By Scott Kaufman, Legislative Director
Whose Line Is It Anyway is an improvisational comedy “game show.” I used quotation marks because while there are games, one of the running gags is it’s “the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.” That could be the state motto for the one-party state of California.
That’s especially true of the tortured path many propositions took to the ballot this year.
Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 (Proposition 5) was a direct attack on Proposition 13 that would have lowered the two-thirds vote of the electorate required to pass local special taxes (and bonds) to 55 percent. But proponents of the bill said it was really about democracy.
“It’s pretty clear what we’re doing here,” said Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry. “It’s just giving the opportunity for the citizens to vote on this.”
Then something happened on the way to the ballot; polling indicated that ACA 1 would fail.
“Recent voter surveys have indicated a lack of support for the special taxes portion of the constitutional amendment,” according to agenda documents from a recent meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments Joint Legislation Committee.
They’re counting on ACA 1’s lower threshold for bonds to dramatically raise taxes in the Bay Area:
“Based on multiple polls conducted by EMC Research, it seems clear that a 55 percent vote threshold is critical to securing passage of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s pending ballot measure for a $20 billion regional housing bond.”
So rather than giving citizens the opportunity to vote on it, because they might not get their way, they changed ACA 1. Their new proposal removes the provision in ACA 1 lowering the two-thirds vote for special taxes but retains the provision lowering the two-thirds vote for local general obligation bonds. Local bonds are almost always paid back through property-related fees and assessments. So, to get it to pass, they are just going to put it all on property owners like you.
Speaking of bonds, there is $20 billion in statewide bonds on the ballot, too. Proposition 2 is a $10 billion bond for school facilities and Proposition 4 is a $10 billion bond for climate-related programs.
Bonds almost double (and, in many cases, have more than doubled) the cost of projects in nominal terms and these bonds will be paid by people decades from now that didn’t even get to vote for their authorization. To make matters worse, the Legislature missed their own deadline to put them on the ballot.
But wait, I am hearing you now, didn’t I say they are on the ballot? Yes. But didn’t I also just say the Legislature missed its own deadline to put them on the ballot? Yes. How can both those things be true? Oh, fair reader, you forgot that we live in a Whose Line Is It Anyway democracy. Everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
The Legislature simply passed a bill declaring a special election on the same day as the November general election and consolidated the two together. How convenient! That’s also how they intended to snake a watered-down Proposition 47 reform initiative on the ballot to compete with the citizen-initiated reform measure.
Prop. 47 from 2014, if you don’t remember, recategorized crimes like shoplifting, grand theft, forgery, fraud, receiving stolen property, writing bad checks and others that don’t exceed $950 to misdemeanors rather than felonies. They called it the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”
You might be surprised to find out that making petty crime a slap on the wrist seems to have encouraged more crime and made our neighborhoods and schools less safe. So, public safety groups and commercial retailers collected signatures to put a Prop. 47 reform initiative on the ballot.
The governor and Legislative leaders didn’t approve and sought to put their own competing measure on the ballot. Fortunately, the media scrutiny and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s national aspirations caused them to rethink that and the law enforcement, district attorney and business-backed Prop. 47 reform measure will be allowed to stand on its merits. That’s Proposition 36 on your November ballot.
I hear you again, fair reader, you’re saying, there is a Proposition 2 and Proposition 36? Yes. There are 35 propositions on the ballot? No. What? You forgot the motto again! In that bill where the Legislature made a special election so they could put those bonds on the ballot past their deadline, they also gave themselves prime placement by picking their own numbers. They are Propositions 2 through 6. We mere citizens get Propositions 32 through 36.
Finally, you might be asking, what happened to ACA 13? ACA 13 would have increased the voter threshold selectively; citizens’ initiatives that require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes or borrow money would require a two-thirds vote to pass. We were told it was simply meant to protect the will of the majority. In reality, it was an attack on the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act.
To prove my point, when the California Supreme Court removed TPA from the November ballot, the Legislature removed ACA 13 too. They called another special election to move it to the November 2026 ballot in case we qualify a new TPA initiative by then.
“I trust the voters in weighing these and making their decision,” said Assemblyman Chris Ward when passing ACA 13.
Well, unless you might disagree with them.