Opinion: The Undead Howard Jarvis and Prop. 98

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What will it take to keep Howard Jarvis in his grave? A wooden stake? A silver bullet? A “no” vote on Prop. 98?

Howard Jarvis was a landlord looking out for landlords as well as for older homeowners when he got Proposition 13 locked into state law 30 years ago. During the campaign, he promised renters that landlords would look out for them if Prop. 13 passed, but very few shared their tax rebate with their renters.

This election, Jarvis is still shilling for landlords, 22 years after he’s died.

And once again, renters will take it in the shorts if he gets his way.

A mailer with a 30-year-old picture of Jarvis shaking his fist in perpetuity, and “Proposition 13” written in Olde English lettering, like a religious text, arrived in my mailbox the other day.

Jarvis admonishes voters to “Save Prop. 13” on June 3 by voting for Proposition 98, to “protect all property” by constricting eminent domain.

But the entire mailer says not Word One — not even Syllable One — about what Prop. 98 will also do: end rent control. You find that out only if you read the actual language of the law — not the rah-rah mailers.

What are they so ashamed or afraid of? If ending rent control is so swell, as worthy of being enshrined in state law as eminent domain, in why not shout it from the political-mailer housetops?

Because Prop. 98 is a Trojan horse, using stealth and fear to slip a permanent end to rent control into the state constitution, where it would have to be practically dynamited out.

This is the initiative process at its worst — dishonest, sneaky, the political equivalent of using a date-rape drug on voters, who wake up thinking one thing has happened and find out that it was something else altogether, something they didn’t really want.

Whatever happens to Proposition 98 — ideally, that it will lose to its counter, Proposition 99, which really is about eminent domain and only about eminent domain — it’s time for two things to happen:

A law requiring that a ballot initiative deal with only one matter at a time — no more piggybacking or stealth-loading

And term limits at last, 22 years after he went to his grave, for Howard Jarvis’ face.