As the California Legislative Analyst's Office reported last month, the state budget is in strong shape, and currently on track to yield a $14.5 billion surplus this fiscal year. Yet many lawmakers and officials act as if the state is desperate for dollars. The last session of the Legislature saw more than 30 proposals for new and higher taxes, fees, assessments and charges, including an outrageous proposal to impose for the first time a tax on water use.
Now there is a fresh example of the state's rapacity. The California Public Utilities Commission is considering adding a flat fee to phone customers' bills that for the first time would charge them for text messages conveyed by phones (as opposed to those sent over the internet through apps like Facebook Messenger). Incredibly, the CPUC wants to make this new fee retroactive for five years. The CPUC cites the need to find more funding for a program that helps poor people have access to phones.
The cause is worthy, yet paying for it with a new fee on something as essential to modern life as texting is a gross overreach by the utilities regulator. In a welcome twist, a recent Federal Communications Commission decision reclassifying phone texts into a service category not subject to state taxation may short-circuit the CPUC's proposal.
Thank you, FCC. Tax- and fee-besieged Californians will take relief wherever they can find it.
