Early ballots have been mailed out to everyone in California, so it's time for my traditional recommendations about how to vote on the ballot initiatives. As usual, keep in mind a couple of things:
- I don't like ballot initiatives because they lock things into the state constitution that shouldn't usually be locked in. So my standards are high for a Yes vote.
- I especially hate ballot-box budgeting. It's a cancer.
- I believe the point of ballot initiatives is to give grass roots activists a chance to pass legislation opposed by moneyed interests. However, modern initiatives are largely the handiwork of corporations and the ultra-wealthy. I will almost never vote for an initiative sponsored primarily by businesses or billionaires.
That noted, here are my recommendations:
Proposition 2: NO. This is a school bond initiative. There's not much harm if you want to vote Yes, but I'm opposed to all bond measures, especially small-bore stuff like this that ought to funded out of the normal budget.
Proposition 3: YES. This protects same-sex marriage in the state constitution. It's not really necessary, but it's best to be sure, I guess.
Proposition 4: NO. Water bonds.
Proposition 5: YES. Allows local communities to approve housing and infrastructure bonds with a 55% majority instead of the current two-thirds. This change can only be made via initiative, so this is the way to do it. NOTE: I misread this initially and recommended a No vote. Fixed now.
Proposition 6: YES. This is an odd duck. It bans prisons from requiring inmates to work—aka ENDING SLAVERY, as its backers put it. I'm not sure this is quite the moral issue of our time, but there's no opposition even from conservatives. So sure.
Proposition 32: NO. This would raise the minimum wage slightly, from about $16.50 to $18, and index it to inflation. But the minimum wage is already indexed to inflation in California and the $1.50 increase itself doesn't strike me as anywhere near important enough for a ballot initiative. Let the legislature handle it.
Proposition 33: NO. This is yet another initiative from Michael Weinstein that would widely allow rent control in California. But California doesn't need rent control. It needs more housing, something that rent control would hurt, not help.
Proposition 34: NO. This is ostensibly a measure about prescription drug discounts. In fact, it's a punitive measure aimed solely at Michael Weinstein from folks who are tired of his rent control initiatives. Whether you love Michael Weinstein or hate him, this is preposterous.
Proposition 35: NO. This would extend a tax on health insurers that provides extra money for Medi-Cal payments to health workers. That's fine, although the tax will get extended regardless. But it would also designate which health workers get more money—and those groups are different from the ones who are set to get money in the state budget. In other words, this is basically a fight between different big health care providers and I'm not excited about this kind of ballot box budgeting. If the legislature was clearly acting in bad faith to divert funding, that would be one thing. But it's not.
Proposition 36: NO. This would repeal a reduction in penalties for certain drug and theft crimes that was passed a decade ago. It's a dumb, panicky, "tough-on-crime" measure based on a nonexistent crime wave supposedly sweeping California. There isn't one. The old reforms were good ones and we should keep them.
Prop 5 isn’t affordable housing bonds as such - it’s a procedural amendment reducing the current supermajority requirement for passage of local bonds down to 55% from 67%. These bonds can pay for affordable housing but also hospitals, libraries, etc - stuff that localities aren’t able to pay for out of their year over year budgets. And while I agree that ballot box budgeting is bad, excessive supermajority requirements are worse. Seems like an easy yes to me.
Prop 32 isn’t just a small minimum wage increase, it also indexes future changes to inflation, which does seem worth a yes vote since it means we won’t have to keep doing this every couple years.
Prop 32 is messy and seems like it should've been allowed to be re-written instead of using the same text that was proposed three years ago.
But yeah, I wonder hy it doesn't say the inflation indexing in the state's summary? The text itself is super complex with lots of extraneous information.
The minimum wage is already indexed to inflation in California.
You're right about Prop 5. I misread it. Fixed now.
33 doesn't implement rent control, but as state law is currently, localities can't even clamp down on excessive rent increases or fund housing.
It *allows* rent control.
I was guided by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers. Anything they were against. I voted for. I recommend this as a firm rule for determining how to cast one’s vote.
And the opposition to Prop 33 also seemed particularly dishonest. It was hard to figure out the truth about the proposition but, in the end, I voted for it because the opposition seemed vastly more dishonest.
I get you, and I'm strongly inclined to do the same. It always feels good to vote to make the Howard Jarvis people cry.
Still, though, that's not a perfect process. Sometimes the worst person you know makes a great point. Consider all the stupid stuff conservatives end up saying and believing because so much of conservatism is just being against whatever liberals are for, updated daily. One doesn't want to fall into that trap.
Here, in particular, that rule breaks down at prop 33. The opposition are, on the whole, dishonest assholes, and the supporters are, on the whole, well-meaning and decent people.
But the supporters are, alas, misguided. Rent control is a disaster of a policy, almost always doing more harm than good. Sometimes dishonest assholes, just by chance, wind up on the right side of a dispute.
How does Property Crime in California compare with Property Crime in the United States?
Re Prop 35, what exactly is “Behavioral health throughput?”
It's funding for mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities, looks like.
You mean we don't get to vote yet again about dialysis clinics? No California election is complete without another proposition on that topic. I feel robbed! /s
Isn't this because of the limits on when and how property taxes can be increased?
Unfortunately, the way capital improvements (particularly to schools) are done, because of things like Prop 13, bonds are the only way to fund them.
So Kevin's recommendation basically means no capital improvements to schools.
Stick to your idealistic guns, but I'll vote for what works.