at the polls. In this paper, we argue that an individual's propensity to approve or deny a sales tax extension for transportation purposes is a function of a set of attitudinal and self-interest factors. Using a two-county survey, we find that opposition to the renewal of the existing sales tax is centered among anti-tax, political conservative residents who do not trust elected officials. Furthermore, we find that while the two counties border one another, the impact of the attitudinal and self-interest factors in the model vary significantly by county. The findings are important for transportation practitioners who face future transportation sales tax elections, and for political scientists who are attempting to develop a generalizable set of factors which explain public support for transportation sales taxes.

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“…Counties have experienced considerable success at raising sales taxes for transportation, funds that now provide a significant share of local transportation revenue in the state (Barbour 2007). Local option transportation sales taxes provide an opportunity to leverage transportation match funding from the state and federal government and respond to local priorities (Green, Neiman, Bockman, and Sirotnik 2013).…”