Also, I think Prop 13 is one of the reasons that housing prices are so out of control in CA. If I understand it correctly, property taxes can be adjusted when a house is sold, but not before. Therefore, some older people own a house that might be too large for them, but these houses won't come onto the market, because if they sell and move into a smaller house, they still will end up paying more in property taxes than they were paying on the larger house.
I would love for my property taxes never to go up again. Hell, I'd love it if my electric bill, my phone bill, my insurance bill, and every other bill, could only go up 2% per year or whatever Prop 13 allows.
If Prop 13 were to be repealed, then houses that are paying very low property taxes due to the grandfather effect would have their taxes go up substantially. But taxes on houses bought in the last two years or so would go down. Just like rent control.
So for those of you who say that the legislature would just spend the money, well, elect a better legislature. But don't keep a tax that is inherently unfair to all people born after 1965 or so. The reason it's unfair to the younger crowd is because younger people couldn't buy a house in 1978 and then let the rates go up much lower than even inflation since then.
You want an equitable real estate tax scheme that limits what the government can take. Then apply it to EVERY house and property every year. Don't let the taxes go up when it's sold. Because it is totally unfair that two identical houses have different tax rates. If Prop 13 said that the tax rates on all existing houses couldn't go up more than a certain percentage, and that tax rates on all newly built houses had to be comparable, then I'd have no problem with it. But the way it stands now is completely crazy.