For the past two legislative sessions, Mr. Ammiano has sought to close what he and many others see as a loophole in Proposition 13’s treatment of commercial property. Even if an owner sells his entire interest in a piece of commercial real estate, the property is not reassessed if no single entity acquires more than a half-ownership stake. It is easy for corporations to structure deals to avoid a tax increase.

Mr. Ammiano thinks it’s an outrage that companies can skirt the intentions of the law when properties change hands.

“You have very large commercial enterprises, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, with this little sleight of hand in the way they structure ownership,” he said Wednesday in an interview. “It is very, very dishonest.”

Yet the feisty Mr. Ammiano is quiet as a church mouse about altering the residential protections of Proposition 13 — of which he is a signal beneficiary.

Mr. Ammiano, who is also a comedian, pays just $530 a year in taxes on the Bernal Heights home he has owned since 1974. As far as the city and Proposition 13 are concerned, his house is worth $45,600. Zillow estimates its current worth at $645,000. At that value, the tax would be about $7,500.

How good a deal is this? Imagine for a moment that Mr. Ammiano’s house was a car. If he parked the car at a metered space near his Civic Center office, the amount he now contributes each day to the commonweal in the form of property tax would buy just a hair less than 29 minutes, curbside.

Perhaps his next stand-up routine could be built around this theme: San Francisco on $1.45 a Day.

There is nothing illegal about Mr. Ammiano’s good fortune. As long as a property does not change hands, Proposition 13 limits annual increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less.

And he is hardly alone. The latest Case-Schiller survey for home sales in San Francisco reports a median market price of $760,000. Yet 23,059 of the 139,918 single-family homes in San Francisco are currently assessed at less than $100,000. If these properties were valued at the median, that would yield about $184 million in additional revenues; even valued at $500,000, they would generate an extra $114 million.

Of course, many people simply cannot afford to have their property taxes jump to market rates. Proposition 13 has delivered just what Howard Jarvis, its crusty champion, wanted: Older residents are not getting squeezed out of their homes by rapidly escalating taxes.

But you can make the case that the cost of that benefit has escalated out of all proportion to reason. It certainly looks that way to Anthony Costa, Mr. Ammiano’s next-door neighbor.

Mr. Costa, a City College librarian, bought his house — a mirror image of Mr. Ammiano’s — in 2004. He pays $8,300 in annual property taxes.

While he says he bears his neighbor no ill-will, what Mr. Costa does object to — strenuously — is the reduction in government services he attributes squarely to Proposition 13.

“Prop 13 is a tragedy which has made things in California worse every year since it was passed,” Mr. Costa wrote in an e-mail. “The people of California have to settle for inferior schools, libraries, transit, roads, sewers, parks and other services. I don’t object as much to my personal tax bill, as I do the obscene discrepancy between the great wealth of this state and the relative poverty of our government and public institutions.”

Even Mr. Ammiano agrees that it is unfair that he pays one-sixteenth the property tax of Mr. Costa. “My feeling is, there’s a need for reform, absolutely,” he said.

But that isn’t where he’s expending his energy in Sacramento.

A little defensively, Mr. Ammiano, 69, noted that he had not availed himself of every opportunity to whittle down his property tax bill. “There is a senior-citizen exemption for homeowners tax in San Francisco,” he said, “and I do not take advantage of that.”

Actually, there used to be such a tax break. It was suspended in 2009, according to the city assessor’s office — a victim of state budget cuts.

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03bcstevens.html