And another thing

If this tax burden were as heavy as you suggest, California likely wouldn't be experiencing a financial crisis right now.

It's true that it might have been better to have higher taxes in the past than to have the debt burden now, but that would at best have smoothed out the problems over a longer period. The real problem is that during the last economic boom the California legislature saw all the money coming in and decided to spend it rather than to set it aside for a rainy day. That led to an increase in public spending, and of course the political process assures that once public spending starts in a new sector it will never stop - so California is stuck with higher spending, which combined with a predictable drop in the economy means higher debts, which causes uncertainty among investors and contributes to a worsening economy, and the process then begins to feed on itself.

California also has a political system prone to producing fiscal disaster.

It can and does use referenda for too much stuff.

In particular, it uses referenda for starting new government programs. And it is always easy to get a majority in favor of any new government program with any "think of the children" (or the whales, or the ugly people) type campaign. So they ended up committing to spending a lot.

In the legislature, any such new program is less likely to pass, because lawmakers have more of an idea of debt (not too much usually, but they are more exposed to explanations of the disadvantages, and can modify and remodify bills potentially an infinite number of times both before and after approval - which the Volk in a referendum cannot).

And conversely, more taxes will never pass a referendum - not even in California. Well, except for tobacco, and then smokers will move to North Carolina or smoke smuggled produce.

So the California Republic ends up with too many commitments and too little money to pay for them all. But this situation is relatively unusual and due a lot to the political system.