Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Jon Coupal

No. 70

California’s historic Proposition 13 was a long time ago – 1978 to be exact – and the man behind it, Howard Jarvis, is long gone. But his spirit lives on in Jon Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. While HJTA hasn’t always fared well in local tax battles, it has generally been successful at beating back statewide efforts to get around Prop. 13. This year Coupal went after the locals again, leading a successful charge to qualify a tax-cutting ballot measure that critics argued would have had a devastating impact on local economies. He and other supporters (notably the California Business Roundtable) argued many of those same locals had been using a loophole in the law to violate Prop. 13’s spirit. By qualifying his measure for the ballot and then steadfastly refusing to pull it unless he got something big in return, Coupal gained the upper hand. He used that leverage to force majority Dems and the governor to agree to a measure to make it harder for those local taxes to happen. Leverage is power, and Coupal used it.