Sacramento, CA -- Despite a slight reduction of the car tax, cleverly disguised as a "registration fee,"
Californians get little relief. And even before they can pay the state’s high taxes, those who want to
become Californians are subject to yet another example of state greed.

California’s economy is booming and the classified sections are bursting with job ads. Those qualified to
fill high-tech jobs are so scarce that Silicon Valley companies are looking abroad. Americans in other states
could fill many of those posts but California’s government doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat.
While the Golden Welfare State lavishes welfare, education, and medical benefits on those who entered
the country illegally, it assesses a stiff penalty on legal American citizens who come here from other states.

Like it or not, an automobile is a virtual necessity of life in this state and most people who come here drive
their own cars. Since 1991 they have had to pay a "smog impact fee" of $300, even if their car meets or exceeds California emissions standards. But this is not a smog fee; it is another example of false government
advertising.

The money it confiscates--$360 million in the last seven years and $69 million last year--goes not for
smog enforcement or motor vehicle programs but directly into the state’s general fund, a violation of the state
constitution. Superior Court Judge Joe Gray has ruled that the tax is unconstitutional because the state
failed to follow the rules of its own constitution on how the money was to be spent. State agencies
predictably appealed. They like the concept of relieving newcomers of their money, a kind of highway
shakedown.

The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, a maddeningly inefficient bureaucracy which has wasted millions on
computer programs that don’t work, championed the tax as a measure that would "ensure equity." Actually, the
tax punishes the poor and imposes needless hardship on all. As residents of other states, the victims have no
way to oppose the tax before moving here. The tax also hinders interstate commerce, one of many reasons it
needs to be eliminated. But the measure is at least educational.

This tax reveals that, despite the rhetoric, legislators and bureaucrats spend much of their time and energy thinking of clever ways to fleece the populace. Recall the 1996 attempt to impose a tax on editorial cartoons, the so-called "laugh tax," and the "snack tax" on so-called junk food. One expects liberal Democrats like Richard Katz, an early promoter of the measure, to turn back the clock to the days when the government taxed personal property. Liberal Democrats, after all, are people of the state, who believe that the government has a prior claim to what people earn. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, are supposed to be champions of the individual and limited government. But their silence on this issue shows otherwise.

California still has a lot to offer and creative, entrepreneurial people still want to come here. Freedom of movement is the most basic freedom and California’s car tax is an affront to that freedom. Any politician
who does not urge its immediate abolition should be ashamed of herself.

-- K. Lloyd Billingsley