It's fair to say I'm a little late on this, especially given CA's top two primary system which actually makes the primary arguably more important than the general election. But let's jump in. Just going to go in official voter guide order. Prop 1 - Authorizes $6.38 Billion in Bonds to Build Mental Health Treatment Facilities for Those with Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges; Provides Housing for the Homeless. Legislative statute: What's it do: what it says in the title, mostly. $4.4 billion for places for mental health and substance abuse treatment (6,800 beds). This seems incredibly expensive. 6 years ago, it cost under $350,000 per bed to build mental health treatment facilities. Now we're expected to fork over nearly $650,000 per bed? $2 billion for housing construction and conversion grants for mentally ill/drugs or alcohol abusing homeless people; $1 billion of which is for places for veterans (4530 housing units, 2350 for veterans). This will reduce veteran homelessness by 20+%, and have a negligible impact on total state homelessness (171,000 people) . This seems somewhat expensive, but less objectionably so; $460k/unit [later O2C: $475k isn't terrible for new construction, but a lot of these grants go to converting motels. That seems ludicrously expensive]. It also changes the MHSA allocation from 5/95% state/county programs to 10/90%. Why's it on the ballot: It's a bond, and it modifies MHSA, which was a ballot measure. What doesn't it do: 6,800 is less than half the beds needed at a time in California. What doesn't need to be on the ballot: the $2 billion housing chunk; recent budgets have allocated $3.7 billion for this purpose without voter involvement. I think someone doesn't want this gravy train to stop. From a governance perspective, this is a mix of good and bad. I'm tempted to just vote for it since the legislature voted overwhelmingly to pass it already, but I'll try to give the text a read-through first to make sure I'm not missing anything important.... okay, it also creates a new layer of bureaucracy to oversee the county systems and local behavioral health boards... side note: I really, really hate the drafting choice made here: instead of an actual diff between the old and new text, they duplicated the text of the edited sections, and inserted a deprecation clause and operationalizing clause at the end of each, making it basically impossible to compare the before and after. This should be illegal. I'm tempted to vote against it on principle now. Actually yeah, the only thing this seems to have going for it is the fact that it was overwhelmingly passed by the legislature. But this is SO DAMN EXPENSIVE, and the governance is SO BAD... I think I have to vote No. EDIT: I know it's probably important to allow MHSA funds to be used for substance abuse disorders, but that can be on a November ballot measure and not change anything, since nothing of this law goes into effect till January anyway. The legislature can fix their shit for a cleaner November ballot prop.
Some very interesting results in San Francisco: https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2024/03/06/sf-primary-election-results Proposition A: Affordable housing Asks voters whether the city should issue $300 million in bonds to fund affordable housing construction amid a state mandate to build more than 46,000 affordable homes by 2031. 67.7% supported, 32.3% opposed. Proposition B: Police staffing A controversial measure that seeks to set minimum staffing levels for the city's police department, potentially diverting tax revenues from other sources or creating a new tax. Proponents say the measure would help the police department address staffing shortages, while some critics argue police staffing levels have little impact on reducing crime. 67.4% supported, 32.6% opposed. Proposition C: Office-to-housing conversions Designed to incentivize office-to-housing conversions amid San Francisco's climbing office vacancy rate, this measure would implement transfer tax exemptions the first time commercial buildings are transferred to new owners for residential purposes. 53.9% supported, 46.1% opposed. Proposition D: City ethics rules Aims to expand the list of gifts city employees are prohibited from accepting and prohibit city employees from accepting "anything of value for themselves or a third party with the goal of influencing any government action." 88% supported, 12% opposed. Proposition E: Police surveillance, vehicle pursuits Another controversial measure that would enable the police to chase people suspected of committing felonies or misdemeanors, use drones for car chases, and install public surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology. Proponents argue the measure would help police prevent and solve crime, while opponents say police chases are dangerous and that surveillance tech unjustly targets communities of color. 60% supported, 40% opposed. Proposition F: Welfare drug screening If passed, anyone who receives financial benefits from San Francisco's County Adult Assistance Program could be subject to drug screening. Opponents call the measure "dangerous and punitive," while proponents argue it would help get people into drug treatment programs. 63% supported, 37% opposed. Proposition G: Eighth-grade algebra Would make it city policy to encourage the school board to resume teaching algebra in eighth grade. The school board last month already approved a plan to offer eighth-grade algebra beginning next school year. 84% supported, 16% opposed. So basically leftist NIMBYs and the "defund the police" crowd were told to fuck right off. And I can only surmise that some sort of leftist nonsense like "algebra is racist" is what led to reinstating algebra becoming something to vote on
Two days later: Senate Candidates (partial term and full term): Sepi Gilani - Free college, free grad school, make dying cheaper, and a surprisingly long but very conventional policy essay on homelessness. I don't get a sense of whether she actually has positions on most things. Baseline. Steve Garvey - The leading Republican Senate candidate. Former baseball star, has flirted with Senate runs before. Appears relatively moderate; the word "Republican" is missing from his website. Has promised not to try to restrict abortion, and is pro-Ukraine. But he also supported Trump twice, and has refused to talk about January 6. A wolf in sheep's clothing, I'll bet. Pass. Katie Porter - Famous for her use of whiteboards in Congress, claims to refuse PAC money. Is being attacked by a crypto-bro Super PAC. She's got an anti-corruption platform I'm mostly positive on. All her solutions to problems involve money at the Federal level, which I suppose is appropriate for a Senator, but also a little unimaginative. Her Social Security plan - lowering the eligibility age to 50 - is unfundable. Her public safety platform is centered entirely around gun control and mental health. Not even a mention of poverty mitigation. Wants a $20 federal minimum wage. Climate Change issue page plans are generic and vague. Her Plans page, is considerably better, spelling out the legislation she'd support. Housing affordability is a major component of this, which I like, a lot, and it's not all just "throw money at the problem". Doesn't seem to have any sort of Yeah, her over Gilani, for sure. Intermission: at this point I watched the last two Senate debates with Garvey, Schiff, Porter, and Lee. No one came off very good. Porter and Lee seemed sincere, but Lee has some basic logic problems ("How would you cut the deficit?" "I'd cut $100 million dollars from the Pentagon budget and put it into troop readiness"), and couldn't keep straight whether she was for a $50 federal or state minimum wage. Schiff was deliberate, calculating, and kinda smarmy. Porter wouldn't commit to funding the military to defend Taiwan, is rather anti-nuclear, and there are real questions about how effective she would be in the Senate. Garvey was slow and evasive, only providing real answers when it couldn't possibly hurt him. At this point, I feel like I have to consider polls. I don't like to, but I'm running out of time and I don't think I'll be able to research every candidate. Currently Schiff > Garvey > Porter > Lee, so I’ll vote for Porter.
I dropped the ball on this guide. I had writeups for the SF props, but never posted them here. My picks were: A: Yes (far more cost effective than 1) B: No (strips the police commission of most oversight of PD) C: Yes D: Yes E: No (more massive decrease in police oversight) F: No (drug testing welfare recipients is a waste of money) G: yes but it’s pointless The results @Ten Lubak posted are only about halfway through counting. I wouldn’t be surprised if A fails. I hope E does and there’s a chance. I hope F fails but there’s little chance of it.
By their nature these threads of yours never get a lot of discussion activity, but wanted to say I always enjoy reading them.
According to this and the links therein, it was taken away because it was "too difficult" and because of people who think that knowing algebra isn't a useful life skill. And while the vote passed to reinstate it (and I'm in no way sure if this is correct) there is some controversy about whether it will achieve anything as there is no jurisdiction.
Update: Prop 1 is currently passing by the skin of its teeth. With ~215k ballots left to count, it’s only passing by a 20k margin. For a while that gap was only 3k.
