Whatever happened with Proposition 4?

An overview of the bond measure and what it means for California’s budget.

Voters were sold a shiny promise — now California is billions deeper in debt. Last November, California voters approved Proposition 4, which authorized $10 billion in bonds for “safe drinking water, wildfire prevention, and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.” It started with SB 867 (Allen-D, Hollywood), which was passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Newsom last year, and subsequently put on the November ballot.

The bill (or rather, the approved bond measure) states that “Fifteen of the 20 most destructive wildfires in state history have occurred in the last decade alone… These wildfires have claimed more than 100 lives, tens of thousands of homes and structures lost, and more than 2,000,000 acres burned.”

Sadly, the Palisades, Eaton, and Hughes fires would break out just over two months after voters passed this bond, accentuating the need for effective wildfire prevention in the state. However, with an already-strained budget, California doesn’t need to resort to this exorbitant borrowing and spending to enact effective fire prevention strategies.

Lawmakers are using climate alarmism to greenlight billions in debt.

The bond measure calls for “planning, investment, and action to address current and future climate change impacts” to be “guided by the best available science, including local and traditional knowledge.”

Supporters used shocking statistics to drive home the urgency — but do they justify the cost? The bill behind the bond measure claims that “without intervention, the cost of climate change to California is estimated to reach $113,000,000,000 annually by 2050, according to the Natural Resources Agency’s California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment.” The report contends that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the economic impacts of “human mortality, damages to coastal properties, and the potential for droughts and mega-floods” that are the alleged result of climate change.

Here’s how the $10 billion from Proposition 4 is supposed to be divvied up.

The Proposition 4 bond calls for:

• $3.8 billion for safe drinking water, drought, flood, and water resilience programs
• $1.5 billion for wildfire and forest resilience programs
• $1.2 billion for coastal resilience programs
• $1.2 billion for biodiversity protection and nature-based climate solution programs
• $850 million for clean air programs
• $700 million for for park creation and outdoor access programs
• $450 million for extreme heat mitigation programs
• $300 million for climate-smart, sustainable, and resilient farms, ranches, and working lands programs

Who’s actually in charge of spending the money? A whole lot of agencies, departments, and commissions — 30 of them, in fact. Among them are the California Natural Resources Agency; the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; the California Department of Fish and Wildlife; the California Vanpool Authority; the State Coastal Conservancy; the Wildlife Conservation Board; the California Conservation Corps; the Ocean Protection Council; and even the California Department of Education. (In other words, the bond money will flow through California’s jungle of bureaucracy).

And not every planned use of the funds lines up with what voters thought they were approving.

The plan includes funds for deferred maintenance on parks, fairground updates, certified mobile farmers markets, and research farms at postsecondary education institutions — questionable uses at best for borrowed money marketed as a fire protection and drinking water bond.

Behind the science-speak is a familiar tactic: spend now, answer questions later.

What’s the actual price tag — and who’s paying for it? Proposition 4 allows California to take on $10 billion in debt for the purposes listed below, which taxpayers will pay back later (in addition to interest accrued on the debt, which the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association estimated will total an additional $8 billion).

For context, as of February of last year, California already had a total outstanding bond debt of about $79 billion. Since then, in addition to Proposition 4, voters also approved a $10 billion bond for public education facilities and a $6.38 billion bond for behavioral health services.

Also keep in mind that in 2014, California voters approved a $2.7 billion bond for water storage projects — including the Sites Reservoir, still nearly a decade away from completion as of 2025.

Governor Newsom’s multi-year spending plan for Proposition 4 is projected to make appropriations through 2040, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report from February. $2.7 billion of the funds are expected to be appropriated in 2025-26.

Will Californians see meaningful results from the $18+ billion check that they wrote the state government (which they and their children will be paying off for decades)? What can be predicted is that California taxpayers will bear the burden of the state’s exorbitant debt, whether they know it or not.

Sheridan Karras is the research manager at California Policy Center.  CPC intern Wyatt Greco contributed to the research for this article.