PROP 14 - In 2004 voters approved a state constitutional amendment that affirmed the right of researchers in California to conduct Stem Cell research. The vote also created a state agency to distribute $3 Billion in grants for medical research. That money is nearly gone.
This year's Prop 14 would authorize an additional $5.5 Billion to the fund. A portion ($1.5 Billion) would be dedicated to diseases affecting the brain, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Some funding would be dedicated to training students at CA State Universities and Community Colleges, since most of the funding went to the UC system last time.
This is all worthwhile and important, but a lot has changed since we approved the earlier prop in 2004. In that year, when voters approved the first bond, there was a federal ban on funding for stem cell research. Barack Obama lifted that ban in 2009, so more funding sources are available now. Also, back then, it made sense for California to throw down money to be a major player in a new medical field. Today, our industry doesn't need the public step up that it did back them. And, thanks to the investment we made in 2004, the science has also improved, lessening the need for stem cells alone.
We did the right thing when we passed the first initiative to prop up a nascent industry with loads of promise. But now might not be the time to take on another large debt that doesn't address our more pressing needs.
Your Political Friend is voting NO.
PROP 15 - It used to be that property taxes in California were assessed the way they are in other states - they were determined by the property's current market value. But in the late 70s, as the price of homes was rising steeply, property owners were being hit with huge increases in their property taxes. An anti-tax revolt followed, and Prop 13 was passed.
It is hard to overstate the damage that 1978's Prop 13 has done since then. The legislation, which froze annual increases of taxable value to 2%, rolled back property assessments to where they had been in 1975. The result is local governments and schools, which rely on property tax revenues, have been starved for funds.
Moreover, Prop 13 made no distinction between commercial and residential properties. While many homes change owners over years, large commercial buildings do so less frequently. As long as the same corporation holds title, their property taxes have stayed roughly where they were during the Ford administration.
Prop 15 would require commercial properties be taxed based on their market value. Owners with less than $3 million worth of commercial land and buildings would be exempt. Business equipment, such as farm equipment, would see a reduction in taxable value by $500,000.
There may be unintended consequences, of course. Some landlords will pass along the tax increases to tenants, driving up costs for businesses that are already struggling. But this is not certain. What is certain is that large corporations are saving billions, while our local governments and schools suffer.
Your Political Friend is voting YES.
PROP 16 - For a "progressive" state, California voters have passed some badly discriminatory propositions. Prop 8 immediately comes to mind. That one banned same-sex marriage. Yes, we actually banned gay marriage in 2008.
In 1996 voters passed Prop 209 which ended affirmative action in public employment, contracting, and education. It did so with the wording, "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group, on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." So, maybe some people who voted for it thought they were voting against discrimination in general, instead of ending a program meant to reverse years of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, etc.
Many people have debated pros and cons of affirmative action, and I don't mean to do so here, but suffice to say that the historical justifications for it are sound. Statistics bear out the case that race is class for most people.
Prop 16 would eliminate the ban put in place by Prop 209. That's it.
Your Political Friend is voting YES.
PROP 17 - I have never understood why people in prison or parole are not allowed to vote. These people, regardless of their past, still have an interest in who represents them in government. Stripping a convicted criminal of their physical freedom is just, but taking away their democratic franchise seems, at best, unAmerican.
The opponents' argument against the prop is basically this: many tax increases and bond measures are on the ballot, and 17 year olds don't have the real-world experience to make informed judgements.
Of course, these 17 year olds, just a few months shy of being legally declared reasonable, are the ones who will be paying the debts that their elders are so faithfully considering. Unless you fear this is a slippery slope to toddlers voting, what is the harm in giving them a voice? Don't forget that many of these teens pay taxes, and what do we say about taxation without representation?
As we saw with the student activists in Parkland, Florida, and the armed anti-mask protestors in Lansing, Michigan, wisdom and maturity do not correspond to age. As the Fool told his King Lear, "Thou shouldst not have been old, 'till thou hadst been wise."
Your Political Friend is voting YES.
PROP 19 - In 2018 the California Association of Realtors (CAR) put the self-serving Prop 5 on the ballot. In a nutshell, it aimed to help wealthy seniors sell their homes while lowing property tax revenues throughout the state. Your Political Friend recommended a hard NO and, fortunately, the prop failed to pass.
As a reminder, property taxes in CA are based on the price at which you purchased your home. With the inflation in home prices over the past 25 years, many people who move within the state experience a shocking increase in property taxes on their next home. The state gives exceptions to people over 55 and disabled people, allowing them to retain the taxable value of their former home, so long as they buy a home of equal or lesser value. They can use this exception only once in their lifetime.
Prop 19 would add people who's homes were destroyed by wildfire to the list of exceptions. It would also allow eligible homeowners to use the exemption three times instead of one, as well as allow for the purchase of a more expensive home. These would all lower property tax revenues.
In exchange, the measure would raise property taxes on inherited properties. Currently, homes and farms can pass from a deceased parent to their children without triggering a reassessment. Under Prop 19, property taxes on homes and farms will go up if the market value exceeds the assessed value by more than $1 Million. However, the taxes will not go up if one of the children claims the home as a primary residence.
A 2018 Times article detailed how nearly two-thirds of homes inherited in L.A. were being used as second homes or rental properties. The inheritance tax break allowed hundreds of thousands of Californians to avoid paying the higher taxes owed by newer homeowners, even as they raked in rental income. California is the only state in the country to provide such a tax break.
It's easy to see why the CA and National Associations of Realtors have spent more than $40 Million to pass this prop. They make money when homes are sold. They don't when homes are inherited. That's what makes this prop so problematic. Raising the property taxes on inherited homes makes sense, but fixing this problem by advantaging wealthy seniors is also wrong. This measure would give older buyers who were lucky enough to buy their homes decades ago an even greater economic advantage over struggling first time home buyers.
As the Mercury News wrote, "Proposition 19 on the Nov. 3 ballot would close one inequity in California’s byzantine property tax laws and create another." They took a good idea and poured it over something terrible, hoping you won't taste it before you've swallowed.
Your Political Friend is voting NO.
PROP 20 - In 2014 voters approved Prop 47 which resulted some theft-related crimes, such as shoplifting involving less than $950, being punished as misdemeanors instead of felonies. In 2016 voters passed Prop 57, which sought to decrease prison overcrowding by emphasizing parole and rehabilitation for non-violent offenses.
Prop 20 would roll back many of the changes approved by voters in those years. It would classify dozens more crimes as violent, making the convicts ineligible for nonviolent offender parole programs. It would give prosecutors more leeway to charge certain theft-related crimes as felonies, while giving parole boards more avenues to deny parole. It would also restrict parole and probation by requiring county agencies supervising probationers to go before a judge before altering or easing the terms of probation. The measure would also add two new crimes to the penal code: serial theft and organized retail theft. The theft crimes are designed to target repeat offenders and people involved in shoplifting rings. Lastly, it would require certain misdemeanor offenders to submit to DNA collection by law enforcement.
The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world- over 2.1 Million in prison (and that doesn't include incarcerated juveniles). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled California's jails as unconstitutional, finding that preventable deaths were happening once every five to six days due to overcrowding. Thanks to certain reforms, that prison population has been in decline.
And whose pocketbook gets hit when we have fewer prisoners? Welcome back the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, who mostly funded this initiative (with some help from Devin Nunez, et al!). The Yes on 20 campaign has largely relied on scare tactics without any evidence that passing the prop will fix the problems.
There's no evidence of a rise in crime after the passage of Props 47 and 57. This is mostly a job security bill for prison guards, one that will increase prison populations and cost us tens of millions when we could really use that money elsewhere.
Your Political Friend is voting NO.
PROP 21 - Right now only a few cities in CA impose rent control on residential rental properties. Those rent control laws are regulated by a state law which creates three main limitations: 1) Rent control cannot apply to single-family homes, 2) rent control cannot apply to homes built after 1995, 3) rent control laws cannot dictate what landlords can charge new tenants when first moving in, and, 4) landlords of rent controlled properties may only increase rent annually on existing tenants by 5 percent plus inflation, or 10 percent, whichever is lower.
CDCs must report any dialysis related infections to the federal government. Prop 23 would require that they report infections to the CA Dept of Public Health. It would also impose fines for reporting incomplete or inaccurate information.
CDCs receive payments payments from Medicare, Medi-Cal, as well private insurance companies. Those private insurance companies, on average, pay multiple times what Medicare and Medi-Cal pay for dialysis treatment. Prop 23 would prohibit a CDC from denying care to a patient based on who pays for their treatment.
You may wonder why voters are being asked to decide regulatory issues that should be the purview of legislators with access to public health studies showing the need for safety improvements. But this isn't about public health.
Prop 23 is about the United Healthcare Workers Union and SEIU trying to unionize private CDCs. Two years ago the unions failed to pass Prop 8, an initiative that sought to cap the CDCs' revenues while forcing them to pay their employees more. In reality, it would have also had the effect of restricting patient access to care.
Prop 23 would have a similar effect. Requiring a full time physician on-site, playing lifeguard instead of providing care, will only increase costs and exacerbate our shortage of doctors. Will reporting infection information to the state improve patient care? Maybe?
The only good part of this bill is the one requiring the big CDCs to treat patients regardless of their source of coverage. It's so good that the legislature actually passed a law last year doing just that.
Your Political Friend is voting NO.
PROP 24 - In 2018 California passed the first major data privacy law in the country. It gives residents the right to know if and how their information is being collected, whether it is being sold to third parties, and, if so, to whom. It also allows us to opt-out of the sale of our personal information, as well as request that our data be deleted. Companies that fail to protect our data face penalties and are open to civil action. The law went into effect this year.
So this prop is probably an industry attempt to roll back those rules, right? Not really, but it's hard to know what's up based on the support and opposition. The CA NAACP and Common Sense support it. The Consumer Federation of California and ACLU oppose it.
A bit of history:
After Allistair Mactaggart, a wealthy real estate developer and privacy activist, qualified a data privacy proposition for the ballot in 2018, the legislature negotiated similar legislation in exchange for his withdrawing the measure. The California Consumer Privacy Act is a good law for all the reasons mentioned above. However, it has some problems.
One of those problems is that the law only prohibits companies from selling your data. It doesn't stop them from sharing your data, which is really the same thing. Prop 24 would allow you to limit data sharing, as well as limit the use of sensitive data such as race and sexual orientation. It would also triple the fines for violating children's privacy.
The main concern about the current law is that, because it is written by the legislature, it can be amended by the legislature. In the 18 months since the law was passed corporate lobbyists have been busy chipping away at its protections. By passing Prop 24, voters would make those protections immune from amendments meant to weaken it. In fact, the only changes allowed would be those that "further protect consumer rights, including the constitutional right of privacy".
I don't want to sell short the loyal opposition to this measure. The Electronic Frontier Foundation raises legitimate concerns about creating a "pay for privacy" system in which companies withhold discounts from consumers who don't give up their privacy, creating a world of wealthy privacy "haves" and poor privacy "have nots". For this reason and others, the prop is clearly not perfect (I encourage you to read those links).
Nevertheless, I've been come to the tentative belief that the prop is a better choice than risking the current law gets weakened over time. As with most elections, we're not asking ourselves, "which do I like best", but "which one will do the least damage".
Your Political Friend is voting a very ambivalent YES.
PROP 25 - Except for some felony crimes, people who get arrested have the right to release before standing trial. The court can release them on their "own recognizance", or they can be required to post bail. Courts consider various factors when deciding whether to release on bail and, if so, how much to require.
The system of cash bail has been controversial. Many see it as a way to criminalize poverty, as those who cannot pay even the smallest bail amounts are kept in jail for days or weeks, during which they can lose their jobs, their homes, and custody of their kids. And, remember, these people are presumed innocent.
New Jersey ended cash bail in 2017 and found that "the rate at which defendants appeared in court remained high...with an average appearance rate of 92.7 percent in 2014 and 89.4 percent in 2017. Concerns about a possible spike in crime and failures to appear did not materialize." Similar results have been seen in Texas and Washington D.C.
Based on these studies, California passed a law requiring bail reforms in 2018, but that law has not been enacted because of Prop 25. Under the State Constitution, when a referendum on a new law qualifies for the ballot, the law goes on hold until voters determine whether to put it in effect.
Prop 25 was put on the ballot by the bail bonds industry, which obviously stands to lose millions. However, even the supporters of bail reform are split over this one because of the law's reliance on pretrial Risk Assessment Tools. These tools use algorithms to predict which suspects are more likely to flee or commit other crimes based on historical factors about the suspect including criminal history. Judges will still have discretion, but many fear that over-reliance on the tools, which may still exhibit biases against the poor and people of color, will not only perpetuate the current problems, but make them seem scientifically objective.
I understand the fear that many have about the prospect of releasing people who would have otherwise stayed in jail. I live in a city where car break-ins, petty theft, and vandalism are rampant. And the people who commit these crimes are rarely arrested, let alone jailed. Clearly something is not working. But will ending cash bail make things worse? We don't know for sure. What we do know is that the only difference between people who get out on bail now and those that can't is money, and that's not fair.
Your Political Friend is voting YES.
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