Telephone tax to ballot

Setting up a showdown with voters, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously declared a revenue emergency Tuesday and agreed to ask voters to approve a 9 percent telephone users' tax that would expand the levy to many new technologies. Beth Barrett in the Daily News.

The 14-0 vote to place the tax on the February presidential primary ballot comes amid concern that a judge could soon invalidate the current 10 percent phone tax - which brings in $270 million of the city's $7billion budget.

San Fernando Valley council members Dennis Zine and Greig Smith, who had questioned the urgency of the measure, met privately with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa after learning, to their surprise, that the measure would tax new technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol and private communication services used by large companies.