California’s November ballot will be busy with 10 propositions as Secretary of State Debra Bowen has recently certified and today numbered each for the voters to ponder. 9 of them were placed by citizen committees upon gathering the requisite signatures [and spending pretty good dollars to get them in most cases] The 10th is the $11 billion water bond placed on the ballot by legislative action.
An interesting point is there are 2 more redistricting measures on this upcoming ballot. One is to finish the job started by Prop 11 and include Congressional seats in the process that has turned drawing seats for Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization over to an independent citizens commission that is being formed right now for 2011. [Congressional seats were left out in a strategy to increase the odds of passing Prop 11 in Nov. ’08 as Pelosi and crew were sure to dump mega dollars to stop it from drawing Federal House seats]
The other measure, cynically, is to remove and deny the citizens commission [before it’s even been tried once] and turn it right back over to legislators to draw district boundaries how they see fit. [look at the current maps and see how convoluted it is when legislators do it] That’s a big thumb in the eye of voters by Democrat leaders who want to take back that power to gerrymander. Anyway, here are the Proposition numbers as just released.
Prop 18-Safe Clean Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2010 [how many times have you heard that title for a bond?]
Prop 19-Legalize Marijuana [Spicoli rejoices and may become a first time voter]
Prop 20-Redistricting of Congressional Seats [mentioned above, the good one]
Prop 21-Vehicle License Surcharge to fund State Parks [$18 increase per car annually. The car tax hasn’t been real popular folks…]
Prop 22-Prohibits State Raids on Local Government Funds [forestalls legislative efforts to find new ways to swipe transportation and local dollars by end runs around previous propositions]
Prop 23-Suspends AB 32 [pushes off unreasonable AB 32 state global warming regs until economy and jobs recover]
Prop 24-Repeals Business Tax Credits, Loss Carry Over and Sales Tax Calculation [estimated cost to business of $1.7B…hello, see Prop 23 for job status!]
Prop 25-Eliminate 2/3 Vote For State Budget to Simple Majority [one party can pass any budget, uses legislator pay forfeiture for late budgets as the carrot for voters to approve ]
Prop 26-Increases To 2/3 Vote For Legislature to Pass State Levies and Charges and certain taxes [as well as some local measures not currently required…in the Spirit of 13, 26 is a good number too!]
Prop 27-Eliminates State Commission on Redistricting [gives back to the same legislators the responsiblity that voters just took it from via Prop 11 in Nov ’08, with out even using it once]
There you have it. See the Secretary’s press release page for more detail, www.sos.ca.gov
It is a diverse and attention grabbing group of props that will make for fascinating debate the next 4+ months!