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Politics

Local Professors Focus On Budget Solutions

Local Professors Focus On Budget Solutions
San Diego County college professors and public school teachers marched through downtown San Diego yesterday demanding legislators adopt budget reforms and new taxes to preserve education.

San Diego County college professors and public school teachers marched through downtown San Diego yesterday demanding legislators adopt budget reforms and new taxes to preserve education.

Faculty from colleges across San Diego County are uniting with students and public school teachers to demand change.

They say the way education is funded in California is broken. They want to overturn the two-thirds super majority vote needed in the Legislature to pass a budget. They say Prop. 13 should be modified so business properties are taxed more heavily. San Diego Community College President Terry Burgess also called on the state to extend the sales tax to services.

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"When our tax code was enacted nearly 50 years ago, California was about three-quarters goods and about one-quarter services. Today we’re the reverse," Burgess said. "The tax liability falls on goods not on most services. We need to reverse that."

But the Governor’s office maintains California has a spending problem, saying that the state cannot tax its way out of this problem.