If you had a time machine, would you rather visit the future or the past?
No need to choose. Over the next few days, Californians will be living with both of them.
On Tuesday, voters will decide whether people in the future, possibly including themselves, will be forced to sell their homes because property taxes are skyrocketing year after year, despite Proposition 13.
We will decide whether millions of Californians who live in single-unit rentals, such as individual houses and condos, will be evicted in the future because the owner wants out of the rental housing business.
We will decide whether nearly a billion dollars more of state tax revenue will have to be paid to Wall Street investors, every year for decades, before the current needs of California residents can be met.
We will decide whether the courts can force the state prison system and county jails to pay the minimum wage to inmates who work, at a potential cost to future taxpayers of billions of dollars per year.
And L.A. County voters will decide whether more than a billion dollars in extra sales taxes will be taken from their pockets and given to non-governmental organizations, every year, to continue their costly but failing work on the problem of homelessness.
That’s why, if anyone in the future has a time machine, they’re probably here right now to make sure we vote no on Proposition 5, Prop. 33, Prop. 2, Prop. 4, Prop. 6 and in L.A. County, Measure A.
Proposition 5 makes it easier to raise property taxes. It slashes the two-thirds vote requirement to approve local debt (bonds) down to 55%. Local bonds are repaid by adding extra charges to property tax bills. Prop. 5 makes it easier to pass those bonds for countless projects and purposes that often could be funded from the taxes you already pay, if the budget was prioritized.
Prop. 5 gets around Proposition 13. It’s a turbo engine for future property tax increases that will blast through the 1978 voter-approved measure’s 2% annual cap. After a few years of gunning that engine, tax hike after tax hike, people will start losing their homes. The future you save may be your own. Vote no on 5.
Proposition 33 would take away a law that protects property owners, including individuals who own a house or condo that they rent out. The 1995 Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act says cities may not impose rent control on these single-unit rentals or enact other types of unreasonable rent control.
If Costa-Hawkins goes away, so will millions of rental units in California. Many owners of single-unit or multi-family rental properties will decide to withdraw those units from the market — or never build them in the first place — rather than lose money every month. California needs more housing, not less. Vote no on Prop. 33.
Prop. 2 is $10 billion of borrowing for school facilities, and Prop. 4 is another $10 billion of borrowing for climate-change programs. But this money will not teach reading or stop the climate from changing. It will just run up interest charges that nearly double the cost.
California already has about $79 billion in outstanding bond debt, $30 billion more is authorized but not yet issued, and $6.3 billion was added with Proposition 1 in March. The governor declared a “budget emergency” so he could break into the rainy-day reserve accounts, but the “emergency” is only that spending exceeds revenue. It’s time to cut up the credit card and stop sticking it to future grandchildren. Vote no on 2 and 4.
Proposition 6 would change the provision in the state constitution that bans involuntary servitude except to punish crime. Prop. 6 removes the exception, which means inmates could not be required to work (as they currently are under state law). Removing the exception also removes the basis for court decisions that said inmates were not “employees” and were not entitled to be paid minimum wage.
The Senate Appropriations Committee staff analyzed Prop. 6 when it was called ACA 8 in the Legislature and warned of “anticipated” lawsuits. When courts force California prisons and jails to pay inmates the state or federal minimum wage for working while incarcerated, future California taxpayers could have to pay billions of dollars more every year. Vote no on 6.
If future residents of Los Angeles County get angry that the sales tax charges on their receipts are insanely high, as are some of the people (still) living in tent encampments on the sidewalks, they may pull up in their time machine to plant a “No on Measure A” sign on every freeway ramp.
Measure A would double the 2017 sales tax increase for homelessness programs, which was temporary, and make it permanent. It would entrench the current broken system, funding its incompetence richly with more than a billion dollars every year, forever. Vote no on Measure A. Existing funding doesn’t end until 2027. There’s time to develop a more effective plan, without a tax increase.
Present-day Californians may want to borrow a time machine and go back to 2006 to block the upcoming increase in gasoline prices. Due to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations, the price hike might be 47 cents, or 65 cents, no one really knows. The entire state is on regulatory auto-pilot to fulfill the demands set in law by Assembly Bill 32, the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.
Last week, reporters demanded answers from the California Air Resources Board about next week’s vote on an “update” to the regulations. Will it raise gasoline prices? How much? There were no answers to be found. We’ll have to travel back in time to ask the Legislature and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger why they enacted AB 32, ignoring concerns that the law would endlessly increase electricity and fuel prices in California (while having no effect on the global climate).
If people from California’s future could have made it there in time, they might not be future Texans today.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
