California cities banned from imposing new soda taxes for 13 years

SACRAMENTO -- California cities were banned from passing new taxes on sugary beverages for 13 years under a bill that state lawmakers reluctantly approved Thursday to head off a soda-industry ballot measure that many of them said would have been worse.

The ballot measure would have made it far more difficult for state and local governments to raise any taxes. The soda industry, which funded the effort to qualify it for the ballot, offered to withdraw the initiative if the Legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill banning new soda taxes.

After the governor did so, backers withdrew their initiative from the Nov. 6 ballot.

The initiative would have raised the threshold for approval of any new state and local taxes to a two-thirds vote. Local governments can raise taxes now by a simple majority vote if the money is directed to their general funds.

The initiative was funded by soda companies including Coca-Cola and Pepsi. When it qualified for the ballot, the firms used it as a bargaining chip.

In a signing message, Brown said the ballot measure would be ``an abomination'' and that it was ``in the public interest'' to sign the bill to head off the initiative.

The bill does not affect cities that passed taxes on sugary drinks before Jan. 1, 2018, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. But it bars cities that were considering levies, including Richmond and Sacramento, from imposing them until 2031.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said the ballot measure put lawmakers ``under the biggest rock and the smallest hard place.'' She then urged her colleagues to support it.

The Assembly passed it 60-1 and the Senate passed it 21-7 on Thursday.

While some Democrats said they felt forced to vote for the measure, Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, said the Legislature should have stood up to the ``shakedown by the soda industry.''

``In a sense, this action saved the soda industry millions it would have spent on a campaign for the initiative,'' said Levine, who voted against the bill. ``I would have preferred to see special interests make their case to voters so that the initiative can go down to the defeat it rightfully deserves.''