voted for Proposition 13 in 1978.

That’s not unusual given 65 percent of Californians did.

I was 22 at time and did not own property.

That isn’t what was unusual about my voting for the measure that capped property tax assessment gains to 2 percent annually unless a home sold which allowed it to be set at the market price.

What made my vote in the affirmative was fact I was an elected school board member at the time.

You likely couldn’t even fill a 55-seat school bus with all of the California school district trustees that voted for the property tax measure even though there were more than 1,000 public school districts at the time.

Western Placer Unified School District had a little over 2,200 students in 1978.

Not to get into the thick of the weeds, but it was a high tax and low wealth school district.

Freely translated, it meant the property tax assessment levied was near or at the maximum allowed by state law without a voter override.

And because Lincoln was still a rural community slowly turning into a bedroom community for Sacramento without a strong employment base, it was low wealth.

Given every education group from the California School Board Association to the California Teachers Association was channeling Chicken Little when it came to fear mongering in regards to the ballot measure’s potential passage, it clearly made me odd man out.

Our superintendent implored board members to rally support to help defeat the measure as it would hurt district funding.

The reality was passage of Proposition 13 actually improved school funding in a lot of ways as it forced the California Legislature to step up.

Sacramento had been talking a big game about both property tax reform and education funding reform for years but did nothing.

There was the Serrano-Priest court ruling that ordered the state to take steps to address school funding inequities from district to district. There was some progress being made but not enough. It didn’t matter, though, as Proposition 13 blew that out of the water.

Before continuing, it should be pointed out California has a state school system. There are local school boards but they have limited local control.

That said, local schools were funded by and large by local property tax.

It is why Beverley Hills had much more “robust” schools, if you will, compared to Watts.

And if you think school funding now makes a Rubik’s Cube easy to master in comparison, be careful about asking for simpler times.

Prior to 1975, schools funding was simple.

The superintendent came up with the costs to run the schools he was in charge of for the upcoming year, deducted the amount of money the state committed to the district, then took the difference and adjusted the property tax assessment accordingly.

It was similar to what cities and counties did.

Say what you want about how government is funded today in California but it is certainly not as cutthroat as it was before Proposition 13.

And by that, I mean the go to source was always property taxes.

It created two realities, of which neither were ideal.

If a community was stagnant and did not have a lot of sales tax revenue, they leaned on property taxes. But council members in such cities under economic stress were reluctant to raise assessments.

It’s kind of hard to raise taxes in a world where you get hammered at the store, the barber shop, and Little League games by people getting shocked with property tax hikes.

And if a community was in growth mode and people were buying homes like drunken sailors and if you were within two blocks of a house that sold for $200,000 while it and your house had been appraised at $50,000, your tax assessment would quadruple even if you stayed put.

That created financial pressure even for renters that landlords passed on tax increases.

Keep in mind the tax is on the place you live in.

If you are on a fixed income as a  retiree or have a steady job that perhaps gave you a 5 percent increase but if a neighbor two blocks away decided to move and struck the Mother Lode, you could see your property taxes doubled or even quadrupled.

What we have today in terms of school and local/county government financing is the net result of California readjusting to the June 1978 will of the people.

And before you start waxing eloquently about the good old days, studies by non-taxpayer affiliated groups have shown property receipts on a per capita basis in California has exceeded inflation since 1978.

Meanwhile, there have been all sorts of other taxes and fees added along the way.

If you think defanging Proposition 13 will solve government budget problems whether you rent, own, or are making payments to a mortgage lender so one day it might be all yours guess again.

Those other taxes are not going away because many of them are hidden in the price you pay for goods whether it is stick-it-to-the-oil-companies “fees” collapsed into the price of gasoline or simply other taxes that are the cost of doing business.

But revenue is not the problem. It’s spending.

Not only are schools still funded reasonably well in California, but government on all levels are doing a lot more things than they did in 1978. And it is if often because we demand it to do so.

That said, what happened after Proposition 13 in Western Placer and many other districts peeled back major flaws that were previously unseen.

One of the first things Gov. Jerry Brown did was end the practice of the state dangling financial incentives in front of local school districts to get them to do the right thing.

As an example, the cost of summer school and driver’s education behind the wheel was only reimbursed 100 percent by the state as opposed to 125 percent before Proposition 13.

I still recall the board meeting when the superintendent told the board he was recommending cutting both summer school and driver’s ed because it was only 100 percent funded.

I was the only trustee to balk.

When pressed, the superintendent said it was only covering costs instead of generating money to cover other budget shortfalls.

My retort was if that is the case, how could he as an educator justify dropping a needed remedial program for struggling students just because the state decided only to cover the actual cost.

Long story short, two years later we had a new superintendent and summer school was restored.

In retrospect, I can understand where the superintendent was coming from as Western Placer was forced to cover basic costs elsewhere with the incentive from the state for running the two programs.

That is how twisted funding of schools was back when it was “simpler” and funded more heavily by property taxes.

The bottom line was it was so contorted that an educator was able to convince himself it made sense to deny students remedial help via summer school even if the state picked up only 100 percent of the cost.

Contrary to the never-ending teeth gnashing and howling, school funding is in a better place in California today than before Proposition 13.

The real issue is the unchecked expansion of government.

Just one example is state paid Medi-Cal for illegal immigrants.

Yes, it is true it is cheaper than emergency room visits where no one is supposed to be denied treatment regardless of ability to pay.

But a universal state-funded healthcare program for illegals was far from being on Sacramento’s radar back in the 1970s.

Sacramento doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.