Ballot-O-Rama: A Guide to California’s 2024 Ballot Propositions

As spectator sports go, November’s ballot propositions have everything – drama, intrigue, the manipulation of language. But for California, this is no mere entertainment: the stakes are very high, indeed.

The ballot includes 10 important propositions, few of which are likely to be the source of more smoke, light and heat than Proposition 36, which reforms a 2014 ballot measure that notoriously downgraded multiple felonies to mere misdemeanors. There are also efforts to raise taxes now (through bonds in Props 2 and 4) and to make it much easier to raise taxes in the future (Prop 5); if you want to maintain California’s earned reputation for being an expensive place to live, you’ll love Prop 5. There’s a measure to end prison labor (Prop 6) and a fascinating showdown over rent control (between an AIDS organization and apartment owners, in Props 33 and 34).

We’ll update this analysis as new information becomes available. Meanwhile, contact us with your comments to Will@calpolicycenter.org.

PROP 2: Public Education Facilities Bond Measure

BACKGROUND: Prop 2 would set up a state matching fund for local bonds. The state match is 65% of the value of the local bond. The state match is designed to make local bonds more attractive to local voters.

SUPPORTERS love the idea of making bonds more attractive to local voters because that makes it more likely the bonds will pass; more money today will immediately relieve the pressure on government budgets.

CPC reminds you that a bond is a tax paid for by future residents, generally over 30 years. Originally established as a way to build big infrastructure projects that would be used by generations (e.g., roads, reservoirs and schools), they’re increasingly simply a way for government to pay for current operating expenses, especially skyrocketing government employee pay and benefits. We’d also remind you that a state matching fund will spur the creation of new bonds at the local level. 

Prop 2 will dramatically raise the cost to state and local taxpayers of any local bond in ways that aren’t always obvious. So,

• if you see a bond on your local ballot that is advertised as $10 billion,
• you have to add the match, in this instance $6.5 billion. 
• And then add interest payments over 30 years. Interest is about 50% of the total amount – in this instance, about $8.25 billion …
• So, if Prop 2 passes, a $10 billion bond becomes a nearly $25 billion bond that future taxpayers – our children and grandchildren – will pay. 

Californians already complain about the high cost of living; this will raise the cost of living in every community that passes a bond – and even (thanks to that state match) in every community that doesn’t.

PROP 3: Right to Marry and Repeal Prop 8

BACKGROUND: In 2008, California voters passed Prop 8, establishing marriage as a legal relationship between a man and a woman. But five years later, after much litigation in state and federal courts, including a decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, a Ninth Circuit court overturned Prop 8. Nevertheless, the Prop 8 definition of marriage remains on California’s law books.

SUPPORTERS say Prop 3 is what’s sometimes called a “cleanup bill” – that, in this case, it merely cleans up the conflict between Prop 8 and that subsequent federal court decision.  

OPPONENTS point out that California lawmakers have a bad habit of using “clean-up bills” like this one to expand their authority to make broader claims about rights in the future. And that seems to be the case with Prop 3 since it doesn’t simply delete the 14 words that Prop 8 made law. And in all the language Prop 3 proposes adding, there’s no simple protection of clergy to refuse to solemnize marriages for any reason whatsoever. Nevada confronted that specific constitutional issue straight on when, in 2022, voters there agreed to eliminate conflicts between state and federal law but included this intelligent provision: “religious organizations and clergy persons have the right to refuse to solemnize a marriage.”

There’s no similar protection in Prop 3. And California has a habit of turning one person’s right into an unconstitutional attack on the rights of others – particularly when those others are people of faith. 

Prop 4: Parks, Environment, Energy, and Water Bond Measure

BACKGROUND: Prop 4 entered political life as a climate bond, then a water bond, and was then rebranded as bond that will include parks – a legislative path that suggests a marketing effort more than prudent policy. If passed, Prop 4 would allow the state to borrow $10 billion to fund state and local parks, environmental protection projects, water infrastructure projects, energy projects, and flood protection projects.

SUPPORTERS ask you to vote “yes” because, well, who doesn’t like parks, the environment, water and energy?

OPPONENTS remind voters that the state hasn’t built the dams it promised in 2014 when they passed Prop 1. There is no reason to believe that passing this bond will do more than send tax dollars to special interests, not projects that build capacity and allow you to have a lawn or take long showers. 

Also, a bond is borrowed money and must be repaid with interest by future taxpayers – generally over 30 years. They also point out that Californians already pay the highest taxes in the nation. 

State lawmakers ought to slice through the red tape – the hundreds of government regulations that make it so difficult to build parks and water or energy infrastructure. Government could produce much more by simply getting out of the way.

PROP 5: Lower Supermajority Requirement to 55% for Local Bond Measures to Fund Housing and Public Infrastructure Amendment

BACKGROUND: First, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers went to court to block the Taxpayer Protection Act. That citizen-supported initiative would have made it more difficult to raise taxes. Then, skipping the difficult and expensive work of gathering citizens’ signatures to qualify Prop 5, state lawmakers simply voted amongst themselves — with the backing of labor unions, to place Prop 5 on the ballot. If passed, Prop 5 will make it easier to pass local bonds for some government projects by lowering the required vote threshold from 67% to 55%. 

SUPPORTERS: The need for more government spending is so urgent that we need to make it easier to raise taxes through bonds. Hoping to reduce the pain, Prop 5 includes this provision: each bond that passes will require a bond oversight committee. 

OPPONENTS: This is just the state’s powerful government unions trying to make it easier to raise taxes in advance of their next campaign — to raise the pay and benefits of government employees. Opponents remind voters that a bond is borrowed money and must be repaid with interest by future taxpayers – generally over 30 years. They also point out that Californians already pay the highest taxes in the nation – and that state lawmakers ought to slice through the red tape — the hundreds of government regulations that make it so difficult to build housing, parks and water infrastructure energy. In this instance, they say, government could produce much more by getting out of the way. And about the creation of a citizens oversight commission: these are rightly viewed as ineffective. Most citizens are appointed to these boards by the people who authorized the placement of the bonds on the ballot in the first place: local officials and government unions that back more government and more government spending. 

PROP 6: Remove Involuntary Servitude as Punishment for Crime Amendment

BACKGROUND: If you’re convicted of a felony and sent to prison, California state law allows that you may be required as a condition of your punishment to help pay for the costs of your imprisonment. This typically involves janitorial, laundry or kitchen work in return for a modest amount of pay you can use in the prison store, for instance, or to purchase phone cards. 

SUPPORTERS of Prop 6 call this slavery, and slavery is, of course, illegal. 

OPPONENTS point out that the 13th amendment abolished slavery – and specifically distinguished slavery from requiring prisoners to help pay for the costs of their prison time, as found in Article 1, Section 6 of the state constitution. 

Opponents also say: 

• Of course, prisoners should shoulder some of the burden of the cost of their crimes
• And whether they “volunteer” for that work as most do or must be forced to do the work is irrelevant. The victims of their crime didn’t volunteer to be victims, they might say. And incarceration – prison time – is by definition involuntary.
• Prison work is overseen by a prison board whose members are appointed by political leaders, including the governor. 
• Prison work is remunerative, and not just in dollars and cents but in training people for life outside prison. 
• This measure is supported by government unions who don’t care about “involuntary servitude” so much as capturing additional work for union members. But their proposal would force taxpayers to pay even more than they do today for what’s already the nation’s most expensive prison system – now estimated at between $80,000 and $100,000 per inmate per year. That’s more than the cost of sending a student to Stanford University.

PROP 32: Increase minimum wage to $18 an hour

SUPPORTERS say it’s expensive to live in California, so we must make it easier by raising the minimum wage.

OPPONENTS: Raising the minimum wage always sounds reasonable if you know nothing about economics. Prop 32 will make the cost of everything in California – already the most expensive state in the nation – more expensive for everybody. Businesses can pay the higher minimum wage only by either raising prices (that’s inflationary, and it hurts consumers) or by cutting costs (for example, eliminating bonuses and vacation time, or by cutting new equipment purchases or employee training). For businesses that compete against out-of-state producers, the higher minimum wage may simply make California-made products uncompetitive. Here’s a simple rule to remember every time you hear someone talk about raising the minimum wage: Everything is a tradeoff. 

PROP 33: Repeals Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act

BACKGROUND: The late 1970s saw rising real estate values (driven up by environmental concerns and historically high Jimmy Carter-era interest rates) make single-family homes in California less affordable. Californians who couldn’t afford to buy homes surged into apartments, and as they did, rents went up. That produced calls for rent control. The Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 allowed local governments to cap rents on existing apartments, but prohibited them from imposing caps on single-family homes, condos, and new construction as of the bill’s signing in 1995. Prop 33 would repeal that law. 

SUPPORTERS: Weirdly, this one comes down to one group: the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. (More about them when we come to Prop 34.) They say the cost of housing is so expensive that we need to cap all rents now. They tried this – and failed – in 2018 and 2020.

OPPONENTS point out that, like the minimum wage hike proposed in 32, rent control sounds easy. But everywhere rent control is initiated, it makes housing costs higher – because it disincentivizes new home construction and maintenance of existing homes. Berkeley, Palo Alto, Hayward, Oakland, Palm Springs, San Francisco and Santa Monica aren’t cheaper because they’ve got rent control. 

PROP 34: Requires health care providers to spend 98% of revenues from federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care

BACKGROUND: Hoping to reduce the costs of prescription drugs, the federal government negotiates discounts on some medications. Proposition 34 would require that health care providers use 98% of their profit on those drugs on direct patient care – a description that applies to just one health care provider: “health care providers that spent over $100 million in any 10-year period on anything other than direct patient care and operated multifamily housing with over 500 high-severity health and safety violation.” If that seems very specific, it is: it applies to just one California organization: the Los Angeles-based nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, backers of Prop 33, above.

For more than a decade, AIDS Healthcare Foundation of Los Angeles has bought AIDS medications at steep, federally negotiated discounts and resold them through its pharmacies at much higher prices – and then used the profit to fund the group’s interest in rent control. It’s an unusual model that the group’s founder, Michael Weinstein, calls a “social enterprise.” And it has made Weinstein a major California political player. 

SUPPORTERS of Prop 34 are apartment owners – specifically the California Apartment Association. They’re tired of watching AIDS Healthcare Foundation buy Rx drugs at a federal discount, sell them at a premium, and then use the difference to spend on rent-control initiatives – like Prop 33, above – that are aimed at apartment owners.

OPPONENTS: Weinstein’s group says everything they do is above board, and that apartment owners are simply greedy. 

PROP 35: Permanently authorizes a tax on managed care organizations to fund Medi-Cal programs

BACKGROUND: California taxes the income of managed-care organizations (MCO) like Kaiser Permanente, LA Care Health Plan, and Orange County’s CalOptima. The federal government matches that tax revenue for the purpose of funding Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid; it’s the federal government’s way of incentivizing the state to fully fund healthcare for low-income people. But Pete Wilson (1991-1999) was the last California governor to direct that money to actual healthcare. Every governor since Wilson – Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom – has used MCO tax revenue as slush fund to cover budget shortfalls. Newsom made that practice more controversial by extending Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants while draining the MCO tax fund and cutting payments to service providers – for example, payments to physicians who see Medi-Cal patients. Some healthcare providers, including some physicians, have responded by refusing to see Medi-Cal patients. The result: 15 million Californians carrying a Medi-Cal benefits card can’t find a doctor who will accept Medi-Cal patients.

SUPPORTERS (including Planned Parenthood, SEIU, The California Medical Association, the California Hospital Association, and the state’s Democrat and Republican parties) say Prop 35 will guarantee that income from the MCO tax funds remains protected from deployment to budget items other than Medi-Cal. They say that will make it possible to pay more to doctors, healthcare facilities (including hospitals and abortion clinics), and ambulance services.

OPPONENTS: Though no major political player publicly opposes Prop 35, the measure has created a cold war between Prop 35 supporters and allies of Gov. Newsom. The governor wants a free hand to move money as he confronts what are is likely to be years of budget deficits brought on by reckless spending. Some critics argue that the debate over Medi-Cal – poor doctor pay, extending coverage to illegal immigrants – is evidence that government can’t be trusted to manage healthcare at all.

PROP 36: Drug and Theft Crime Penalties and Treatment-Mandated Felonies Initiative

BACKGROUND: In 2014, California voters passed Prop 47 which, most famously, turned many felony crimes into misdemeanors. For example, it turned felony theft into a misdemeanor if the total value of the theft is less than $950. 

SUPPORTERS of this measure say that Prop 47 was passed under false pretenses when it was called the “The Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act” and say it unleashed crime and criminals in California and spread homelessness.

Under Prop 36: 

• Offenders with two prior convictions of theft, can face a felony, regardless of the value of stolen property. 
• It enhances penalties for those who steal at $50,000 or more, and adds new laws to address smash-and-grab thefts that result in significant damage or injury.
• It increases penalties for those who deal hard drugs, like fentanyl, that end up killing or seriously injuring someone.
• Gives judges the option with drug sentencing to send dealers to state prison instead of county jail when they’re convicted of trafficking large quantities, and requires courts to formally warn those convicted of dealing or manufacturing fentanyl and other hard drugs: They could face murder charges if they do it again and someone dies.
• Allows judges to offer mental-health treatment to those convicted on drug charges.

OPPONENTS say that California already jails too many people — particularly men who are black or Latino — and argue this will increase that disparity.