Proposition 1 – Yes, with minor reservations. This one would
authorize issuance of $4 billion in general obligation bonds to pay for
low-income and veteran’s housing programs.
General obligation bonds are paid back through taxes, and I have
concerns about California’s overall debt levels, so that gives me some concern
about adding to California’s debt.
That said, housing affordability is a serious problem in
California, and I think it is a societal problem (see my discussion of Proposition
10 below), so I think it is appropriate for California as a state to do something
about it. In addition, this proposition
looks to be relatively well crafted to accomplish its goals, so on balance I
think it is worth a yes vote.
Proposition 2 – Yes, I think. This one is weird and pretty
technical. As best I can figure out,
this proposition would allow the state to use county mental health funds to
pay off bonds used to pay for housing for mentally ill people who are homeless or
at risk of being homeless. (And there is a pending court case and a
previously-passed law involved.)
I think the bottom line is whether you want the money at
issue to be used by counties for mental health treatment and services, or if it
should be used by the state to pay for housing for the mentally ill. I don’t
have a strong opinion on this one, but am somewhat leaning toward yes.
Proposition 3 – No. This is another bond proposition, which
would authorize $8.9 billion in general obligation bonds to pay for water and
water-related projects. So again, this
triggers concern about debt (this one would cost about $430 million per year
for about 40 years to pay off).
While some of the water projects that this would fund seem
worthwhile, others are pretty questionable. The worst one to me is funding of
repairs to the Madera and Friant-Kern Canals.
These are federally-owned canals, primarily serving large
agriculture, and a lot of why they need repair is earth subsidence due to
over-pumping groundwater by the same agribusinesses that use the canals. Since
these are federal canals, it seems like the federal government (and taxpayers)
should pay for their upkeep, not just state taxpayers. And maybe their users
(and the people who helped create the need for repairs) should pay for their
upkeep. So while this proposition is not
all bad, I think what they did was load a bunch of pretty good stuff on top of
their self-interested pork so overall it doesn’t look too bad (and makes their
pork look small). But I think the price
tag is too high, so I recommend voting no.
Proposition 4 – No. Proposition 4 would authorize issuance
of $1.5 billion in general obligation bonds to pay for “construction,
expansion, remodeling, renovation, furnishing, equipping, financing, or
refinancing” of certain hospitals that treat children. Again, issuing more general obligation bonds
adds to California’s debt, and would need to be paid for through taxes.
Under this proposition, 72% of the money raised would go to private
non-profit hospitals, 18% would go to five UC hospitals, and 10% would go to a
variety of private and public hospitals. I have a serious problem with public bonds
and tax funds being used to support private hospitals. This is a straight subsidy,
designed to play on our sympathies for sick children (and it throws some money
at public hospitals to make it a bit more palatable). And the money – that you would be paying back
via taxes - could be used for things like remodeling the lobby or refinancing a
previous loan. If we want to spend tax money on hospitals, they should be
public hospitals, not private ones. Vote no.
Proposition 5 – No, but not a strong no. This is another
tweak to the weirdness that is Proposition 13, which commonly results in
properties’ taxable value being significantly less than their market value. (For
example, your house might be worth $900,000, but it could be taxed on a value
of $60,000.) Under existing law, if you sell your house and buy a new house
also worth $900,000, your property taxes will now be based on a value of
$900,000. This creates a serious
disincentive to move, even if moving makes sense.
Existing law has an exception to this – if you are over 55
or disabled and move to a house in the same county (or certain other counties,
but not all counties) that has a market value that is less than your current
home’s value, you can take your reduced Prop. 13 tax value with you, but you
can only do this once. The idea behind
this is that older people may want to downsize, but would avoid doing so
because of the tax hit.
Proposition 5 loosens the requirements for taking your tax
value with you. First, the good things: 1)
It allows you to move anywhere in the state, rather than only certain counties.
The fact that you could only take your tax value to some counties but not
others always struck me as arbitrary and unfair, so I think this makes sense
(and makes things simpler). 2) You can use it more than once. You may want or
need to move again, to be closer to children or medical care, or to a more
accessible home. There is no reason to create a disincentive to that – it does
not reduce tax revenue.
But there are some not-so-good things: 1) If you move to a
less expensive home, your tax value actually goes down. So if you move from the
$900,000 house to a $450,000 house, the taxable value would go from $60,000
down to $30,000. (It is reduced by a proportionate percentage.) C’mon already –
getting to pay taxes on $60,000 for a house worth $450,000 is already a major
subsidy. We already have problems resulting from getting too little revenue
from property taxes, and this would make those worse for no good reason. 2) You
can move to more expensive home and still get most of the tax break. Example:
You sell the $900,000 home and buy a $1 million home. Your tax value would go
from $60,000 to $160,000. (The increase in market value is added to the tax
value.) This is not such a subsidy or a big
deal, but it seems inconsistent with the idea of downsizing. In addition, when combined with the ability
to use the exemption more than once, it would appear to most benefit relatively
wealthy homeowners.
Overall, I would be inclined to vote no, mostly because it would
reduce tax revenue while exacerbating the weird subsidies caused by Proposition
13.
Proposition 6 – NO, NO, NO! This proposition would repeal
recently enacted fuel and vehicle taxes that are paying for road and highway
repair and mass transit, and would require any future fuel and vehicle taxes be
approved by the voters, not just the legislature.
In case you had not noticed, California could benefit from road
and highway repair and better mass transit.
Infrastructure is worth spending money on, and it is appropriate to be
paid for via taxes. Since it is for road
and highway and transit purposes, it is also reasonable for it to be paid for
by vehicle users. This proposition is
just another greedy, selfish, short-sighted move by the anti-tax people. Vote
NO.
Proposition 7 – Yes. This one makes it possible for
California to go to year-round daylight savings time or standard time (but does
not actually make it happen – that would require a 2/3 vote of the legislature
and maybe some other stuff). I think changing the time back and forth is
annoying, and doesn’t really make sense.
Most discussions (both pro and con) seem to think it would be a step
toward year-round daylight savings time rather than year-round standard time,
but I’m not clear exactly why, and I don’t have enough interest to dig that
deeply. But I like daylight savings
time, as it stays light later. So even though this doesn’t do much, I think
yes.
Proposition 8 – No position. This proposition would regulate
the costs charged for dialysis. I know firsthand that for this type of
regulation, the devil is in the details, and I haven’t dug that deeply into it.
Sorry.
Proposition 9 – Removed from ballot.
Proposition 10 – No (but it is complicated, and if you
believe all landlords are evil you should vote yes). This proposition would
repeal a state law (known as Costa-Hawkins) that placed limits on local rent
control ordinances. If you live in a
city without rent control (and unlikely to enact rent control), this
proposition will have no effect on you, whether you are a tenant or a landlord.
(Full disclosure: we live in Berkeley, and are landlords, so we would be
directly impacted by this proposition.)
First, as a general matter, housing affordability is a major
problem in many parts of California. As
I mentioned in my discussion of Proposition 1, it is a societal problem. Rent control is a band-aid on that problem
that does not really address it, and essentially tries to privatize a non-solution
by regulating the behavior of landlords, rather than taking on the actual
causes of unaffordable housing. That
said, moderate rent control can mitigate the worst abuses of greedy and
unethical landlords, and protects some (but typically not all) tenants from
excessive rent increases. (If coupled with eviction protections, as most rent
control regimes are, it can also protect tenants against unfair or arbitrary
evictions.) In some situations, however,
more aggressive rent control can actually make the overall housing problem
worse.
The existing Costa-Hawkins law allows for local rent control
that caps the rent increases for an existing tenant, but it also requires “vacancy
decontrol,” which means when a tenant moves out, the landlord can raise the
rent to a market level. For example, under
current law, if a tenant is paying $700 a month, and the market rate for that
unit is $1200 a month, when that tenant moves out, the landlord could set the
rent for the next tenant at $1200. In Berkeley, if Proposition 10 passes, the
landlord would most likely be required to rent to a new tenant at $700 a month.
This will make it increasingly uneconomic to be a landlord, particularly for
smaller landlords with only a few units. (The economics are different for large
developers of new units.) Berkeley’s rent control regime has already caused
problems with rental housing supply, with many small landlords either taking their
units off the market or renting them short-term via Air BnB, and Proposition 10
will exacerbate this problem.
If you think all landlords are evil and greedy, vote yes. If
you are a strong believer in property rights, vote no. Looking at it from self-interest
perspective: If you think you may be a tenant in a city with rent control or
that might enact rent control, vote yes (if you think you might get a unit with
low rent) or no (if you think it will make it harder to find housing). If you
are a landlord (or may become a landlord) in a city with rent control or that
might enact rent control, vote no. If you are a tenant or a landlord in a city
without rent control, you don’t have a dog in this fight.
If I didn’t live in Berkeley (or hadn’t read their rent
control ordinance), I might feel differently, but if you don’t otherwise have a
strong opinion, I would suggest voting no.
Proposition 11 – Yes. This proposition would make it clear
that privately-employed paramedics and EMTs (typically under contract to local
government) would remain available and on-call when taking meal breaks. Under a
recent court decision (re security guards), it is possible that paramedics and
EMTs would have to take uninterruptable meal breaks. So if an emergency
happened and the paramedics were right around the corner eating a burrito, they
would not respond. This proposition would maintain the existing system, where
they would put down the burrito and respond. Seems like a good idea to me. Vote
yes.
Proposition 12 – Yes. This proposition would set forth some
minimum square footage requirements for confinement of farm animals, such as
veal calves, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens. The square footage required is
pretty modest, and some provisions don’t kick in for several years, but it
looks like an improvement, and should not be too hard or expensive to
implement, so on balance I would vote yes.
Posts
