§ 526a.Action to Restrain Or Prevent Waste of Or Injury to Estate, Funds Or Property of Local Agency

Section 526a is California's taxpayer suit for injunctive relief. It lets a resident, or a corporation, who pays certain taxes that fund a local agency sue that agency's officers, agents, or other people acting on its behalf to stop illegal spending, waste, or injury to the agency's money or property. The qualifying taxes include income tax, sales and use tax, property tax (even property tax passed through in rent), and business license tax, and the statute reaches anyone currently paying, or who paid within the past year, one of those taxes.

"Local agency" is defined broadly — any city, town, county, city and county, district, public authority, or other political subdivision of the state — and "resident" covers not just people who live in the jurisdiction but people who work there, own property there, or attend school there. That breadth is what makes § 526a a frequently used tool: it gives ordinary residents standing to challenge government spending they believe is illegal or wasteful, without needing to show the kind of individualized injury that standing doctrine usually demands.

The statute carries two important limits. It does not create a right to enjoin the offering, sale, or issuance of municipal bonds for public improvements or utilities — that carve-out is what § 526b's liability provision protects. And it does not take away any separate right of action the local agency or a public officer already has. When a taxpayer does sue to stop a public improvement project under this section, the case jumps to the front of the court's civil calendar, behind only other matters that already have equal priority by law.