A number crunching Mom's crusade against tax inequity -- and toward solving the school funding problem

06-07-2010

Opinion by Charles Kerchner/Huffington Post

Charles Kerchner is a research professor at Claremont Graduate University currently studying institutional change in public education.

Jennifer Bestor doesn't sound like a radical, but she has methodically peeled back a veil that clouds the inequity caused by the way California taxes commercial property. She is a stay-at-home mom in Menlo Park who just happens to have 20 years' experience in business and finance. She's also ticked off, but in a very nice way. Bestor, who traces her Republican roots to an ancestor who served in the Illinois legislature with Abraham Lincoln, was drawn to look at how commercial property is assessed when her local school district came upon hard financial times. She examined the tax rolls for 352 commercial properties and found enormous unfairness. "Once you start digging," she said, "it's really hard to stop." (more...)

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A number crunching Mom's crusade against tax inequity -- and toward solving the school funding problem

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