An Open Letter to the CA State Controller

Ms. Betty Yee
Cal State Controller
300 Capitol mall, Ste. 1850
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Ms. Yee,

Are you aware of the pandemic?

I feel like you aren’t so I’m going to try and bring you up to speed a little.

As of today (Dec 29th) California has had over 2.4 million confirmed cases of the COVID -19 virus. We have over 20,000 people hospitalized (right now) because of the virus. Also, 25,000 Californians have died from this virus.

Gov. Newsom has tried to keep us from dying by issuing STAY AT HOME orders since the beginning of this nightmare. I have dutifully followed to the best of my ability. Of course, with almost every restaurant, and most businesses shut down there isn’t much you can do anyway.

A by-product of this response to the state’s directive has been an almost defacto shut down of Californian business. The OC Register recently published a story stating “Avg. loss per household in CA due to covid is $17,000 in 2020”. Obviously, that is an avg and not consistent with amounts but many small business owners have lost everything in the last year.

Much of the world took it upon themselves to help. Stores changed operations to meet the needs of people safely. Many apartment owners reduced or deferred rents and truckers worked insane hours to transport necessary goods.

For instance, SPE my mortgage holder has accommodated my business fluctuations and allowed me to defer a portion of my mortgage payment every month. They also established a base of loyalty I will never forget.

Yes, there is a lot of good that has come out of this nightmare. A lot of people who tried selflessly to work towards a greater good.

Which makes me all the more repulsed by the state’s attitude towards property taxes. The ‘FU pay or else’ attitude I was met with when I contacted the state made me pissed at myself for voting for you.

To compound my frustrations, I reached out the same week Gov. Newsom established a new stay at home order. I’m not dispelling the value of the orders, in fact, had Gov. Newsom toned out the doubters and actually made people wear masks maybe we’d have fewer dead Californians. But I digress.

Instead of rewarding people for doing the right thing and helping the economy by deferring property taxes, state taxes etc, you have pushed the depleted and beleaguered citizens for more and more. That’s not doing what’s “unpopular” or the “difficult but necessary job”, that’s being largely uncreative and lazy.

If you needed revenue that badly have you thought about approaching some of the large multinational companies (Google, Facebook, Apple etc) to prepay taxes for a .25% reduction of state totals over the years of prepayment? Just a thought. With the lengths they go to, to avoid taxes I have to imagine you could have generated a pretty penny.

Or you could have shown us the way, like the bank that holds my loan did and offer to defer some of the totals. Because, Property Taxes, end of year taxes I have to pay the state and City of Los Angeles business taxes (talk about ‘taxation without representation’) all coming in December…. Well, I feel like it was almost your goal to destroy small businesses and middle-class homeownership in this California. Well, your goal and Eric Garcetti’s I guess.

I have one last question. I would have included Mayor Garcetti in this as well, but given his deputy mayor being brought down by the FBI for soliciting bribes, his agenda was pretty clear so no point.

Please tell me what your sacrifices have been throughout this horrible time in global history Betty?

I’d like to know.