This qualitative study focuses on the duality of the principal-agent relationship experienced by elected community college trustees in the California Community Colleges system; i.e., their roles as principal to the agent role of employee unions, and the quasi agent role in the districts association with the state. It examines this relationship through the lens of the unintended consequences of Proposition 13, including the centralization of school finance at the state level, the de facto change of the property tax from a local tax to a state tax, and the removal of the power of taxation from local boards. The study includes interviews with nine current or former elected trustees whose service began prior to the 1978 enactment of Proposition 13. Four of the nine trustees still held elective office when the interviews for this study were performed in fall 2014.