Proposition Triple-Header To Fill California Ballots in 2008
January 25, 2008
By John G. Matsusaka
After a lull in direct democracy in 2007, California voters will face a triple-header of citizen lawmaking in 2008, beginning with seven propositions on the February 5 ballot.
Thanks to the decision to push the state’s presidential primary forward to February to join “Tsunami Tuesday,” California voters will have three statewide elections in 2008. All will include propositions to decide. Single propositions are already on the ballot for the state’s regular primary elections in June and general elections in November. Several other measures are in the process of verification, and dozens more are in circulation, seeking enough signatures to qualify. Since 2000, California voters have decided a total of 97 propositions.
Eye on February 5
All seven February propositions were placed on the ballot by citizen petition (rather than legislative action), including four initiatives that propose new laws and three referendums that ask voters to repeal existing laws.
If campaign spending is any guide, the most prominent measures on the February ballot will be Propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97, which ask voters to rescind recently approved gaming compacts between the state and four Indian tribes with significant gambling operations.
The compacts allow the tribes to add 17,000 slot machines to their current 60,000. In exchange, the state will get a share of the resulting revenue, which the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office anticipates would be “in the low- to mid-hundreds of millions of dollars” annually. By mid-January, the four tribes backing the compacts had already raised $83 million for the election. Opponents — who include competing tribes, the owner of two racetracks, and a casino workers’ union — had already put up $26 million, pushing total spending on the measures to $109 million with two weeks to go before the election. That total already eclipses the $107 million spent in 2004 by tribes and other gaming interests on Propositions 68 and 70.
With so much money being bet by both sides, the gambling measures should continue to dominate the airwaves with last-minute advertising. But two other measures also should receive considerable attention.
Proposition 93 would extend the terms of sitting state legislators and increase the amount of time a given legislator can serve in a single house. The measure also cuts the total amount of time a person can serve in the two houses combined from 14 to 12 years. Supporters, including Democratic state leadership, have emphasized the overall cut in time in office, but critics have been more skeptical, seeing it as a way for incumbents to forestall the effects of term limits.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently came out in support of the measure, giving up his threat to withhold support unless legislators backed a nonpartisan redistricting plan. By January 1, proponents had raised $7 million, and opponents had raised $5 million. Given past history, the measure faces an uphill battle for passage: In 2002 California voters rejected by a wide margin (42-58) a similar measure that would have weakened term limits. Numerous proposals to weaken term limits have failed in other states across the nation.
One other measure — Proposition 92 — has potentially significant implications for how education money is allocated. It would lower community college fees and guarantee a greater share of the state’s education spending for community colleges. The measure has divided the state’s powerful teachers’ unions, with the California Federation of Teachers in support and the California Teachers Association against. The measure wouldn’t affect the minimum guarantee of funds for education, but would change the way the money is allocated, benefiting community colleges to the detriment of funding for elementary and secondary schools.
The remaining measure on the February ballot is Proposition 91, which would restrict diversions of gas tax revenue away from transportation projects. This is an “orphan measure” that no is longer supported by its initial backers, because voters approved a similar measure in 2006.
Eye on the Future: The Rest of 2008
Looking down the line, voters are likely to face dueling land-use measures on the June 3 ballot. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Farm Bureau Federation and private-property groups have joined forces to qualify an initiative that would restrict the use of eminent domain to seize property for private uses. Such restrictions on eminent domain have been popular fodder for propositions around the country since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo decision in 2006, which expanded the acceptable reasons for government seizure of private property. Measures to restrict the impact of the Kelo decision usually have passed with majorities of 70 percent to 80 percent.
However, the initiative goes beyond restricting eminent domain. It requires governments to compensate property owners when new regulations reduce the value of their property (typically called a “regulatory taking”). The measure also limits the use of rent control.
While voters nationwide have been quite receptive to restrictions on eminent domain (nine states approved similar measures in 2006), they have been more skeptical about requiring compensation for regulatory takings. In 2006, California voters narrowly rejected Proposition 90 — which also contained both eminent domain and regulatory takings provisions — by a 48-52 margin.
The progenitor of these measures was Oregon’s Measure 34 in 2004, which required compensation for regulatory takings, including for regulations that had been put in place before the measure was approved. Oregon voters voted last year to weaken Measure 34 by approving Measure 49. In 2006, voters in Arizona, Idaho and Washington also voted on regulatory takings measures, with only the Arizona measure passing, narrowly. The others failed by large margins.
To complicate matters, the League of California Cities is collecting signatures for a counter-initiative that is pitched as a compromise between the current initiative and the status quo. The league’s measure would restrict eminent domain, but it has no provisions on regulatory takings and rent control. Counter-initiatives frequently lead to the defeat of both measures. But in this case, recent electoral history suggests that voters will embrace the counter-initiative and reject the original proposal.
The direct democracy triple-header of 2008 will come to a conclusion in the November 4 general election. So far, the ballot has just one measure, a proposal to issue $9.95 billion in bonds for transportation projects, which was placed on the ballot by the legislature. The state’s budget crisis is unlikely to have a permanent or structural solution by that time, so it will be interesting to see whether voters will authorize significant additional spending and borrowing in a crisis situation. In California, the average number of propositions on a general election ballot is 18 historically, so we can expect to see more than this single bond measure by the time November’s election ballot arrives.
John G. Matsusaka is vice dean and professor in the USC Marshall School of Business, and professor in the USC Gould School of Law. He is also the president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC.