Howard Jarvis

Howard Jarvis (September 22, 1903 - August 11, 1986) was an American politician.

Jarvis was born in Magna, Utah, and died in Los Angeles, California. In Utah he had some political involvement working with his father's campaigns and his own. His father was a state supreme court judge and, unlike Jarvis, a member of the Democratic Party. Howard Jarvis was active in the Republican Party and also ran small town newspapers. Although raised Mormon he smoked cigars and drank vodka as an adult. He moved to California in the 1930s due to a suggestion by Earl Warren. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919744-2,00.html Maniac or Messiah? - "Time" ] ]

Jarvis was a Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate in California in 1962, but the nomination and the election went to the liberal Republican Thomas Kuchel. Subsequently he ran several times for Mayor of Los Angeles on an anti-tax platform and gained a reputation as a harsh critic of government. He went on to lead the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and spearheaded Proposition 13, the California property tax-cutting initiative passed in 1978 which slashed property taxes by fifty-seven percent and initiated a national tax revolt.

Regarding the motives of Jarvis in promoting Proposition 13 and the role its passage had in rent control subsequently being enacted in most large cities in California, Greg Katz has written: "There was little doubt from his rhetoric that Howard Jarvis, who penned Prop. 13 with his on-again-off-again political ally Paul Gann, hated taxes of all kinds. But his intentions were, at best, turbid; Jarvis was at the time employed by the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association as a lobbyist. In a fundraising letter to the landlords that employed him, he claimed, “We are the biggest losers” if Prop. 13 fails. (Not to mention: The Yes on 13 headquarters were located in a Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association office.) He tried to persuade renters to vote for Prop. 13 by saying it would drive down rents, by decreasing the property taxes that landlords paid. Post-13 news reports found rents weren’t going down, despite Jarvis’s promises – apparently landlords were just pocketing their property tax savings. That revelation prompted many of the rent controls still in effect around California." [ [http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/the_crushing_blow_of_howard_jarvis/6623/ The Crushing Blow of Howard Jarvis, "Los Angeles CityBeat" Jan. 23, 2008] ] San Francisco comminity activist Calvin Welch has stated “Jarvis was the father of rent control." [ [http://www.sfaa.org/0406forbes.html The Birth of Rent Control in San Francisco, "San Francisco Apartment Magazine" June 1999] ]

In 1980 he had a cameo appearance in the film "Airplane!", playing an incredibly patient taxicab passenger. This was an "inside joke" that people outside California were probably unaware of since Jarvis, a champion of fiscal responsibility, spent the entire movie sitting in an empty cab waiting for the driver to return, with the meter running all the while. Jarvis had the final line in the movie, which he said after the end credits. Still sitting in the cab with the fare at $113 and still rising, he looks at his watch and says "Well, I'll give him another twenty minutes, but that's it!"

During a public speaking event, Jarvis was hit in the face with a pie, to which he responded, "That doesn't bother me a damn bit."

External links

* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7473 Howard Jarvis at Find-A-Grave] Howard Jarvis was hit with a pie at a speaking event in Portland Oregon. His tax initiative in Oregon went down to defeat shortly after that.

References