California

California has two constitutional TELs that were passed by voter approval. Proposition 13 passed in 1978, and Proposition 4 passed in 1979. These TELS can be found in Article 13A and 13B of the California State Constitution.Proposition 13 rolled back property taxes, capped property tax rates, and imposed a 2/3 supermajority requirement to raise taxes. Proposition 4, known as the Gann limit, limited the growth of appropriations to population growth and the lesser of Consumer Price Index inflation and California personal income per capita growth, exempting debt service, retirement costs, and unemployment insurance compensation. This limit did adjust to apply to local governments. Revenues that exceed this limited had to be refunded within two years.

By the 1990s, these TELs were affected by other voter approved propositions that required mandatory refunds be spent directly on education, changed the appropriations growth limit to a weighted average population growth and per capita personal income growth and expanded exemptions.