O2C's 2020 General Election California Voter Guide

What a clusterfuck this year. 12 statewide ballot props this year.

Gonna start with a summary, and dive into the propositions as I think need diving.

Prop 14 - Authorizes bonds to continue stem cell research funding. This is a continuation and expansion of Prop 71, which was passed in the aftermath of Bush's veto of stem cell research funding. More research needed, default No.

Prop 15 - Repeals prop 13 for commercial and industrial (but not residential and agricultural) properties valued over $3 million. Prop 13 limits both property tax rate hikes and assessment value increases. This would probably help undo some of the market distortions that prop 13 imposed, but could introduce others, and could bias cities toward approving only commercial projects in a time when we desperately need housing instead. Leaning very weakly No for the last reason.

Prop 16 - Repeals prop 209. Prop 209 "prohibits the state from discriminating against, or granting 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." You want to do WHAT while ethnonationalism is on the rise? Hard No.

Prop 17 - Restores voting rights for felons out on parole. Seems like a no-brainer Yes.

Prop 18 - Allows 17-year olds to vote in primary elections in general election years if they'll be 18 by the general election. If this was just about candidates, that'd be one thing, but this also lets them vote on ballot propositions. Voting No.

Prop 19 - Makes prop 13 even better for seniors. There are a few fairness things that are good, and a few unabashed giveaways. It *could* help free up some housing though. Leaning No.

Prop 20 - Restricts parole for non-violent offenders, authorized felony sentences for certain crimes that are currently misdemeanors, and increases the state's ability to collect DNA. Pros: makes domestic violence a felony. Cons: pretty much everything else. There's always one of these tough-on-crime bills on the ballot. Voting No.

Prop 21 - Expands local governments' ability to enact rent control, and repeals the statewide rent control ordinance passed last year. Yuck. Voting No.

Prop 22 - Allows Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, et al. to classify their drivers as independent contractors, opposed to AB5. On the one hand, AB5 blows chunks and should absolutely be repealed. On the other hand, this doesn't do that. One the one hand, Uber and Lyft are better than taxis and I want them to continue operating in CA. On the other hand, they'd lose standing in their lawsuit against AB5 if Prop 22 passes. I want AB5 to go down in flames, and I think a court case is more likely to do that. If prop 22 passes, I think the other people that AB5 fucks over won't have enough clout to fight it anymore. So voting No.

Prop 23 - Regulates kidney dialysis clinics. Does this sound familiar? Something similar was on the ballot in 2018 and failed. Still haven't figured out which company is trying to screw over its competition here, but I'm 90% sure that's what's happening. I won't be party to it. Voting No.

Prop 24 - Creates a new consumer privacy bureaucracy for CCPA violation enforcement (currently handled by the CA DOJ). Need to actually read the text on this one. I don't have a good sense of whether it's worth doing this, or if it could be done by regular legislation. Default No, but I'm undecided.

Prop 25 - Referendum for SB10, which would have eliminated money bail. This is a referendum rather than an initiative or amendment, so it's a Yes to maintain the status quo, rather than a No. The ACLU was supporting SB10 until the final draft, after which they pulled their support. I've seen 2 current and 1 former public defender against this, so I'm gonna vote No unless someone gives me a good reason to vote Yes.

On Prop 25, did the ACLU indicate why they withdrew their support? It seems like ending the bail system could be good, but I havent read much into the bill.

The replacement scoring system is known to have implicit biases.

We get to deal with a longer ballot too in Florida because of Amendments. Only one that excites me is the one to change local and state races to open primaries with runoffs in November. That should help weed out the extremists.

Checking my cheat-sheet... hmm, may have to rethink a couple of these...

Thanks, BTW!

For me, pretty much straight no, except 22, though I need to get more info on a few.

Sounds like a big improvement. The biggest problem has been the term limits for legislators which have left the lobbyists in charge in Tallahassee, but I can't see any way that's ever going to be changed.

Oregon's ballots can't get here soon enough. I want to deep dive our Measures to see what needs to be scoffed at.

Of course you love Prop 22. The fact that it effectively bans the legislature from enacting ANY regulations on an entire industry is a robber barrons’ bootlicker‘s wet dream.

A stem cell cure saved my life over a decade ago now, so I have a hard time understanding what research is needed before funding, even more so where the money will come for that research in the first place.

You read a lot into that. I just like Uber and Lyft. Other customers and I like those services. And, apparently, the drivers by pretty wide margins would rather continue as they have. So, if the workers and customers would rather have it the way it's been, why should the state erect barriers to that? I know in your world the state always knows best (except, of course, when the state is controlled by Republicans), but I think it's better to let people choose. And if the state has shown that it's unwilling to let people work out their own affairs on this matter, the people may need to take some of that authority away from them. Very democratic, doncha think?

I myself have worked gig jobs and am opposed in principle to the state "helping me" by making me less able to get work, or to get work on terms that could be favorable or important to me. Truthfully, O2C's reasoning for being against 22 gave me pause, because he's probably right. By carving out an exemption for Uber, Lyft, etc., we might makes it less likely that a lawsuit bringing the whole statist idea down will succeed. But, at the end of the day, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And if this proposition fails, they can still be part of the lawsuit.

The reason gig workers say they prefer to be independent contractors is because the companies muddy the waters and try to pretend that classifying them as employees means they'll be required to have set schedules.

They could still keep the same setup. The main difference is that Uber and Lyft would pay the employer share of payroll taxes and drivers could unionize.

Odd, but it's my understanding that the drivers are in favor of 22. What are your sources?

I don’t know what polling @Paladin is going off of but here there was quite a division between workers.

The workers who treated it as their job, and did the majority of the rides were pro unionization. Those who picked up a shift here and there throughout the month were opposed. So while the majority of all drivers might have been opposed the vast majority of those drivers who were full time drivers and did the vast majority of the work were pro.

Some confusion: I said most drivers want to continue as they have (and, thus, ostensibly in favor of 22). I was not implying that most drivers are against 22; quite the opposite.

Forgot to mention that we also have the 15 dollar an hour minimum wage to vote on. (Thank you John Morgan!) Early polls already show that breaking the 60 percent threshold. So if that happens, next year the minimum wage will jump to $10.00 an hour and increase each year by one dollar until it hits $15.

The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth will be quite entertaining if it passes. My question to the complainers is "What kind of business are you running if you can't make a decent profit without exploiting your workers?"

As someone who doesn't drive (in SoCal - oh, the horror, the horror!), I've relied on Uber/Lyft frequently... especially when I was apartment-hunting at the height of the First Wave. I also utilize Instacart , whose drivers I believe would fall under Prop 22.

Judging from the variations in ages and ethnicities of the people who drive me or deliver my groceries, I would say that many, many, many of the people who would be affected by CA Prop 22 are (A) people whose jobs disappeared under Donnie-boy's "economy" and are scrambling to make the rent; (B) students who haven't yet found "real" jobs but who have massive student loans to pay off; (C) people whose RL jobs don't cut it in this overpriced region; and (D) recent "legal" immigrants who can't find anything else.

Of that last group, the saddest story told to me was the guy who drove me from the Westside through fuggin' Beverly [under construction] Hills to a downtown L.A. office where I needed to get some documents signed. He was working 12-hour shifts for Uber because he had a wife and two kids to feed. He'd been mugged the night before. The thugs cracked him over the head and he ended up in the ER with a concussion. Signed himself out and, against his wife's pleas, went to work the next morning.

These are the people that no one will protect. If Prop 22 fails, will a union pick him up? Hah.

So something I missed about 22: any modifications takes a ⅞ supermajority in the legislature, and it bans driver unions.

https://wordforge.net/index.php?thr...n-california-voter-guide.120571/#post-3277751



And the 7/8ths super majority to modify is only if the modifications are in the ‘spirit’ of the initiative. Any proposed regulations TO THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY that go against the ‘spirit’ have to go to another initiative.

Okay, more research done on Prop 14. Unfortunately, it doesn't really help me come to a firmer conclusion. The short version is that Prop 71's claims were overblown, but it's delivered about as much as could reasonably have been expected in the absence of media and its proponents' hype of the technology. A plurality of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)'s funding has gone to basic research grants (which, given the level of understanding of stem cells, is completely appropriate), whereas Prop 71 promised clinical trials. Up through 2018, it had funded about 4 clinical trials; the pace ramped up in anticipation of Prop 14. None of them have led to FDA-approved treatments.

That's not to say that stem cell tech hasn't, but it's been NIH-funded stem cell tech. Ever since Obama's 2009 lifting of federal restrictions on funding embryonic stem cell research, the NIH has been better at funding stem cell research than CA. That said, CA has been better at funding transitional steps, the intermediate steps between basic research and clinical trials. basic According to the SF Chronicle, the NIH is not very good at funding those in general, and further funding of CIRM could be very helpful there. That said, the legislature is fully capable of further funding of CIRM without general obligation bonds if they want to; indeed, the plan is to do so at least until the completion of the currently pending and running trials. That said, the bond wouldn't be terribly expensive; interest rates are low right now, and we could get away with only paying $7.8 billion on a $5.5 billion bond, vs the $6 billion we're in the middle of paying down on the original $3 billion bond. That said, we've got a lot of other priorities right now, and a perpetual budget crunch. That said, the bonds don't go into repayment for 5 years, by which time, hopefully, we won't be in quite such a squeeze.

There's also the issue of accountability and transparency. The oversight commission (ICOC) is chock-full of potential and actual conflicts of interest, in that they'd be directing funds to institutions they control or who pay their salaries. Now, that hasn't been a problem in practice because the various members have been pretty scrupulous about recusing themselves from votes in which they have conflicts of interest. But in some cases, over half the commission has had to recuse themselves from votes. Ridiculous! The legislature has no oversight role. Prop 14 does nothing to fix accountability, and in fact makes it worse; the proposed additional members of the ICOC have just as many conflicts as the existing members. Transparency is improved somewhat by adding a quadrennial public audit. Prop 71 also allows voting on contract size by members who have conflicts of interest after it's been determined, without the conflicted member voting, that a contract will be awarded (Prop 14 did not). There was also an issue of how much of the Prop 71 funds were used for administration. Prop 14 tries to close the barn door too late, limiting administrative overhead to 7.5%, 3.5% for general administration, 4% for salaries. That's still $412.5 million for a staff that isn't supposed to exceed 105-120, over 15 years... or an annual average salary + overhead of $229,000. Most of the commissioners already have other full-time, prestigious jobs, like UC Regents, or Stanford Research Directors. If they forgo salaries, that's $323,000-$392,000 on average for the remaining 70-85 staff. The part time Vice Chairman currently gets paid $240,000 annually for the job. This all seems rather expensive.

Prop 14 also earmarks $1.5 billion to central nervous system disorder research (Alzheimers, Parkinson's, stroke, epilepsy, etc.). I'm not sure the ballot box is a good place for this to be divvied up.

Prop 14 re-establishes a Shared Research Laboratory Program to provide a central source of stem cell lines, culture materials, instruction, and instruments to research institutions (note: not private companies). It's not clear at all that this is needed, as all of the institutions that received CIRM grants are perfectly capable of generating and maintaining stem cell lines on their own (it's most of the UCs, Stanford, USC, and half a dozen research hospitals), and already own or are capable of purchasing the equipment they need. This seems like a waste of money.

There's an explicit creation of programs for the distribution of stem cell therapies. This is pointless until there are actually therapies to be distributed that can be done outside a hospital setting. This feels like potentially pointless infrastructure building. It's not clear they'll ever be needed (see the numerous shady stem cell clinics -- they prove that the distribution channels aren't a real risk), and it's clear they're not needed now. That said, part of that program is for making access to clinical trials with stem cells easier. This part might actually be useful. NIH doesn't fund it, and getting patients into clinical trials is a pretty huge burden on investigators.

All in all, I'm inclined to vote No on this, still pretty much by default. Stem cell research should happen, but it's far from clear that this is the only, let alone best way to make it happen, unlike in 2004. If this bond were half the size, I might consider it, and I'd vote for politicians who'd fund it out of the treasury, but I don't see a call for this ballot proposition, or of a bond this size.

Prop 15: The top line is that it repeals the part of Prop 13 (property tax limitations) that blocks reassessments except at time of purchase for commercial and industrial property (I'll refer to it as commercial mostly), but not for residential and agricultural land (I'll refer to it as residential). It's expected to raise $8-12.5 billion annually, with the usual (for CA) 40% set-aside for schools (89% K-12, 11% community college. Nothing for UC or CSU except as funded from the remaining 60%), and an unusual $100/student guaranteed funding increase. The property tax rates don't change (still limited to 1%), only the assessment frequency.

But having such split-roll payroll taxes immediately opens up the question: what about the marginal cases. To its credit, the legislature seems to have made an effort to actually answer this. Here's some of the borderline scenarios that are of most concern to people interested in maintaining Prop 13 protections on their homes:

1. Home offices are not assessed as commercial as long as the office is less than 25% of the square footage of the house. If it's more, it's assessed proportionally (see below).
2. Rental housing is not assessed as commercial if it's occupied. It is unspecified what happens if it's vacant housing.
3. Mixed-use buildings and land are assessed proportionally - eg if a building is 10% retail, 90% residential, 10% of the land and building value are taxed based on the the commercial assessment, 90% based on the old residential assessment.
4. Vacant lots (with no buildings) are not assessed as commercial as long as the land is zoned residential or mixed use. Privately owned open spaces and publicly accessible parks are assessed as residential, regardless of zoning.
5. Commercial landowners with total commercial property below $3 million (inflation-adjusting) will continue to be assessed as residential.
6. There's an intent that small businesses (< 50 people) won't be subject to the reassessment until FY 2025-2026 (directly, or passed through in rent increases), but in fact it only exempts small businesses who own real property. Oddly, it's not required that the business owns the property that they're occupying. So if you have a business that owns some super cheap land some random place in the state, and rents a store in a mall, the mall owner can count your business toward the small business occupancy threshold (50%) to put off reassessment. But if your business doesn't own that land somewhere, your business will not be counted towards that threshold, potentially causing the reassessment of the entire property if only some of your neighbors do. Yikes.
7. Small businesses will have their tangible (non-real) tangible personal property taxes reduced to 0. Non-small businesses get an exemption on their first $500,000 of tangible personal property. This includes cars, but not boats or aircraft. Cities, counties, and special districts will be reimbursed for loss of tax revenue from this.
8. The $3 million threshold is for all commercial property, not all property. So if you own a $2.5 million home, and have a small business with property worth $1 million, the commercial property will not be reassessed.
9. The legislation phases in starting in FY 2022-2023.

So let's look at some of the consequences, intended and otherwise.

• 92% of the increased tax burden should fall on the top 10% of real property owners in CA. Chevron, Disney, Walmart, Westfield, Apple, Google, Cisco, etc.
• Farms that have a commercial arm (eg, wineries with their own vineyards) shouldn't be subject to reassessment unless the commercial part of the property alone is worth over $3 million.
• This opens up the potential for, effectively, a vacancy tax by reassessing vacant residential property while vacant. It's unclear to me what steps would be required here. Could be anything from an executive order to another ballot proposition.
• Number 6 is just weird. Expect a lot of small businesses that rent and have no need for land to buy it up in the cheapest locations available. Honestly it seems like someone screwed up during transcription of the law and wrote the wrong thing. The could cause other consequences too, like large property owners with small business renters to buy, subdivide, and give real property to their tenants in locations completely unrelated to their business. I expect some poor county to say they'll be willing to subdivide some lots to any arbitrary sizes for a fee, to generate some extra revenue here.
• Number 7 could be a significant tax decrease for many small businesses.
• Schools and colleges could definitely use the funding.
• This would correct quite a bit of the market distortion that Prop 13 introduced. But it does introduce a couple others. Cities will be strongly incentivized to approve only commercial projects to increase their tax base, in a time when California badly needs housing. This may be somewhat offset by the decrease in demand for commercial properties at these higher assessments.
• There will also be strong pressure to rezone residential areas as commercial or mixed use. If the balance goes to mixed use, this is actually a good thing.

All in all, except for #6, it seems like a pretty fair tax hike that should largely land where it's aimed, except with a few quirks, and opening the door to, effectively, a vacancy tax.

I'm now very weakly leaning towards a Yes vote.

Nothing brings the two sides together more than the threat of actual change

Nice column by Joe Henderson. He's a long-standing friendly acquaintance of mine. Honest and willing to listen. He was also an excellent sportswriter before he was given a general interest column. Good people.

I'm spending a few days in SoCal on a family visit and of course have been bombarded by ads for and against the various propositions. Thank you for taking the time to explore them and explain them. I can't vote in California, of course, but at least I'm not as bewildered by the noise over this stuff as I might be and I hate feeling bewildered!

It work exactly the way my side gig with Amazon works: I schedule my own shifts but I still receive a W-2 at the end of the year and would still be entitled to health care if I wanted it.

The thing is, those companies plan to keep drivers only until they can work out the kinks in automated driving, and then they'll be dropped liked a prom night dumpster baby, but unable to get unemployment because they weren't employees! Ain't America neat?

Yeah, the human drivers who haven't been paying attention are going to be in for a rude surprise. Driverless cars have been "a couple of years off" for a long time now, but it will happen and whilst Uber and Lyft haven't been going out of their way to publicize it, I don't think they've really tried to keep it a secret, either. The human drivers will be wiped out the way out the way buggy whip manufacturers were crushed by the automobile.

Prop 16:

Textually, Prop 16 is very simple: it's a straight up repeal of 1996's Prop 209, which banned discrimination and preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in government employment, contracting, and college admissions in California.

The biggest opposition to Prop 209 seems to always have been on account of its effective ban on affirmative action in college admissions, and much less so for public employment and contracting provisions. Nevertheless, Prop 16 would repeal those provisions as well. Interestingly, the official arguments emphasize this much more than pretty much all other advertising about it. There is evidence that after Prop 209, more contracts were awarded to the lowest bidder, regardless of racial ownership (but in fact tending to be whiter), whereas in the past higher bids from women- and minority-owned companies would be more likely to be accepted. I haven't found much evidence of a loss or gain in diversity in public employment after Prop 209.

As for college admissions, Asian (not broken down beyond that) students were the biggest beneficiaries in-fact of Prop 209, while African-American admission suffered most. Except for a 1-year jump in 1997, white and hispanic student admissions have more or less been following their respective population trends (down and up, respectively).

To attempt to work around the racial/ethnic affirmative action ban, other measures have been instituted, such as guaranteeing the top 10% of every high school class admission to a UC, and affirmative action based on economic status. These efforts have been successful in returning diversity to the UC system. African-American students make up a larger proportion of the matriculating student body than ever before, and significantly higher relative to the African-American population in California than pre-1997 (5% of admission / 6.2% of population now, vs 3.8% / 7.4% in 1996). Asian students are currently most overrepresented relative to their numbers in California (35% / 13%), American Indian students are most underrepresented (0.5% / 1%). White students are near the bottom (22% / 40.1%). Hispanic students match their population rates pretty well (34% / 37.6%).

So why is prop 16 necessary? Proponents point to extant systemic racism in other areas of California life. I don't doubt for a moment these are true. The question is whether repealing prop 209 would actually improve things in these other areas. There seems to be some evidence that it might, at least in state-level contracting, but it doesn't seem to be a pressing problem in higher education anymore. K-12 education is an entirely different matter -- black students graduate at much lower rates than others (73% vs 89% for white students, 93% for Asian students, and 80% for hispanic students) and drop out at higher rates (15.3% vs 6.3% vs 3.1% vs 10.4%, respectively) -- but prop 16 doesn't even pretend to help with that. I have no data on public employment. It seems to me that gains here would likely be modest.

And there's the other side of this coin: a lot of California is very red and very racist, and have been feeling very bold over the past 4 years. Even in District 11, a Holocaust denier and avowed anti-semite received 25% of the vote for the House seat in 2018. And that's still in the Bay Area, let alone the rest of the state! Allowing racial preferences in public contracting and hiring at the state level could, perhaps, increase diversity at *that* level, but allowing racial discrimination in public contracting and hiring at the county and local levels would almost certainly end very badly in large parts of California. This might not be the case in another year, but I'm pretty worried about it this year. There's significantly higher tail risk on this, especially at the local level, than I'm comfortable with, especially given the modesty of the gains that are likely. We live in a world of rising ethnonationalism, and passing a measure that could enable it locally while it's so emboldened seems like a bad idea to me. I'm voting No on this. The risk mitigation is enough justification, I think. Maybe I'll vote for it when it comes up again in a few years, if current trends have reversed (I don't think that simply electing Biden, even with a blue wave behind him, is going to do it. And if Biden doesn't win...). I would definitely vote yes on a proposition that actually did something about the inequities in K-12 education -- the potential gains are much larger -- but sadly that's not an option.