Poll: Sales tax hike will be a tough sell with California voters

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot proposal for tax hikes has wide support among California voters, but his path to victory in November remains far from certain, according to the results of a poll released Tuesday.

More than two-thirds of California's likely voters say they favor the Democratic governor's proposal to raise taxes as a way to stabilize state finances. Yet roughly the same proportion disagrees with a key element of that plan, raising the statewide sales tax, according to the Public Policy Institute of California survey.

The poll, conducted in mid-January, illustrates the difficulty the governor faces in navigating the state's political cross-currents as he pushes his top priority for 2012.

Likely voters overwhelmingly say they favor raising taxes to pay for K-12 education and support raising income taxes on the wealthy, the cornerstones of the initiative Brown hopes to place on the November ballot. But they also do not want to raise the sales tax, believe the state could spend less money while maintaining the same level of services and are pessimistic about the direction of the economy.

“Therein lies the challenge for the governor,” said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute. “He has some things he has attached to his tax initiative which do resonate with voters ... but there are lots of other elements to question.”

Brown and his supporters have been cleared to gather petition signatures for his initiative, which the governor refers to as “The Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012.” His title does not refer to the temporary tax increases, which would raise between $4.8 billion and $7 billion a year.

The initiative would boost the statewide sales tax by half a cent for four years starting in January 2013. It also would raise the income tax rate on those making $250,000 a year, increasing it from 9.3 percent to a maximum of 11.3 percent, depending on the amount of income. The income tax bump would start in January 2013 and last five years.

Most of the new revenue would be dedicated to K-12 education, with much of the rest funding the governor's plan to have counties house lower-level convicts who otherwise would have been sentenced to state prison.

There is broad agreement among Californians for funding public schools, with 62 percent of likely voters saying they would be willing to pay higher taxes for K-12 education, according to the survey. That question drew support in each state region.

Yet the survey also found that just 45 percent of likely voters said they would prefer to pay higher taxes for more government services.