The Legislative Analyst Office has published an interesting collection of facts about California's economy and budget that may interest readers here: Web Link

One item that caught my eye was "Allocation of Property Tax Has Varied Over Time". The chart shows that in 1977 the total revenue of property tax collected was $10.3B. This is from before Prop. 13 and you can see the expected drop in revenue in 1979. But look at in 2008 where the LAO estimates the revenue at $45.2B. If you plug $10.3B into a CPI inflation calculator, you come out with an amount significantly less than $45.2B (I got $37.19B). In other words, Prop. 13 has not been as big a hindrance to revenue to the state as it is made out to be sometimes, but a real source of stable revenue that surpasses inflation.

The more interesting data to look at on that chart is how the percentage of the state budget devoted to the different distribution classes has changed. In 1994 the state used over 50% of that property tax revenue on schools while it is less than 40% in 2008. It would be interesting to look at a graph showing the changes over each year. Since the chart shows only the distribution of property tax revenue, it would be interesting to see a similar chart for non-property tax revenue distribution.

Anyway, the publication is a good introduction.