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essentialsaltesessentialsaltes guide to election 2024
As I’ve said before, I think proposition writers are getting craftier and craftier and making things more and more confusing, with good provisions used to mask bad provisions they really want (and I don’t). I find it a hard rule to follow myself, but if you don’t quite understand it, just vote no.
I'm certainly not guaranteed to be right -- feel free to leave comments.
Additional help
LA Bar judicial evaluations (for the primary, but still useful for the runoff/final election)
Another set of opinions on the props
This is the order on my ballot in my little chunk of unincorporated LA County.
LAUSD District 1: Sherlett Newbill
LACC Board: LA Times recommends the incumbents and I agree. Many (but not all) of the other candidates appear to be perennial candidates for various offices.
Assembly: Isaac Bryan
Congress: Kamlager-Dove (though I give a shout out to Juan Rey who managed to get 2nd place in the primary with no party preference. He actually reps the Working Class Party, which honors the Wobblies as antecedents.)
Measure LL: calls for redistricting of LAUSD every 10 years. Sure, why not? No opponents put their names up.
Measure US: $9B in bonds for LAUSD construction/improvements
Not how we should do things, but maintenance and repair is way behind. I don’t like that new construction is included, and there’s no breakdown in how funds will be spent. Reluctant yes. If Prop 2 passes, they could stack well (as would the tax burden).
Measure E: YES. LA County emergency response — a little inside baseball, but LA City and some other cities have their own fire systems; this addresses other parts of the county (like where we live). Although mostly touted as something to help replace antiquated 911 communication technology, the tax is permanent until repealed by voters. I feel a little bait and switched, but the voters are somewhat to blame. According to the LA Times, the county fire district lost the ability to impose taxes on its own. And it gets no funds from the General Fund. So if you think fire and emergency response costs are generally rising, this is our chance to address it responsibly. A similar measure failed because it needed a 2/3 vote. This version was voter-initiated and can pass with a majority.
District Attorney: Nathan Hochman. I know I know. He’s a Republican (or at least he was 2 years ago). And not everything bad that has happened in LA County is Gascon’s fault. But a lot of things Gascon has said and done have just rubbed me the wrong way.
Judges
My picks either align with the LA Bar recommendations, or when there’s a tie between equally qualified candidates, I find a tie breaker
39: Turner. Morningside valedictorian and UCLA summa cum laude & ΦΒΚ. Go Bruins!
48: Rose
97: Ransom
135: Yee Mac. Clearer vision and website than opponent.
137: Blount
Measure G: expanding the county board from 5 to 9 makes sense. Adding an elected executive ‘mayor’, I’m not so keen on. We’re distributing power, and then centralizing it. Yes?
Measure A: Sales taxes are inherently regressive. This would double the expiring sales tax devoted to homelessness. I think there are other, better props on the ballot for addressing housing and homelessness. No.
Prop 2: $10B in bonds for repairing schools. It also reduces slightly the amount poorer schools need to come up with to get matching state funds. This is how it plays well with Measure US.
Bonds aren’t a great way to fund things the government should just be doing. And I don’t like that it sets aside funds specifically for charter schools (fuck them). On the bright side, CA’s overall debt obligation has been declining. By no means is the credit card paid off, but for important things we can charge it. Yes.
Prop 3: Obvious Yes. Removes the unenforceable language that bans SSM. Costs nothing, right thing to do.
Prop 4: $10B in bonds for wildfire/environmental/drinking water oriented projects. The same stuff for Prop 2 about bonds goes for this one. I think I’m a stronger Yes on Prop 4. If and when CA gets another budget surplus, CA already requires a lot of spending on education and schools. I think it’s more likely lawmakers will be able to address the problems Prop 2 fixes than the ones Prop 4 hopes to fix.
Prop 5: Lowers the vote threshold for local bond measures from two-thirds to 55% if the bonds are for housing/infrastructure. Here’s one of those ways to address housing/homelessness. Bonds are still in the voters’ hands, but the 2/3 threshold is often insurmountable.
Prop 6: Eliminates forced prison labor. Yes.
Prop 32: Raises minimum wage from the current $16 to $18/hr, effectively doubling it from $9 ten years ago. I feel we’ve ramped it up so rapidly, we need time to absorb and assess. We all passed a prop to put it where it is now. Inflation pinches of course, but we’ve already done a lot (especially compared to the pathetic national minimum wage unchanged since 2009). No (for now).
Prop 33: This again? Voters have rejected it twice, and I think they should again. Why is the rent too damn high? There is not enough housing. How do We The People get more housing? We can tax ourselves and do it ourselves (see Prop 5). And we can make it more inviting for private builders to build it on their own dime. LA has done a lot in the past few years along those lines with zoning changes, incentives for low-income housing, and reducing building costs for locations near public transit, etc.
But in the end, those private builders want to make money, and rent control puts limits on their return on investment. So Prop 33 might offer some benefits to people who already have housing, but the very real housing crisis will be made worse.
If, on the other hand, we encourage building even more housing, increasing that supply to better match demand -- that could also lead to lower rents.
The Costa-Hawkins law is now old enough that I certainly support moving the 1995 date for what counts as ‘newly built’ (and immune to grandfathered rent control laws on the books in many cities) forward. Developers have gotten their money back over those 30 years, and older buildings can slip into rent control where applicable.
But for this, once again NO.
Prop 34: Correctly called the Revenge Initiative against the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, for giving us Prop 33 three times. And I can feel my own desire for revenge. Prop 34 is aimed at
Healthcare organizations…
that get certain federal benefits…
and spent $100 million on things other than healthcare (like promoting prop 33)…
and are slumlords with at least 500 high severity housing violations.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is likely the unique entity that qualifies. It is a slumlord that doesn’t want housing competition to be built. And will spend $100 million to defend its turf by discouraging new construction (prop 33).
That said, though I feel that desire for revenge, that’s a bad reason to pass a law, so also NO on this one.
Prop 35: I agree with the LA Times on this one. It’s framed as a feel-good measure, but this is one of those too complicated to understand issues, and should be left to the legislature. NO.
Major healthcare providers want it, because it would increase Medi-Cal reimbursement rates. But this comes at the cost of $12 billion near-term and an unknown amount long-term that is unfunded. Prop 35 is opposed by “Gov. Gavin Newsom, the League of Women Voters, the California Budget & Policy Center and community health organizations that were left off the list of service providers guaranteed higher funding in Proposition 35.” Uh, and me.
Prop 36: No. Police are already doing a better job of using existing laws to go after smash and grab robberies — with one big help being the use of Jan 6th style video identification. Prop 36 may feel attractive, but it will increase the prison population without providing any means of funding. Likewise the drug intervention has no funding, and waitlists for those programs are already long.
Meanwhile Prop 47 funds that we saved when we reduced prison populations were dedicated to homelessness and drug treatment, so another effect of 36 would be to essentially transfer money from those programs back to prisons.
For better or worse, Prop 36 looks like it’s sailing to victory. So much so that the Yes on 36 campaign gave $1 million to the California Republican Party.
